EMI Only Selling CDs To Mega-Chains From Now On

farrellj writes "According to Zeropaid, record company EMI has been notifying small music stores that they will no longer be able to buy EMI CDs from EMI, and will have to buy product from mega-chains like Walmart. Independent record store customers are some of the most loyal music buyers around. You are not going to find the back catalog, what used to be the staple of the music business, at your local Walmart. One wonders when the music business is going to run out of feet to shoot?"

Comments

CDs?

[Tenebrousedge]

I'm 15

What's a CD?

Re:CDs?

[kspn78]

A CD is a funky mirror (at least according to my workmates)

I can't imagine that this is going to do EMI much long term good!

Re:CDs?

[morghanphoenix]

I thought CDs were those coasters AOL used to send you.

Re:CDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, my son, in the days before there was a thing spelt A-M-A-Z-O-N and pronounced "PirateBay"...

Re:CDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm 12 years old and what is this?

Re:CDs?

[BryanL]

A CD is a hard, physical back-up of data (eg. music). If your hard drive crashes, you can reinstall your daat (music) from the physical back-up. This has saved me many a times.

Further, you can play it in your DVD drive and get better sound quality than you normally get from your mp3s and AACs. /sarcasm

Re:CDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Better sound quality? That's what they always say about obsolete media formats. And who really cares about the artsy leaflets you get with physical media? It's the music that matters.

Re:CDs?

[Itninja]

It's a Certificate of Deposit (ask your parents for details). I am still befuddled what this fiduciary tool has to do with EMI...maybe they are going bankrupt.

Re:CDs?

[umghhh]

Well obviously you have never experienced this 'bad money replaces good money' effect in your life yet.

Re:CDs?

[Entropius]

Marblecake, clearly.

Re:CDs?

[asdf7890]

Well obviously you have never experienced this 'bad money replaces good money' effect in your life yet.

Or maybe he has always been an active practitioner of the "paying no money" methods of music acquisition?

Re:CDs?

[sopssa]

People here seem to taking the "music industry is evil and outdated" thinking route again. However when I saw the title and summary, I couldn't but think that they're starting to see how internet distribution starts to dominate.

So now they're cutting extra costs by only delivering physical media to the largest retailers, and maybe putting that effort into online sales. If so, for me this sounds good.

Re:CDs?

[Wowsers]

CD or compact disc is a physical medium that has spun off from the development of Laserdisc.

The audio CD has increasingly been sold in standards breaking versions with record companies pretending they are genuine Red Book Standard CDs. These fake audio CD's that the music industry has flooded the market with are used to distribute computer rootkits, or other Windows targeting malware hidden with music.

Music CDs are increasingly being marketed as remastered, this is usually a clue that the CD is basterdised in sound quality thanks to music industry obsession with loudness, making music completely unlistenable and giving ear ache in very short order. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

Re:CDs?

[calmofthestorm]

What you burn your music to after you get it from bittorrent, if you want to back it up or make a mix for a friend.

Re:CDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

there's an inherent advantage to the read-only nature of cds...also, the data on them is lossless.

Re:CDs?

[antic]

Shaun Micallef (Australian comedian) recently intro'ed a TV show "Talkin' 'Bout Your Generation" with something roughly as follows.

"In 1979, the CD or Compact Disc was invented, and none too soon: it finally provided a use for CD Towers which had been invented 20 years prior."

Re:CDs?

[morghanphoenix]

Now if only they'd distribute DRM Free lossless files online, and kick the RIAA to the curb so the artists can be paid more than the lawyers, they might get a customer back. But let's be honest, that will never happen.

Re:CDs?

[Anonymos Noel Coward]

Don't be silly, it's a Credit Default! These are responsible for the current recession, and for the Great Depression II to follow.

Re:CDs?

[Jafafa Hots]

Exactly! And now that they're cutting manufacturing and finally realizing the huge economic benefit of not having to produce and ship physical product, they're gonna drastically lower the price of downloads to reflect the drastically lower real cost of them! We all win!

wait.. what? what do you mean no?

Re:CDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course they might just be cutting costs and _not_ putting that effort anywhere except their bottom line.

The music companies' biggest addition of value to the product is their distribution network, i.e., the ability to get audio data onto small, shiny circles, and get those small, shiny circles into clear plastic boxes, filled with pretty, printed paper, and then get all of the small, shiny circles and the clear plastic boxes and the pretty, printed paper onto the big delivery truck and then get the big delivery truck full of all of the small, shiny circles and the clear plastic boxes and the pretty, printed paper, out to all the Small, Shiny Circles, Clear Plastic Boxes And Pretty, Printed Paper 'R' Us stores across the country, for the poor, downtrodden consumer to buy.

If the poor, downtrodden consumer suddenly doesn't want any small, shiny circles or any clear plastic boxes OR EVEN ANY pretty, printed paper, then the big ol' music companies are suddenly just ghastly, faceless corporate horror-shows who are charging customers obscene amounts of money for doing not-an-awful-lot for either the customer, or the musicians.

So, yeah. I'm thinking that they're probably not going to do what you said.

Re:CDs?

[sopssa]

Actually they already do and every other record company does aswell. Lossless is probably just issue with the music stores. They also provide music to spotify and equivalent where users can listen to music for free or pay premium (9 euros a month) to listen to everything without ads. Speaking about spotify, it's said to getting close to US release soon, so americans can also enjoy the service we europeans have been enjoying for a year now :)

Re:CDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

there's an inherent advantage to the read-only nature of cds...also, the data on them is lossless.

only for a few years...

Re:CDs?

[sopssa]

However, their distribution network doesn't just consist of delivering those cd's to retailers or making them. There's lots of else involved too, from actually finding the artists that could be something, providing them studio time and sponsoring them so they can get their job done, making the music videos, doing promotion, making sure the actual product is somewhat quality (yeah, quality can be argued!) to actually delivering the products to retailers, tv and radio stations and whatever other places. Lots of times people forget that record labels do lots of other work too and sponsor the bands, and they're not there just to collect money forgefully.

This is why I think the record labels will continue to exist and will be used by artists. Yes, I said used. Its not necessary for artists to use them, noone force's them to. But lets face it, all that usually needs lots of money and time and work. Not a single person can usually do so much, but go work with record labels so they can handle all the other stuff and artists can spend the time on their core thing -- making music.

Re:CDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously a recording industry troll!

Re:CDs?

[xaxa]

It's something old people buy, claiming that the sound quality is better than a music download. Unfortunately, their ears are wrecked from listening to too many of them, so they can't tell the difference anyway. The only people who can tell the difference are teenagers, but unfortunately they can't afford to buy CDs.

(And thanks for making me feel old, even though I'm only 8 years older than you. For some reason (apart from the better sound quality, which I can still hear) I still like having CDs, even though I only look at the artwork once, rip them, and put them in a box.)

Re:CDs?

[countertrolling]

You're thinking of floppy disks.

Re:CDs?

[hrvatska]

As this article points out, for musicians the alternatives are not just go it alone or sign with a record label. New business models are developing that permit musicians to raise money directly from investors and still maintain ownership of their copyrights and master recordings. While there may still be a place for the major record labels in the future, it's going to be a lot smaller than it is today.

Re:CDs?

[NickFortune]

However, their distribution network doesn't just consist of delivering those cd's to retailers or making them

True, but it's debatable how many of the other functions you list add value from a consumer point of view. In some cases you could argue the reverse was true.

This is why I think the record labels will continue to exist and will be used by artists

Ah, now. From an artist's viewpoint, it's a little different.

Its not necessary for artists to use them, noone force's them to.

Indeed it's not. On the other hand, suppose you're seventeen years old. On the one hand, you have extravagant lifestyles of the rock-and-roll megastars. On the other you have the prospect of a career scraping by as an independent, self publishing musician. It's not much of a contest. In terms of common sense, it's a lot like spending all your cash on lottery tickets in the conviction that you're going to win big someday, but when you're that age, you know it's going to be different for you because you're special.

In effect, it's a long con. The message is "if you work hard and have talent, then one day you too will be rich and famous". I think the reality of the matter is that there's higher profits for be made from a small number of megastars, than there is from lots and lots of stars, and there are more talented, hard working bands than the big labels can ever hope to use under their marketing strategy.

So yeah, I think artists are going to continue to chase after contracts with the big labels. I'm just not entirely convinced that this is a good thing.

all that usually needs lots of money and time and work. Not a single person can usually do so much, but go work with record labels so they can handle all the other stuff and artists can spend the time on their core thing -- making music.

I thought that was why bands had managers, myself. Don't need a record company for that.

Re:CDs?

[sopssa]

Indeed it's not. On the other hand, suppose you're seventeen years old. On the one hand, you have extravagant lifestyles of the rock-and-roll megastars. On the
other you have the prospect of a career scraping by as an independent, self publishing musician. It's not much of a contest. In terms of common sense, it's
a lot like spending all your cash on lottery tickets in the conviction that you're going to win big someday, but when you're that age, you know it's going to be
different for you because you're special.

Not really, I work in software development and nothing near music industry, and even tho I'd want to be 17 years old again (damn those we're the best years), I'm not :) But I do have the understanding how business industries work, and understand how artists need the labels. You can compare it to outsourcing, if that makes better sense (+ they sponsor too, same with game development)

In effect, it's a long con. The message is "if you work hard and have talent, then one day you too will be rich and famous". I think the reality of the matter is that
there's higher profits for be made from a small number of megastars, than there is from lots and lots of stars, and there are more talented, hard working bands than
the big labels can ever hope to use under their marketing strategy.

You're underestimating the power of lots of less-selling bands compared to megastars. When you have lots of them, you have more fans, more income and more sales. You also have more stability -- You're not depending your business on a few megastars that usually lose their status in a few years.

I thought that was why bands had managers, myself. Don't need a record company for that.

The managers are there to handle contracts with record labels, gigs and possible other stuff. But record labels still do many of the things.

Re:CDs?

[ChoboMog]

I'm in my 20's and prefer to avoid those "Mega-Chains". I guess they don't want/need my business.

Re:CDs?

[ILongForDarkness]

I think at some level society needs big stars not just a bunch of good bands that some people know. Part of culture is a shared music tradition. By definition if thousands of bands are being listened too and no one is a big star then music doesn't make it into culture as much (as in if you quote lyrics from a song few people will know what your talking about). Not saying other bands shouldn't exist, just that their is a huge need for very popular music and as a bonus it is very profitable.

Myself I'm into black death metal which is somewhat hard to find (you can't find it in Walmart, at least were I live ;)), usually more expensive (25 for a new album versus ~15 or so for pop music). That said though, I can go to a 3 music festival for $50 including camping and hear 20 good bands. There is something to be said for being part of a subculture where everyone assumes you are poor and gives you good deals :)

I think that is the way that the music industry is going, most poeople will end up purchasing the music online and most of the money will be spent on concerts. For example last year the music industry made record profits even though the record sales were down. People are just spending the money on concerts instead of the albums.

Re:CDs?

[jimicus]

wait.. what? what do you mean no?

What part of the word "no" are you having difficulty with?

Re:CDs?

[rbrausse]

hey - he is 15. don't overstrain him with ancient relics like AOL

Re:CDs?

[Angstroem]

A CD is a data carrier on which the audio data is typically stored in way less corrupted way than the Generation MP3 is used to consume.

Maybe my ears differ just enough from the average physical model, but listening to MP3 for longer time makes me dizzy -- and I see no point in buying artificially crippled audio.

Re:CDs?

[xtracto]

What you burn your music to after you get it from bittorrent,

What? is that the new leetspeak for copy to usb ?

I know some of those are supposed to be disposable, but to put fire on them... is it entertaining or something?

Re:CDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm actually 23, but I think it's irrelevant to the point. Also, I post as AC whenever I don't think I'll pick up a karma bonus.

I've bought one CD, ever. I like vinyl because it doesn't sound like shit. It seems like bands will do two masters: one for CD (or more commonly radio and mp3), and one that actually sounds good.

I listen to classical music and jazz because nobody's competing to have Beethoven be pumped up to digital full scale. I hate popular music with a passion.

My main source of music these days is Pandora. I've deleted most of my mp3s, saving only the lossless formats. I miss my Rio Karma and its native ogg and flac support.

The one album? Rage Against the Machine, released in 1992. I lost the physical copy years ago.

Re:CDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Usb Cant be that common a format, Dragons Lair hasn't been released on it yet.

Re:CDs?

[Znork]

from actually finding the artists that could be something

Which, considering that music taste is varied, is something the audience does a much better job of itself. Particularly with modern tools like social networks.

providing them studio time and sponsoring them so they can get their job done

Studio time ain't exactly that expensive any more. Especially if you're reasonably prepared beforehand.

making the music videos

Somehow I doubt the wisdom in wasting money on videos that there's barely any market for at all. Subsidizing it from the main product is certainly one reason it's hard to make money from the product.

doing promotion

Certainly not something that should be encouraged by copyright. Too much promotion in the industry as a whole is one of the reasons you need more promotion, and when you're distributing more promotion materials than product you should realise there's a problem.

making sure the actual product is somewhat quality (yeah, quality can be argued!)

And much in the mind of the listener. One persons quality can be another persons boredom.

to actually delivering the products to retailers, tv and radio stations and whatever other places.

If they want them they can pay for the delivery. Or use electronic delivery. It's not as if transport costs need to be significant today.

But lets face it, all that usually needs lots of money and time and work.

It's always easy to spend money. The trick of free market economics is that they encourage producers to spend less money, becoming more efficient. Monopoly rights on the other hand encourage spending more money and you end up with the absurd current situation where some have trouble making money selling many expensive copies of things that can demonstrably be produced at almost no cost.

Re:CDs?

[RancidMilk]

What part of the word "no" are you having difficulty with?

Well, I get messed up at the 'n' and I'm afraid that it doesn't get much better after that.

Re:CDs?

[wisty]

Yep, bands are a start-up, and the Silicon Vally model for start-ups is better than the "label" model. Less middlemen.

Re:CDs?

[Mashiki]

Don't you mix songs to a tape? Everyone still has their copy of "Summer of Love 1986" don't they?

Re:CDs?

[peragrin]

There will always be those with real talent to be a big star. The trick is instead of Britany spears type talent(all looks medicore everything else). You can get talent like Jon Lennon who could actually write his own music.

That will be the difference.

Re:CDs?

[NickFortune]

Not really, I work in software development and nothing near music industry

Ah, my bad. I didn't mean you personally, right now. I mean it in a this-is-how-people-think-when-they're-that-age sort of way. Sorry for any confusion there.

You're underestimating the power of lots of less-selling bands compared to megastars. When you have lots of them, you have more fans, more income and more sales

And far more overheads. It takes a lot less staff to actively promote twenty artists, than it does to promote twenty thousand. And of course, there are some aspects that just don't scale at all: there's a limit to how many artists for whom you can arrange "saturation play" at any given time.

You also have more stability -- You're not depending your business on a few megastars that usually lose their status in a few years.

Meh. Keep - let's say - twenty A-Listers on the go at any one time, with maybe another 40 in development. That's enough to even things out. The rest of them, let them get on with it. Maybe one of them will surprise you and have a hit. I see what you're saying, but I'm not sure I believe that's the way it is.

The managers are there to handle contracts with record labels, gigs and possible other stuff. But record labels still do many of the things.

Oh probably they do. But do they need to be done by the labels? Wouldn't any number of small management agencies handle things just as well? And more to the point, does this function justify the hideously over-inflated prices charged by the record labels? Getting back to the original point, if they're adding value, then they have to be adding from the consumer#'s viewpoint, and I'm far from convinced that's the case here.

Re:CDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also bribing radio stations to play your company's featured bands.

Re:CDs?

[Dan541]

Can't remember the last time I actually saw one of those.

Re:CDs?

[NickFortune]

Part of culture is a shared music tradition. By definition if thousands of bands are being listened too and no one is a big star then music doesn't make it into culture as much (as in if you quote lyrics from a song few people will know what your talking about). Not saying other bands shouldn't exist, just that their is a huge need for very popular music and as a bonus it is very profitable.

Hmmm. I suppose it depends on how you think of big stars. If you mean wildly popular, then I'd agree. I was thinking of megastars more in terms of income and lavish lifestyle. I don't think that's a necessary part of our culture, and I don't think it's going to survive the current upheavals in the music industry.

I think that is the way that the music industry is going, most poeople will end up purchasing the music online and most of the money will be spent on concerts. For example last year the music industry made record profits even though the record sales were down. People are just spending the money on concerts instead of the albums.

Yeah. And I think the big labels are going to be increasingly marginalised as more and more new acts decide to exploit online distribution channels directly. Interesting times, eh?

Re:CDs?

[sopssa]

Oh probably they do. But do they need to be done by the labels? Wouldn't any number of small management agencies handle things just as well?
And more to the point, does this function justify the hideously over-inflated prices charged by the record labels? Getting back to the original point,
if they're adding value, then they have to be adding from the consumer#'s viewpoint, and I'm far from convinced that's the case here.

Actually I think the shares are calculated more on the investment. Record labels sponsor more, they get more from sales. When they think its a sure deal and theres no risk, they dont need to sponsor as much and the artists get better deals. Its quite like investing start-ups in IT, you calculate the risk based on the possible revenue (and include your own costs obviously). Its business as usual.

That comes to adding value to consumers, it comes in some kind of quality. Quality and "good" music is obviously easy for everyone to argue, but if you're ever listened to the bands demo tapes you know they're horrible to professionally made studio albums. That being said, I love the demo songs of bands I like otherwise too -- but I wouldn't listen to such from random bands I dont like and only those. Music labels play a major role in bringing those "probably-awesome" bands from their demo's to professionally made music.

Re:CDs?

[SuseLover]

They're the things you get the best sounding music from. I have yet to find an mp3 that has as good sound quality as any cd (barring some the the poorly re-mastered ones). I hate most of the iTunes/Amazon mp3's, they sound like shit when played on a good sound system compared to my CD's.

Re:CDs?

[mcgrew]

In effect, it's a long con. The message is "if you work hard and have talent, then one day you too will be rich and famous".

True, since only a tiny minority of artists actually do become rich and famous, even if you're incredibly talented, even if you're signed with the majors. It's the same with sports - all the kids trying to be rich, famous basketball or football stars, when most won't even make the minor leagues.

Unlike a sports player, most competent musicians CAN at least make a living, albeit a modest one. Not many can make a living playing baseball.

Re:CDs?

[sopssa]

What most people dont see is that's what major music labels are doing. To get some superstar, you take risk. Most of them never get to anywhere. Some of them get mediocre success and what most of us like to listen aswell. Then there's the megastars and teen idols like Britney Spears, who are great for a bit and then come down. Surprisingly, they still are able to stay on, be that by lame publicity stunds or whatever else. And it's enough big market so there's probably still lots of who listen to Britney Spears.

However, just because some label has some Britney Spears or equivalent doesn't really mean they cant work with other kind of bands or better artists.

Re:CDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. That's called a floppy disk.

Re:CDs?

[mcgrew]

Music CDs are increasingly being marketed as remastered, this is usually a clue that the CD is basterdised in sound quality thanks to music industry obsession with loudness

Older ones that were originally on analog are being re-remastered (if they weren't already) because when they put the analog music on CD, they remixed the multitrack analog, and a lot of the early ones were poorly done. It's a rare album that's sucessfully mixed as well as the LP, or mixed faithfully.

When CDs first came out I salivated for a player (they were very expensive then and I was poor), especially wanting a digital version of Dark Side of the Moon. When they became affordable and I bought one, that was the first CD I bought.

I was very disappointed.

It's a bit of an irony that they go for "loud". CDs have a superior dynamic range than LPs, yet going for "loud" wastes this. Back in the analog days the engineers strived for dynamics, and many titles used dynamic range for artistry - The above mentioned album is an example, as is Boston's first album, as is Santanna's Abraxis.

Re:CDs?

[VJ42]

What part of the word "no" are you having difficulty with?

It's the declarative negative, I never got the hang of those; usually it's just a matter of finding out how much you have to bribe someone to say yes...

Re:CDs?

[turgid]

What's a CD?

A Compact Disk is a digital storage medium which originally held 650MB of data whose primary use was the storage of stereo 44.1kHz PCM losslessly-encoded audio data with a reasonably high dynamic range, which sounded magnificent through a reasonable amplifier and set of speakers.

It is unfortunately being replaced by low dynamic range (loudness wars), lossy-compressed (save bandwidth over the Internet) stuff like MP3 which sounds horrendous on any speakers or earphones costing more than $25.

Never mind, you won't notice since you never experienced CD-quality music. Karajan is turning in his grave. (His Ode to Joy took 74 minutes, allegedly).

Re:CDs?

[morghanphoenix]

Nah, those worked better as storage, the CDs were only good as a coaster or a Frisbee. I didn't mind AOL sending me floppies, saved on my disk budget.

Re:CDs?

[morghanphoenix]

From the download page:

We are sorry, but currently we only support Windows and Mac.

Of course, if you want to go ahead and download the Windows or Mac application for now weâ(TM)ll keep quiet about it.

If you are using Linux, you might want to run Spotify under Wine.

Well, at least they have a Wine guide, more than most people bother to do.

Re:CDs?

[igny]

leetspeak is so 1990s. I do not think 15 year olds would have a clue for the terminology you old people are using.

Re:CDs?

[vertinox]

What's a CD?

A Certificate of Deposit

You can get them at your local bank.

Re:CDs?

[Arkham]

I thought CDs were those coasters AOL used to send you.

To which a 15 year old would reply, "What's AOL"?

Re:CDs?

[mdwh2]

I suspect that good bands will still become popular, and be as part of culture, just not as much as the OTT way it happens now.

Consider the example of subcultures, as you give yourself with metal - surely you've experienced that you can talk about other bands or quote lyrics, and people in that subculture will know what you mean, even if the bands have never received any mainstream advertising. Perhaps it will mean that musical culture will become focused on particular subcultures rather than shared by all, but I don't think that's a bad thing.

People said the same thing about TV going from 4 channels to 100s - "but I won't be able to discuss with my friends what was on the TV last night". But in fact, you still can, because even though there's 100s of channels, good TV still spreads through word of mouth, and people start watching things that they hear their friends talking about. Same with music. Does it matter if there isn't a common cultural interest in music or TV between you and a complete random stranger?

Re:CDs?

[je ne sais quoi]

copy to usb ?

Heck, I don't even bother with that any more. It's easier to just plug in the ipod and use something like senuti for the mac or gtkpod on linux that lets you pull songs off the ipod and transfer the entire music collection. Fairly fast, easy, and don't have to worry about which songs you want, just transfer them all and sort them out later.

Re:CDs?

[Sponge Bath]

"It's something old people buy..."

I'll stick to my wax drums. Their sound has a certain "warmth" all this modern technology lacks. So while the current generation listens to 128kbps MP3s of Hanna Montana through earbuds, I can groove to the bagpipe stylings of Seamus McGinty the way they were meant to be heard.

Re:CDs?

[Hassman]

A shiny "record" ... whatever that is.

Re:CDs?

[samriel]

so americans can also enjoy the service we europeans have been enjoying for a year now :)

Us Yanks already have Jango, last.fm, Pandora, etc. Spotify may be better, but I'd say we can get by for now.

Re:CDs?

[skoda]

It's a new technology promising lower cost and higher sound quality than the current digital downloads. It employs state of the art lossless audio encoding, capturing sonic signals beyond human hearing. The promoters also boast every purchase comes with a free archival system, so if your digital version is lost, you can trivially recover it. Even more amazing, it has absolutely no DRM!

This technology is bleeding edge, and so far ahead of the current lossy, non-archived, unshareable digital dreck, it's no wonder a kid wouldn't have heard of it.

Re:CDs?

[sgt scrub]

No way man. They are the coasters you get when you buy a new computer.

Re:CDs?

[Jurily]

usually it's just a matter of finding out how much you have to bribe someone to say yes...

Small stores don't have enough to bribe with.

Re:CDs?

[sgt scrub]

$10 says Walmart is using their "we will handle your shipping" contracting thing to undermind more little guys again. The only markets they haven't beat down with that tactic is the auto parts and multimedia sectors.

Re:CDs?

[sopssa]

Yeah, and it actually works perfectly on Wine. There's also native linux libraries released to develop linux clients when people just do it, and despotify linux hax client (you need premium tho).

Re:CDs?

[morghanphoenix]

Umm, kinda like CompuServ, only worse.

Re:CDs?

[mathx314]

So now they're cutting extra costs by only delivering physical media to the largest retailers, and maybe putting that effort into online sales. If so, for me this sounds good

Y'know, a year ago I would've agreed with you. But in that year I went off to college and discovered a wonderful little record store just off campus. Prior to this, the only places I ever got music were iTunes, my friends, and The Pirate Bay. I'm going to assume that's the case with you, that you've never been to a really good record store. Let me tell you what it's like.

Inside the store they have three separate racks: new, used, and used-and-no-one-likes-it. The new rack generally sells albums for $12-$14, which is slightly more than iTunes would run you. The used rack sells albums for $5-$9, or slightly less. The third rack sells albums for $2, or $1 if you buy 10 or more at a time. The third rack's quality, however, is a lot more suspect than the other two.

At this store, I found used albums by bands I had heard of, but never actually listened to (in this case, The Decemberists and Neutral Milk Hotel). I bought the used albums, listened to them, then went back and bought as many of their albums new as I could. I randomly stumbled upon a few great bands among the duds on the $1 rack, then bought some of their new stuff too. I splurged for the special editions of albums which I would not have on iTunes. In the past year, I have probably sent ~$100 on music. That's probably at least twice what I spent in the 18 years before that.

If this news is true, it's very sad. In my mind, the way the music industry can stay afloat is as follows:

1. Support indie music stores, because (in my experience at least) people spend more there.
2. Stop using DRM. I've avoided a few albums specifically because I know they have DRM.
3. Stop going after legitimate customers. I'm overall a legitimate customer, but I do have some pirated stuff. My absolute favorite artists though, like Sufjan Stevens and Andrew Bird, I originally got from friends. I then went back and bought as much of their discography as I could.

So that's why I really don't want this to be true. I can't stand buying music in a large retailer, and hope that small independent stores can make a comeback.

Re:CDs?

[NickFortune]

Actually I think the shares are calculated more on the investment. Record labels sponsor more, they get more from sales

You might be right, but it still doesn't scale linearly. There are only so many opportunities each year to flash your boobs during the superbowl, y'know? There has to sweet spot from the viewpoint of the record labels, and I'd be surprised if they hadn't run their minimax spreadsheets on the numbers. I expect they're operating reasonably close to the maximum ROI. I mean you may be right to suggest they'd make a ton more money if took on more staff and promoted ten or a hundred times more acts, but you'll not persuade me that what gets on the playlists today is all that's out there that's worth a listen.

That comes to adding value to consumers, it comes in some kind of quality. Quality and "good" music is obviously easy for everyone to argue, but if you're ever listened to the bands demo tapes you know they're horrible to professionally made studio albums.

I think that's got more to do with startup bands who haven't yet learned their trade than it has with the lack of a record label. Look at Jamendo. Loads of professional quality music on there, without anyone needing a record label to make it happen. What you say may have been true in 1975, but it's not the case today.

Re:CDs?

[ILongForDarkness]

True. I'd think that Britney Spears or other huge artists would actually be harder to work with. More demands for their time, easier for them to get a contract elsewhere whenever they are free, much bigger venues and branding efforts. They also have to work on "manufacturing" more of the music and picking the look of the band more than you'd have to for a group like Slayer. One is more of a creation of the music label while the other for the most part comes with a relatively small number of fans, with the look that their fans like and don't really much care to change to sell 5M albums versus 500k.

Re:CDs?

[Pollardito]

CDs are actually useful for all sorts of things

Re:CDs?

[Kenshin]

I think the reality of the matter is that there's higher profits for be made from a small number of megastars, than there is from lots and lots of stars.

That's the truth of the matter, and the thing the internet screwed up for them possibly more than downloads.

The labels used to be able to control the marketing and life cycles of these stars, through radio stations, MTV, and record store promos. Everyone was aware of the same artists. Now, with the internet, it's trivial for a smaller band to start up and spread a fanbase, so musical tastes are far more fragmented than they have ever been. Kids are the exception: Listening to the same music is still part of fitting in. However, unexpected hits fly out of nowhere there too, now.

Re:CDs?

[plague3106]

You mean like you can get from Amazon already?

Re:CDs?

[sjames]

Especially since they also make sure an unsigned band that does their own recording can't get the time of day on any radio station or in any record store.

The studios may have top of the line hardware and engineers, but by the time it gets mixed 'loud' and especially after it gets compressed to MP3 and played through crappy earbuds, it sounds no better than what an avid hobbiest with 'prosumer' grade gear can accomplish on the cheap.

Re:CDs?

[morghanphoenix]

Since when does Amazon offer FLAC?

Re:CDs?

[commodore64_love]

>>>>>Now if only they'd distribute DRM Free lossless files online

>>>Actually they already do and every other record company does aswell. Lossless is probably just issue with the music stores.

So the original poster was correct. It's nearly impossible to buy lossless files online. If for example I wanted to get "Thriller", all I can get is the MP3 or AAC, which are both lossy.

Re:CDs?

[commodore64_love]

I can't get Spotify in the U.S. What are similar P2P music-streaming alternatives?

Ahhh, never mind. I'll just keep listening to AOL Radio. They stream my local Baltimore station's HD2 mix, which is good enough.

Re:CDs?

[Danse]

Oh probably they do. But do they need to be done by the labels? Wouldn't any number of small management agencies handle things just as well? And more to the point, does this function justify the hideously over-inflated prices charged by the record labels? Getting back to the original point, if they're adding value, then they have to be adding from the consumer#'s viewpoint, and I'm far from convinced that's the case here.

It seems like the labels don't necessarily do a lot to really help a band succeed. They just mooch off of them as much as possible and see where things go. If they get big, you can probably mooch more for a while, until their contract is up anyway. If they don't get big, then you just keep collecting whatever money you can from them anyway. Interesting view on this from one of those bands that never quite made it really big here.

Re:CDs?

[commodore64_love]

>>>Us Yanks already have Jango, last.fm, Pandora, etc

I've tried all of these and don't really like the results. For example if I type "Rihanna" because I want to hear some dance music, I get her, but I also get a lot of obscure music I've never heard before (read: boring).

Re:CDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's important to note that as older recordings go through various releases, the sound usually changes, but there is no guarantee that any one of those sounds better than another. Sometimes a remaster is good, sometimes it ruins the beast.

I have some LP's that blow their CD counterparts away, and some CDs that sound better than the LP version.

Also note that the "loudness" problem isn't isolated to CDs. Any track released that's been engineered to be "loud" (hey, what's this thing labeled "Volume" do?) is going to be crappy sounding when it's ripped to MP3, or Ogg, or whatever.

Re:CDs?

[plague3106]

They offer MP3s, a format which pretty much everyone uses, unlike FLAC, which pretty much no one uses.

Re:CDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bartkid sez,
It is what you buy from the band playing at the bar (which you can go to once you're 21 in the U.S., 18 or 19 in Canada) so they can buy gas to drive to the next city as they tour.

This is easily >90% of the CDs I buy. The remainder I buy mostly direct from artist labels online (e.g., DGM, RERMegaCorp).

Re:CDs?

[Hurricane78]

Burn? What does fire have to do with it?
And wouldn't I make a mix with a DJ program?
Also: When I want to copy it, I use an USB-stick like normal people. Or maybe some other USB drive.

Get off my site, grandpa! ^^

Re:CDs?

[FrankieBaby1986]

Only reason that's funny, is that it's true, which is very sad as well. I'd guess that they've decided to move full on to settlement-grabbing as a business plan.

Re:CDs?

[The Archon V2.0]

I thought CDs were those coasters AOL used to send you.

Coasters? I used them to scare birds!

Re:CDs?

[maxwell demon]

Is there a lossless MP3 format, or did you just not see the word "lossless"?
Of course they could also offer plain .wav instead of FLAC.

Re:CDs?

[plague3106]

Oh please, like you're going to hear the difference between flac and a 256bit vbr mp3.

Re:CDs?

[maxwell demon]

I've bought one CD, ever. I like vinyl because it doesn't sound like shit.

So you based your evaluation of CD sound on one single CD?

Re:CDs?

[umghhh]

Such possibility exists of course but I meant application of Gresham's law to goods like cars etc but I guess you know that of course.

Re:CDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a dog-bites-man story that represents a few artists. It sounds nice but the reality is that most of the industry does not work that way. You need to be on a label to get noticed. If anything the contracts have moved toward giving the artist a hair more freedom and possibly not breaking labor laws, but it's like saying being kicked in the balls four times is better than being kicked in the balls five times.

Maybe in 30 years.

This is unrelated but since I'm AC I'd also like to add that it's unfortunate that everyone on /. seems to only be talking about the pros and cons of digital distribution. For those of us who actually buy CDs on a regular basis, independent shops are the way to go, and EMI is screwing them over.

I don't see why a middleman distributor wouldn't take up the task, however. But it means higher prices for the mom & pop stores. Sad that you have to pay for the privilege of not feeling like livestock when you want to buy something offline.

Re:CDs?

[MattGWU]

"See this? It may LOOK like a silver record, but it's NOT! This is a 'laser disc'"

Re:CDs?

[jgrahn]

Inside the store they have three separate racks: new, used, and used-and-no-one-likes-it. The new rack generally sells albums for $12-$14, which is slightly more than iTunes would run you. The used rack sells albums for $5-$9, or slightly less. The third rack sells albums for $2, or $1 if you buy 10 or more at a time. The third rack's quality, however, is a lot more suspect than the other two.

Yeah, at one point these third racks were dominated by early Kylie Minogue albums, and 1984-era hits. (That was when vinyl still dominated those stores, of course.)

I can't stand buying music in a large retailer, and hope that small independent stores can make a comeback.

Around here (.se) independent stores have always dominated, as far as I can tell. A store tends to either have a broad range of music (but attract its own kind of crowd) and staff who clearly love music, or be faceless and carry the twenty best-selling albums. It's the former kind who gets the customers, or at least the kind of customers who buy music as more than just lame birthday presents.

Re:CDs?

[peragrin]

while you are correct, it does take risk, the trick is that risk is mostly made up of physically producing albums, and paying for a manager with experience to get them started. The studios charge artists $10,000's of dollars for studio time. Currently you can duplicate most of the functionality(if not know how) of major studios for $10,000 in equipment. but you only need to rent it. With digital copies or heck even self burning CD's like a lot of indie bands do you can produce up 50k cd's and millions of downloads easily. while you aren't making money the real money is and always has been touring. That requires a manager with skills and those don't come cheap, however if you are willing to work for your music unlike britiany, then such efforts aren't wasted. You may not own a fancy mansion and drive around in sports cars, but you can make a decent if modest living in such a way.

the labels basically provide money for studio, time cd presses, and managers. They also charge the artist for all of that as any good corporation would. however other than the manager the rest of that stuff isn't needed as much in this day and age. Treuly big stars will become big on teir own. Their talent can be heard.

even 10 years ago getting the word out to a mass market was hard. Now all it takes is a good song, and a facebook account. Okay maybe not uite that easy, but if oyu really want it it doesn't require a studio to loan you 2 million in startup fund only to force you to pay it back with 15% interest.

Re:CDs?

[CastrTroy]

Well, to be fair, any digital copy is lossly. It all depends on how much loss you want to tolerate.

Re:CDs?

[morghanphoenix]

If I'm paying for it I want it at full quality. In order to use it on a portable device I'm going to have to transcode to mp3, but that doesn't mean I want to buy an already degraded quality.

Re:CDs?

[Reaperducer]

A Compact Disk...

Disc.

Disks are floppy or hard. Discs are compact or vinyl.

Re:CDs?

[ps2os2]

No, they are the "thingy" items that MS sends outs its OS on. It is so buggy anyway the items attract other bugs so they are useful pest control objects.

Re:CDs?

[turgid]

Indeed. I apologise unreservedly.

Re:CDs?

[mcgrew]

I often sample vinyl to CD, and discovered that when you rip the home made CDs, the dust and scratches are far more noticeable. Probably why kids think vinyl sounds bad.

Last Purchase

[Anonymous Coward]

Last Purchase

Not a surprise...

[MaskedSlacker]

It's been years since they stopped wanting my business. It's about times these stores stopped getting special treatment. Customers are overrated anyway.

What the hell?

[Dexter Herbivore]

I'm obviously missing something here, how can this business model work when you're reducing your customer base? I realise that Walmart has the buying power but if they've paid for some sort of exclusivity deal then surely that adds expense back into their purchases unnecessarily?

Re:What the hell?

[LKM]

Presumably, one explanation would be that the profit from the smaller stores that it is smaller than the administrative cost of sending them CDs. They could ask for more money, I guess, but perhaps they just don't want the administrative overhead.

Re:What the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing the misdirection that the RIAA will use to claim that shrinking CD sales are due to piracy and that copyright law needs to be extended to 95 years after the death of God and that eternal damnation should be mandatory for filesharing. People. including politicians, will forget or ignore this move and go along with the RIAA's rhetoric and if any questions arise, they will claim that anyone can just buy from the mega chains like good little American consumers should.

Re:What the hell?

[TubeSteak]

I'm obviously missing something here, how can this business model work when you're reducing your customer base?

Ever hear of the 80:20 rule?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
"roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes"

Hypothetically speaking, if 80% of the sales come from 20% of the retailers,
then you can cut your logistics costs by dropping the underperforming 80% of retailers.

I say "hypothetical" because we don't know EMI's real #s,
and I realize it's not going to be a popular opinion, but
if cutting 80% of retailers leads to more than a 20% reduction in costs...

This had to be a high level decision and I'm guessing the bean counters won.

Re:What the hell?

[91degrees]

What will end up happening is a distribution organisation will be set up (or one of the mega-stores will set one up), that will buy in bulk and take on the costs of dealing with small orders themselves.

It's rather a shame for the small businesses who will end up paying for this, but I guess that's how business works.

Re:What the hell?

[maxwell demon]

Probably more important: Why would an aspiring artist go to EMI and have a limited reach when he could as well go to some competitor and be sold also to customers of small music shops? The loss of small music shop customers may not directly hurt EMI (otherwise they wouldn't have done this), but a loss of content to sell will probably hurt them. And it will not be obvious until the current hot stars are not hot anymore, and the new hot stars are with different labels. And then it's too late.

I personally think it's a bad business move. If I had EMI stock, now I would sell.

Re:What the hell?

[BrokenHalo]

I say "hypothetical" because we don't know EMI's real #s,

We do, however, have a pretty good idea of the general standard of their products. It would be trite to say "...and nothing of value was lost", but it would also be largely true.

Re:What the hell?

[thesp]

Because often, aspiring artists are not being courted by many labels simultaneously. Remember, most in the music business are looking, and perpetually waiting, for their "big break" - a major label offering them a contract. No-one will turn down a label because they think they'll do better with another. Labels are not a service industry for musicians. Musicians are raw material for the labels' products.

Re:What the hell?

[SepticPig]

Exactly, this is what already happens in other markets.

A wholesaler that already distributes Tshirts, posters, joss sticks etc will take on this role.

Upside for the supplier is they only deal in bulk.
Upside for the retailer is that they can now combine their CD orders with the Tshirt etc orders to meet minimum order values and be able to order more frequently.

It may cost the retailer a little more but that has to be weighed against the ability to reorder more often, from a stock aspect, the benefits of this cannot be stressed enough.

What will suffer is the tail, now a special order for that niche album will have to feed back an extra layer and so become slower. It is these sales that will end up as p2p searches instead, leading to reduced sales and then delisting by the supplier.

Expect more of the market to follow this model.

Expect it also to be reversed in 10 years or so as the suppliers look to bring back direct those smaller, higher margin, customers.

Re:What the hell?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

I think it's over-reliance on rules like that leads to companies like EMI doing silly things to begin with. It's the same reason why Microsoft are doing so poorly at the moment while Apple is actually doing well despite everything else. It's as if they're operating their business by treating it like some kind of machine and trying to understand it's separate parts and systems, rather than developing a more realistic overall view of the industry (perhaps like Steve Jobs).

Re:What the hell?

[jhol13]

if cutting 80% of retailers leads to more than a 20% reduction in costs...

It still wouldn't make sense - in the long run. It might make sense if there were no competition.

Re:What the hell?

[BlueStrat]

Why would an aspiring artist go to EMI and have a limited reach when he could as well go to some competitor and be sold also to customers of small music shops?

As a long-time musical artist & bandmember myself, I can tell you why. Most don't know any better. Most bands and artists are so desperate to "make it" that any label showing interest in them is considered as being offered the gold ring. They're sick and tired of playing dumpy bars and clubs and making $50-$75 a night, two or three nights a week, four sets a night. That's if they can actually stay booked steadily.

One of the things that being signed gets you is that it opens up a whole new level of venues to play, with a whole lot more money. A band goes from a few hundreds of dollars a show to two or three thousand. Billboards and radio ads go up ahead of their appearances, and crowds increase. Merch sales skyrocket.

The fact that the label that's offering them a contract doesn't distribute to independent record stores doesn't even enter the picture to their thinking.

Again, that's not all musicians/bands/artists, but most that I've encountered in my many years in "the biz".

Strat

Re:What the hell?

[rohan972]

developing a more realistic overall view of the industry (perhaps like Steve Jobs).

Jobs (Apple) targets the high end of the market. Apparently he'd rather make big margins selling to the top 20% than lower margins to the 80%.

Re:What the hell?

[RDW]

'Exactly, this is what already happens in other markets.'

This is what already happens in the music industry. The zeropaid author has misinterpreted the original waynerosso article (which itself seems to be over-hyping the situation - see some of the replies to the post):

http://www.waynerosso.com/2009/06/30/emi-to-mom-pops-eat-cake/

This only states that EMI wants the independents to purchase from 'one stops' rather than directly from EMI. These 'one stops' are one stop wholesale distributors, not one stop retail stores like Walmart.

From a post by 'chpthrlls' in the zeropaid thread:

"this really isn't such a big deal. First of all "One Stops" DOES NOT mean Wal-mart and Best Buy. A one stop is a distributor that buys from the labels and sells to retailers. Most indie stores get their product from one stops anyway. Some labels do sell directly to larger indie stores that have a large volume, but this, and only this, is what EMI is halting. I should know, as I am an indie retailer. We have always used a one stop distributor, and will continue to do so. And F*CK Wal-mart!"

From Jason Hughes in the waynerosso thread:

"This is sort of a false story. EMI closed a few accounts that were doing minimal orders. No stores in Seattle, or in our coalition for that matter, were closed. The ones that were closed got 3 months written notice. I'm not sure where Wayne is getting his info but he should fact check it."

From 'jack' in the waynerosso thread:

"Wayne's post is inaccurate. Every year, all the labels take a look at their accounts and make changes. I know people at EMI and know EMI sent letters (back in February) to a handful of small physical retailers -- we're talking a fraction of a percent of their physical accounts -- and informed them they'd need to go through one-stops for product. They gave them months and months of notice and a list of options for one stops. They didn't just call them last minute as Wayne claims."

Re:What the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then let me say good residence; the internet can fix this failed distribution model for you.

Re:What the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

The idiocy of the rationalists at its best. Cut the lower 80%. Yay! We've just increased profitability!

Hey, once was good, let's do it again. Cut the lower 80%. Yay! We've just increased profitability even more!

Again! Cut the lower 80%. Yay! Even more profitable.

So on ad infinitum until we are making 1000% profit on sales of $10/annum.

It's the same rationale as a pyramid scheme. Just as there is a finite, rapidly exhausted, pool of suckers, so there is a finite pool of highly profitable customers. The rest return only lucrative profits, not obscene profits.

Anyone get the impression that the "music" industry's business model is to stop selling music and to collect revenue through the courts instead?

Re:What the hell?

[SeaFox]

What's funny to me personally is that a number of years ago I stopped buying music at Wal-Mart because I mad at them for only selling "sanitized" music, and not always labeling it clearly saying so.

So I guess now EMI will never sell another CD to me again.

Re:What the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

You lie! Slashdot reliably informs me that it is fine to pirate music whenever I feel like it, because musicians should make their money from live performances yadda yadda Beethoven yadda yadda player piano lawsuits yadda yadda.

Now you're saying that doing live performances is very low-earning and doesn't provide a decent income unless you are famous enough to be already filling stadiums. That is just un-possible. Slashdot readers are famous for expertise in business management (which as we know is a lame activity done by jerks that is nowhere near as difficult or intellectual as installing software patches or writing v23332 of the companies timesheet software).

Re:What the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

Their business model is suing "pirates", because "piracy is making sales go down". Now, just a few days ago, we had news that sales are UP yet again, just like every year since napster came around and got people more interested in music than radio ever did.

If sales go up any more, it may become hard to convince even politicians that piracy is causing sales to go down. So, something had to be done to stop sales from going up.

Or they may be running out of pirates to sue, so they try to create more by closing the stores where people who like music go to buy said music.

Re:What the hell?

[jimicus]

How true do you reckon the arguments made by the likes of Courtney Cox about how the "gold ring" isn't such a great deal are, in general terms?

Re:What the hell?

[jimicus]

sorry, Courtney Love. D'oh!

Re:What the hell?

[a09bdb811a]

I personally think it's a bad business move.

And what do you impersonally think?

Re:What the hell?

[billsnow]

yet another slashdot summary that is a hyperlink to an article that hyperlinks to some blog. another point for internet journalism.

Re:What the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is only natural that your brain would come up with the Courtney that is still relevant.

Re:What the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

It can work just fine if you are increasing your margins and profit by doing so. If the small stores are fundamentally much less profitable (higher cost of sales, more returns, etc.) that the mega-chains, it could, in theory be beneficial to their profitability.

The implication of this is that EMI is saying that they are going blockbuster groups or nothing because the Walmarts of the world aren't going to dedicate space to bands selling less than 1MM units or so while smaller, more specialized music stores may very well. Furthermore, it gives the megachains much more leverage in negotiating with EMI and would likely end up eroding their pricing there.

Re:What the hell?

[zippthorne]

How much does a billboard cost these days, anyway? or a radio ad? Do you really need to sign your life away to get these things?

Because it seems to me that all the labels really provide is the initial financing for advertising and studio time at usury rates.

Re:What the hell?

[KGBear]

Simple explanation: the music industry doesn't want to sell music anymore, not in the traditional sense. The fact is, in the beginning of a musician's career they are almost totally dominated by the label. They cost some money in promotion, recording, distribution, but those are known and controllable costs. In the end of a successful musician's career, they either own their own material or they have made deals in which they get a bigger chunk of sales and performance revenue.

By then usually their fans have grown older, more mature, more sophisticated and they no longer buy the latest CD of the current one hit wonder for that one hit. They already have a huge collection of music and buy less and less of harder and harder to produce quality. These are the people seen in local music stores.

The music industry wants to sell Doritos (nothing against Doritos), something a huge crowd will buy, consume and dump out the other end, ready to buy a new bag - you know, at WallMart. They want to keep music production just at the cusp where an artist is popular enough to justify burning large numbers of CDs but still cheap enough that profit is maximized.

Like with everything else, profit maximization is killing popular music. Mind you, I _like_ profit; but you see, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

Re:What the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. They've cut 80% of a particular set of costs at the expense of 20% of total revenue. A portion of that revenue they share with artists.

I.e., screw the artists.

Walmart only buys CDs that have been edited to make them Christian Fundamentalist friendly, so they're not an option for independents to use as a middleman anyway.

The issue is that EMI is the actual middleman between the artist and the stores. If they don't want to do this role, the artists will go elsewhere, as their contracts run out and they sign up to 50% revenue share deals with companies that only sell via iTunes, etc.

Re:What the hell?

[hattig]

Thank you for clarifying the entire story, or non-story as it turns out to be.

What had appeared to be an amusing but sad story about a music label shooting itself in the foot actually turns out to be a non-story about a business cutting some unnecessary legacy costs to the non-detriment of anyone.

Re:What the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

Likely, it is also natural that he 'loves' his 'cox'...

hehe

Re:What the hell?

[BlueStrat]

How much does a billboard cost these days, anyway? or a radio ad? Do you really need to sign your life away to get these things?

Because it seems to me that all the labels really provide is the initial financing for advertising and studio time at usury rates.

It's not the labels that pay for the billboards, radio ads, etc to promote a performance. It's the venues and event promoters. However, those venues and event promoters won't spend the money on a non-signed act, nor book them to appear in the first place. Nor will booking agents that handle those type of higher-paying venues accept an unsigned act as a client.

For an average talented, but unsigned regional band to spend thousands on billboards, radio ads, newspaper ads, etc etc on promoting a gig at some average bar/club where they'd be making a few hundreds of dollars would be insane.

There is a sort of glass ceiling effect where unless a band is signed, many of the most-lucrative venues and opportunities are simply not available.

Strat

Re:What the hell?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

But there is more to Apple's success than just that, though. And what about the iPhone and iPod?

Re:What the hell?

[BlueStrat]

You lie! Slashdot reliably informs me that it is fine to pirate music whenever I feel like it, because musicians should make their money from live performances yadda yadda Beethoven yadda yadda player piano lawsuits yadda yadda.

Now you're saying that doing live performances is very low-earning and doesn't provide a decent income unless you are famous enough to be already filling stadiums. That is just un-possible. Slashdot readers are famous for expertise in business management (which as we know is a lame activity done by jerks that is nowhere near as difficult or intellectual as installing software patches or writing v23332 of the companies timesheet software).

I know that you're being facetious, but I'll reply.

Live performances are still the best income-generators for most bands, signed or unsigned.

It's just that being signed opens up a whole new level of venues and opportunities that are out of reach for unsigned bands. Booking agents that handle the larger, more famous and lucrative venues won't touch an unsigned band/artist, regardless of how talented they may be.

Gigging as an unsigned band is much like living like a poorer college student. There's a lot of Ramen noodles in the diet. :)

The average signed act (not the top one-half of one percent of signed acts that become truly famous) still only makes $2K-$3K on average per performance. After expenses that go along with a top-shelf touring band, that still doesn't leave much.

I'd love to have my bands' CDs "pirated" across the world! The promotional value would be tremendous! Even if my band were to be signed, I still would be fine with people "pirating" our CDs as royalties after the Hollywood accounting used by labels means that CD sales would still only account for a very small percentage of income. This leaves live performances and merch sales as still being the lions'-share of a bands' income, whether they are signed with a label or not.

I view "pirating" of my bands' music to be an invaluable source of viral marketing, regardless of if we were signed or not.

Strat

Re:What the hell?

[qzak]

And what about the iPhone and iPod?

Are you suggesting that the iPhone and iPod aren't targeted towards the upper part of the market? Sure, they dominate the market, but I can get a "MP3 Player" for $10-20, yet most current iPods are an order of magnitude more. Likewise the iPhone is targeted towards the upper echelon of the market (this argument was easier when it was $600 and not $200, but clearly they are not "racing to the bottom" with that either).

Re:What the hell?

[Mordaximus]

I view "pirating" of my bands' music to be an invaluable source of viral marketing, regardless of if we were signed or not.

In that case, what's your band's name - let's get the viral marketing on the road!

Re:What the hell?

[BlueStrat]

How true do you reckon the arguments made by the likes of Courtney Cox about how the "gold ring" isn't such a great deal are, in general terms?

Here's a link I've posted before on this subject to a piece that explains the realities of the "biz" for bands and artists very well. Although it was written in the '80s, it's mostly still quite accurate.

http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

Strat

Re:What the hell?

[dontmakemethink]

People who want music to come to them are probably already using online stores to get new music. Everyone else is willing to go wherever the music is.

Also large chains have their own distribution network, cutting UPS out of the loop as well as much of the other distribution costs (reduced packaging, fewer clients to administer, etc). Walmart wouldn't have to offer much more to defer the net expense of reduced distribution, in exchange for exclusivity. Surprised it didn't happen sooner.

Re:What the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention that many musicians are too disorganized to do all this themselves. They have gigs, women and in many cases jobs to attend to before even worrying about booking and promoting.

Re:What the hell?

[ameoba]

I don't know about CDs but in a previous life I tracked/projected DVD sales for a living. For DVD's, Walmart is over 50% of the market.

Re:What the hell?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

I guess if you want to put $10-20 devices in with all the other expensive PMPs, you can do that. But I wouldn't. If you look at the iPod and look for similar feature sets and functionality, you won't find many for $10-20. And an unsubsidized iPhone is actually a pretty normal price for a smartphone. I guess it all depends on how you want to define a market.

Re:What the hell?

[saunderscc]

EMI is no longer publicly traded. Private equity firm Terra Firma now owns EMI.

Re:What the hell?

[rohan972]

I guess if you want to put $10-20 devices in with all the other expensive PMPs, you can do that.

That's the low end they don't target. That's what I was talking about.

And an unsubsidized iPhone is actually a pretty normal price for a smartphone.

Smartphones are the top end of the phone market, also what I was talking about.

Foot

[suckmysav]

Meet bullet

What a bunch of numpties

They're out of feet

[kawabago]

They're out of feet, that was an EMI gonad.

Re:They're out of feet

[bkk_diesel]

That's the first time that reading Slashdot has physically caused me pain. Thanks~

Re:They're out of feet

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be assuming this "EMI" creature somehow has human-like properties, and as such has but two feet which do not regenerate. Given the continuing, ever-growing profits of the music companies, I wonder how you could make this mistake.

Meh. Don't buy RIAA regardless of who's selling.

[fyoder]

EMI is one of the big four RIAA member labels, along with Sony, Universal, and Warner. I stopped buying their shite ages ago, and I don't really care if I'm not buying it from a little store or a big one.

One wonders...

[Anonymous Coward]

One wonders when the Music Business is going to run out of feet to shoot?

I am sure that there was a thorough business analysis performed that showed that the cost of maintaining the back catalog exceeded the revenue that it generated, or that margins are MUCH better on the high-volume stuff to the point of justifying dropping the back catalog to focus on the core business.

The music industry is now focused on shoveling out very high volume tripe through a consolidated distribution system.

Legal?

[mwvdlee]

Is it even legal to only sell to certain customers and not others based on size of business?

Re:Legal?

[Bureaucromancer]

I'm pretty sure that it falls under right to decline business. My understanding (not that involved mind you) is that the rules are basically limited to some fairly obvious racial/gender/etc discrimination that can't happen and anti trust monopoly stuff. As bad as things are, one record label is most definitly not anyone's definition of a monopoly, so it looks to me like they are perfectly within their rights. Now what would possess them to do it I have no idea.

Re:Legal?

[wbren]

How many "In Soviet Russia..." jokes will this generate? I'm taking bets...

Re:Legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

but owning specific artists and their records is a monopoly.

Re:Legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, jokes generate you.

No, wait a second....

Re:Legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

correct, but "legally" the artist could go to a different label.

Re:Legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, big customers sell YOU!

Re:Legal?

[mjwx]

I'm pretty sure that it falls under right to decline business.

Yep, at least in Australia, UK and US. This law is occasionally overruled if the company is a monopoly or the only source of something (in which case it the government normally gets it made by someone else under license). Smaller businesses may be able to start a class action or some similar large civil suit but this is not illegal.

Re:Legal?

[Asclepius99]

Owning specific artists and their records is way too broad to be a monopoly. That's just their product, which of course they don't let anyone else sell. That would be like calling Apple a monopoly because they own the iPhone and don't let Microsoft sell it also.

Re:Legal?

[tepples]

correct, but "legally" the artist could go to a different label.

When all four major labels have the same policy of requiring assignment of copyright in all of an author's works, rather than a time-limited exclusive license to specific works, I smell cartel.

Re:Legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it is.

Try calling Proctor and Gamble and telling them you want to buy one case of Tide to use in your home. They'll tell you to go to a store. Tell them you are a small store and want to buy 10 cases a month, and they'll tell you to go find a jobber/distributor. Tell them you are a regional distributor and want to buy 1000 cases a month, and they might talk to you. Tell them you're a major retailer (or major distributor) and want to buy several train car loads, and they'll sell to you.

Call up Ford and tell them you really like the new Escape Hybrid and want to buy one. They'll tell you to go to a dealer.

Re:Legal?

[david_thornley]

They don't have to discriminate among customers. All they have to do is have a hefty minimum order - say, a thousand of something. Wal-Mart and other big chains can buy straight from EMI, and distribute to stores through their own networks. A small music store might want to order three of something, so they go to a wholesaler who did buy a thousand and order three.

That's de facto selection. Anybody who wants to deal in bulk can deal with EMI directly, and others won't. EMI doesn't need to vet possible customers, they select themselves.

Re:Legal?

[mwvdlee]

The issue isn't bestselling mainstream popular releases, it's the CD's that AREN'T in the charts right now. Wal-Mart has no interrest in those, so how would a small music store be able to get those CD's from Wal-Mart?

Whacked business case

[Lucky_Luke(void)]

Prosecuting file-sharers gives better revenue than selling music. No transportation/storage/etc.. overhead, Just some greedy lawyers to be paid.

Re:Whacked business case

[maxwell demon]

So why do they sell their CDs at all? Just put the torrents on TPB and sue everyone downloading them.

Re:Whacked business case

[fatalwall]

because they need to be able to prove that the music has some value. if its not on the market then it has no tangible value.

Re:Whacked business case

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Prosecuting file-sharers gives better revenue than selling music.

Hey, you know what'd be great? If they didn't have a revenue stream like that. Y'know, if there were no pirates out there to prosecute. Then they'd be forced to work on their music instead!

Ah, a world without piracy. That would be nice.

Re:Whacked business case

[Lucky_Luke(void)]

Well I always was a bit under the impression that all those user license agreements, copyright laws, etc. make everything so complex, that you will always breach a law and pay a fine. It has become a sort of value added tax, paid directly to 'the industry'. I could be wrong ofcourse :-/

Re:Whacked business case

[Anonymous Coward]

Then they'd be forced to work on their music instead!

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Because in the past we had far more truly amazing musicians compared to now amirite.

(No. We didn't. It's just that the only things that still get played now from those times are the songs that were vetted thoroughly with the years so that only the good, or the halfway decent, survived.)

Re:Whacked business case

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

I think you misunderstood me AC. I was playing on the immediate blaming of record labels, rather than the people who rip them off.

Still you make a good point.

Artists involved...

[Gothic_Walrus]

From EMI's website:

New Music finds and develops new, exciting and successful music. Its record labels include Angel, Astralwerks, Blue Note, Capitol, Capitol Nashville, EMI Classics, EMI CMG, EMI Records, EMI Televisa Music, Manhattan, Mute, Parlophone and Virgin. Artists on EMI labels include Lily Allen, The Beatles, Beastie Boys, Coldplay, Depeche Mode, Doves, Gorillaz, Iron Maiden, Norah Jones, Massive Attack, Kylie Minogue, Katy Perry, Pink Floyd, Queen, Sir Simon Rattle, 30 Seconds To Mars, KT Tunstall, Keith Urban and Robbie Williams, as well as international artists such as Amaral (Spain), Camille (France), Empire of the Sun (Australia), Tiziano Ferro (Italy), Flex (Mexico), LaFee (Germany) and Utada Hikaru (Japan).

Catalogue maximises the value of EMI's historic and extensive music assets. Seminal albums in EMI Music's catalogue include Hunky Dory and Aladdin Sane (David Bowie), Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band (The Beatles), Pet Sounds (Beach Boys), A Rush Of Blood To The Head (Coldplay), Birth Of The Cool (Miles Davis), Come Away With Me (Norah Jones), Dark Side Of The Moon and The Wall (Pink Floyd), A Night At The Opera (Queen), OK Computer (Radiohead) and Songs For Swingin' Lovers (Frank Sinatra). EMI Music's Catalogue division also owns and runs the world-renowned recording studios Abbey Road in London and Capitol Studios in Los Angeles.

There's also this page, with a more complete listing of artists.

EMI's catalog includes some of the arguably best albums of all time, and some of the most popular current artists. I don't see any way how this will end well.

Re:Artists involved...

[hemp]

there is no reason why e.m.i.
i tell you it was all a frame e.m.i.
they only did it 'cos of fame e.m.i.
i do not need the pressure e.m.i.
i can't stand those useless fools e.m.i.
unlimited supply e.m.i.
hallo e.m.i. goodbye a & m

-Sex Pistols

Re:Artists involved...

[DJLuc1d]

Oblig: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_EMI_artists Probably not anywhere near complete. Sucks that Astralwerks is EMI though... I didn't know that.

Re:Artists involved...

[Anonymous Coward]

Blue Note's an EMI label? Some of the best jazz albums ever were Blue Note

Re:Artists involved...

[dontPanik]

Rather than look at big names, the important thing to consider in this is the indie record labels and indie bands under the EMI umbrella.

You take away Sgt. Pepper... yeah it's a great album, and yeah they'll miss it in the indie stores, but it's more important to have the hip new bands in stock in an indie record store.

So surfing wikipedia, the indie record labels I see as members of EMI that I recognize are Virgin, Astelwerks, DFA records (wow), and Mute records (wow).

That's a really big deal, and trust me, I don't think that the next Liars or LCD Soundsystem CD (two popular indie rock bands) are going to fly off the shelves at Wal-Mart.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_EMI_labels

Re:Artists involved...

[objekt]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnkDITDZT-M

Re:Artists involved...

[Lodragandraoidh]

I sense a movement in the force -- as if thousands of recording artists just fired their record label all at once....

Well, no.

[gowen]

You are not going to find the back catalog, what used to be the staple of the music business, at your local Walmart.

Well, no. But you won't find the vast majority of that at specialist retailers either, they don't have the space. They would order it for you, but everyone knows its easier (and frequently cheaper) to get it from amazon or their ilk. The web retailer own that long-tail retail space, and that's not going to change.

Specialist records stores will have to survive solely on the quality of information and advice their staff can provide -- it's their only market advantage.

Re:Well, no.

[jhol13]

Let me see ... you go to specialist record store and the advice they give is "this album would be good but I cannot get it, buy it from Amazon" ...

No, the record stores cannot survive solely on the information they have.

Re:Well, no.

[dontPanik]

Specialist records stores will have to survive solely on the quality of information and advice their staff can provide -- it's their only market advantage.

Also independent record stores are more fun to go to (and have more indie "cred") than the Wal-Mart CD section.

Re:Well, no.

[elrous0]

My experience with the "quality of information" at most indie stores has been some half-stoned cocky hippy working behind the counter who wants to talk for 20 minutes about the latest crappy college bands when I'm there to buy heavy metal. They're almost as bad as videogame stores.

Re:Well, no.

[fermion]

What specialty stores do often have is used copies, which I suppose the labels would likely want to consider as pirated copies. After all, everyone knows that the user simply goes home, copies the recording, and then sells the music back. As such, the small retailer that deals in used music is facilitating criminal activity.

I am not sure if this policy changes anything for such retailers. Many years ago I was talking to a retailer about the fact that a big label recording was $18 while an indie recording was $15. Her explanation was that the big labels gave her almost no discount as she did not buy in quantity, while the indie people would give discounts on small quantities. Given that places like Wal Mart offers huge discounts, the specialty stores will likely do better buying big label stock through them, at lower than wholesale. Also many years ago, I worked in a small town pharmacy where we did the same thing. We would go into town and buy stock from the discount retailer and resell it to the local population.

I would say that the specialty stores survive on used sales, local unsigned artists, and, of course, surf and skate gear.

Re:Well, no.

[Colonel Korn]

You are not going to find the back catalog, what used to be the staple of the music business, at your local Walmart.

Well, no. But you won't find the vast majority of that at specialist retailers either, they don't have the space. They would order it for you, but everyone knows its easier (and frequently cheaper) to get it from amazon or their ilk. The web retailer own that long-tail retail space, and that's not going to change.

Specialist records stores will have to survive solely on the quality of information and advice their staff can provide -- it's their only market advantage.

Maybe you live in a small town (like I do at the moment), but in metropolitan areas in the US you can most likely find at least one or two independent music stores with 10-50x the space of the CD section at Walmart. Rasputin and Amoeba in Berkeley have a much better selection of new albums in their used section than Walmart or Target have at all. The used albums are also far cheaper than Walmart/Target prices, while the new albums (with a student ID for a discount) are generally competitive. The same goes in at least SF, Detroit, New York, Atlanta, Denver, Colorado Springs, Boston, Seattle, Chicago, DC, and probably all the large cities where I haven't checked, too. Individual sections in Amoeba (classical, for instance, or punk) are bigger than the entire music section in a Walmart.

Re:Well, no.

[hey!]

Really, the only practical solution to the back catalog problem is some form of downloading.

Starbucks might have another piece of the puzzle here. It's a destination. I work at home, and I frequently go there for a change of scenery. While I am there they sell me coffee and music.

I wonder if these two factors could be combined: destination and download. The labels are afraid to let their IP into the wild of public downloads, but maybe if you could go to a real nice store with a staff that really knows music, sample the wares and walk out with music on some medium, that would make better use of the back catalog.

The problem as I see it is that there's no way for people to discover they want all that stuff which the record companies own. The slow death of independent radio, the strangling of Internet radio, leaves consumers with no way of learning about the product. The record companies aren't going to put it into the public domain because they don't want competition. And artists in the back catalog are deprived of royalties they might have earned. So if they aren't going to sell that old stuff, copyright is doing none of the things it is supposed to do.

Re:Well, no.

[drinkypoo]

Specialist record stores as we know them cannot survive, and there is no particular reason for them to. Anyone can offer a service from which they will order you things from Amazon (or anyplace more or less) for a fee, possibly including a markup, and you might possibly go to them for it if you want/have to make a cash purchase.

Consequently, the only way to survive as one of these establishments is to catalog your stock and make it available via some sort of network like Amazon's, and to offer to your customers to order stuff in, perhaps for a simple fee on top of the order amount. If you want to sift through moldy old stacks of vinyl for that rare gem, that's okay, but most people don't. There's no real justification for something like that taking up prime retail space.

Re:Well, no.

[AndrewNeo]

And they probably have the Parental Advisory discs, too.

What the hell?

[Dexter Herbivore]

What am I missing here? How can reducing your customer base make any kind of business sense? I understand that distribution costs will be higher on smaller consignments but unless your profit margin is exceedingly slim this can't be a wise decision.

Justifying Piracy

[basementman]

Well at least this will give Slashdot to justify their pirating ways.

Re:Justifying Piracy

[MaskedSlacker]

You accidentally a word.

Re:Justifying Piracy

[bersl2]

He didn't accidentally the verb, however. That's an important.

Re:Justifying Piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

No he didn't, it was by pirates.

I never bought CDs in the first place

[Knoeki]

Vinyl is where it's at.

The Corporate Plan

[AnonymousIslander]

Step 1: Set prices for CDs at such a high level consumers start to turn to alternative sources

Step 2: Continue to follow out-dated market system into financial hell while suing average people who may/may not have downloaded music and alienating more of their former/potential customer base at the same time

Step 3:???

Step 4: Government Bailout

Step 5: Profit!

We now know EMI's Step 3!! Can't wait to see how the rest of the gang implements it :-)

Re:The Corporate Plan

[Plekto]

Step 1: Set prices for CDs at such a high level consumers start to turn to alternative sources

Step 2: Continue to follow out-dated market system into financial hell while suing average people who may/may not have downloaded music and alienating more of their former/potential customer base at the same time

Step 3:???

Step 4: Government Bailout

Step 5: Profit!

I thought step 3 was sue everyone and alienate your entire customer base, thereby hastening your demise.

Damn this would be a great business

[OrangeTide]

... if it only wasn't for the customers.

This is the motto for the music industry these days. Do everything possible to minimize the number of customers you have to deal with, I can only assume they don't like having customers.

Re:Damn this would be a great business

[msimm]

Maybe this is just the death of physical media. It's massively expensive to produce and push all this landfill material around. The CD even now is a relic. A generational gap. Obviously they aren't going away right now, but this could signal EMI beginning the inevitable change from physical media to digital. Perhaps physical media (disks, whatever becomes popular next) will be relegated to collectors and fans much like records or concert t-shirts are today. They can be attractive and can make nice mementos, but their advantages stop there. Like and autographed book.

Re:Damn this would be a great business

[buro9]

And the bands.

Having worked in the industry for over a decade, the secret motto is "This would be a great business if wasn't for the bands".

The view is generally that they are prima-donnas that dislike selling their product and think they're artists.

Now they've updated it to be both the bands and consumers you have to wonder whether they've realised what they're admitting... that they're just an intermediary.

Re:Damn this would be a great business

[Anonymous Coward]

Do everything possible to minimize the number of customers you have to deal with, and blame the lost sales to piracy.

These fixed that for ya.

Re:Damn this would be a great business

[OrangeTide]

What they need is for the government to collect a tax on all blank media (including hard drives) and give it to the music and movie industry as compensation for all of the sales lost to piracy. Then these industries really wouldn't need to bother with pesky customers (and bands).

EMI eats feces

[eatspoop]

I suppose it is no secret now, with the release of this rather earth shattering news blip. What the hell are they thinkin'? http://emi.eatspoop.com/

This can only be good!

[geekboy642]

Now, when I look for music at my local store, I'll have a higher chance of accidentally finding a non-RIAA CD to take home. C'mon Sony, you go next. Make my store a better filter, it's annoying searching RIAA Radar for everything I want to buy.

Here's an analogy

[KneelBeforeZod]

We've all been saying that the major music publishers sales are shrinking, right? Well this is the moment where it really shows. This move of theirs will affect the artists signed underneath them as they re prioritize their marketable assets and just remove all the fringe bands/artists that fewer people listen to. Soon they'll be selling only the bands/artists on the Top40 chart (or whatever chart they've made anyways). It's AMPUTATION.

Re:Here's an analogy

[fatalwall]

where's the analogy?

Re:Here's an analogy

[Merls the Sneaky]

Then all the amputated parts should fall into public domain.

And they wonder why piracy is rampant

[schizz69]

It is motions like this which lead otherwise paying customers to pirate music that they just cannot find at big chains, as they are not 'Mainstream enough'. Well done EMI, you have just inadvertently promoted piracy.

sneaky business

[lordharsha]

EMI probably read this, figured something had to be done to get rid of piracy, and decided to hamper their sales. This way when the next study is conducted, they can blame piracy.

Before someone points it out, this is supposed to be funny. I might be overly paranoid, I might hate them greedy buggers, and a little conspiracy theory does the soul good, but this is probably just corporate stupidity. Been seeing a lot of it lately.

Think like a Music Exec (i know its difficult)...

[freedom_india]

You gotta think like a Music Executive to understand their logic.
Fixed Costs and shipping costs per CD shipped rise uncontrollably when sending it in small batches to mom-and-pop stores.
Their sale price is fixed. WHich means, EMI earns less from each CD shipped to corner store as its shipping costs eat up money.
Better way is to ship HUGE amounts to a few stores and ask the corner stores to buy their copies from them.
Of course it assumes that small shop owner still want to waste their time & money and drive to Walmart supercenters, negotiate a price with manager and come back with 100 CDs of latest Jessica Simpson singles.
LOL
That wastes two days: one day for shopping and one for sorting.
Who the hell wants to do that.
If i were a mom-and-pop shop owner, i would point my customers to allofmp3.com or some other seller of mp3 songs.
EMI's CEO has proved his tactical sense for next quarter results is strong, while his strategic business sense is as low as the IQ of his Turd.
Good luck EMI. You have given me one more reason to pirate.

Re:Meh. Don't buy RIAA regardless of who's selling

[martas]

that's right. i don't get music from big labels. i get it from isohunt.

What's the big deal? This is a business...

[wbren]

From the summary:

Independent Record store customers are some of the most loyal music buyers around.

When faced with the shear numbers Wal-Mart brings to the table, does loyalty actually matter? That's the problem here. A thousand loyal indie store customers are trumped by a million disloyal Wal-Mart customers. This is a business about making money, not about keeping indie shops afloat.
 

Regardless of your answer to the above question, if I have 100 customers, and 90 of them buy my product through Wal-Mart and other large chains, I would concentrate on selling to the large chain stores. That number is just a guess, but I suspect it's fairly close. My guess is that EMI looked at their distribution costs versus the number of customers reached and decided, "These indie stores just aren't worth the distribution costs." I can't really blame them. It sucks, but I can't blame them. Distributing a physical product costs money, and what better way to cut down on distribution costs than to ship to your two or three largest customers and make the indie stores obtain your product from there, at their own expense.
 

From the article:

It's a odd turn of events for EMI, adding another blow to its physical CD sales while inversely arguing that illegal file-sharing is the real culprit behind declining revenues. If its concerned with losses then why get rid of customers? It just doesn't make any sense.

This is a rare case of the music industry--well, at least EMI--moving away from a business model we all know is outdated, and people are still complaining? And no, phasing out CD sales has nothing to do with illegal file sharing. There are better, cheaper, more convenient, DRM-free options out there, like iTunes and Amazon MP3. They aren't trying to push away their customers; they are trying to encourage people to either buy from stores with cheap distribution costs or buy from digital stores with even cheaper distribution costs.
 

I don't like the record industry, and I think the tactics they use are despicable. That said, it's stories like this that make me think they just can't win sometimes. The article makes it sound like EMI is a big mean company trying to crush indie competition, when in reality EMI is itself a business trying to keep costs down and phase out a wasteful distribution system. Give them a break.
 

Cue anti-RIAA downmods.... now.

Re:What's the big deal? This is a business...

[koreaman]

iTunes may be cheaper and more convenient, but how is buying a crippled (lossily compressed) file "better"?

Even if your ears can't tell the difference, you still won't be able to do things like transcode it to other formats, or play it on the high-quality sound system you might buy someday.

Re:What's the big deal? This is a business...

[twostix]

In the days when free market capitalism wasn't a dirty word and huge corporations didn't think they had a birth right to cashflow and generally worked hard to make money - 10 or 20 cents profit per CD would have still been seen as profit and worth working for.

Must be nice to have so much money that they can refuse to service customers because it requires some work.

Re:What's the big deal? This is a business...

[frozentier]

iTunes may be cheaper and more convenient, but how is buying a crippled (lossily compressed) file "better"?

The average music listener couldn't care less about the quality, as long as it's listenable. MP3's are all I listen to. I have an average sound system hooked to my computer, I have a decent sound system in my car, I have a decent mp3 player, and mp3's suit me fine. I think this reflects the situation with most music listeners today. That's very obvious, or iTunes would be a niche market instead of serving millions and millions of customers. Besides that, though, I would much rather pay one dollar for a song I want than spend $20 on a cd that holds one song I want and 11 songs I don't. That alone is enough incentive.

Re:What's the big deal? This is a business...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it makes sense if they still make 2/3 of the sales but 30+ cents profit per CD from the bigger retailers or 1/2 at 40+ cents, etc. This isn't that unrealistic if their shipping charges are higher for small stores. Also, nothing keeps small stores from ordering their inventory from Amazon - they have enough of a drop from MSRP online that turning a profit reselling it may be realistic. I remember hearing about some grocery chains selling books as loss leaders and book stores buying their inventory from them rather than from the publisher as it was cheaper that way.

Re:What's the big deal? This is a business...

[dafing]

I actually have started buying music from iTunes, in NZ its 1.79 for most songs (like the american 99c songs), our 1.79 is about 1.17 us, so we are basically another 20 american cents more expensive per song. Our iTunes store came online around 2006 or so I think? It seems "recent" and yet far away whenever it were.

I feel guilty stealing music, so I will buy music assuming its a fair price. I dont mind paying basically 2 bucks for a song I cant get out of my head, but I've never bought a full album (about 20 nzd, only 2 dollars or so cheaper than a cd from a cheap store).

I always encode my own cd rips at 320 AAC, I sometimes feel I can notice the difference between that and lower formats, I dont think I've ever felt an honest difference listening to an unlossy copy before, and also it makes a "lag" when you play it back on an iPod etc, the loading times are longer per track? I would guess battery life takes a hit, which when you listen to music for a few hours a day, would add up, it could be majorly annoying on a long trip for example, without power, it DOES happen, imagine being the only one in a group of friends without music (the horror!) "because I can hear the difference between lossless and lossy audio compression...", my friends would say "enjoy your silence loser".

Do you have a good new format that Apple should use on the iTunes store? Apple Lossless is sort of Apple only isnt it, in that only Apple would use it, if Microsoft sold music, they wouldnt use that format. So, Apple should sell .ogg format or something? What would be the absolute best audio quality, to buy and listen to for decades to come? Perhaps if you have a realistic option (good quality AAC) and then something out there (metre wide vinyl records, half a track per side).

Personally, I wish Apple would rip high quality masters into different levels, and people could pick which version they wanted based on space (and possibly battery life) vs sound quality. I use archive.org to host my podcast, and it automatically encodes down (and up!?!?) my AAC files into wave, ogg, VBR mp3 etc, it is quite doable on a large scale apparently. Under my proposed system, if you wanted a higher, or lower copy, then you could redownload it, for free, you would essentially own that song forever, with no need to rebuy. A bit of a pipe dream eh?

Re:What's the big deal? This is a business...

[bogjobber]

IMHO one of the main reasons the big four record industry goes through such dramatic slumps is because they do not pursue hardcore music fans. They make so much money off of blockbuster albums that they ignore building up a diverse portfolio of talented musicians that are consistently profitable but will never sell millions of records. They only market and promote music that teenagers or preteens like, or bands that are already famous. Everything else they pretty much leave alone. Even though very few artists can sell above 100,000 let alone a million, their business model relies on the albums that sell 500,000 or 2 million. It does not take into account artists that are selling 10-20,000 albums.

The "Wal-Mart" music fan is fickle. They're not going to come into the store every week to make a new purchase. They might purchase 2 or 3 albums a year. When they get interested in something else, they might stop listening to your music or pirate it instead. The hardcore fans are what keep records stores and record companies in business when the masses are doing something else.

90% of the new music hardcore music fans and critics listen to and talk about is released on independent labels. Most innovation and originality comes out of bands on independent labels. Independents are doing better financially than they ever have, and are taking market share (although still very small compared to the majors). The major labels have more or less completely stopped releasing classical music, bluegrass, folk, jazz, gospel, soul, or anything else with a small but loyal customer base. With the current strategy they occasionally get the Pussycat Dolls or Taylor Swift, where they spend a tiny amount recording an album and make millions. But when they miss with the blockbusters they get in trouble because the custoemrs they rely on the most have absolutely no loyalty.

Add to that the fact that they treat even their best-selling artists like crap (see Radiohead with EMI or Trent Reznor with Universal) and it's no wonder they have trouble making money. If they want to cut costs they should fire their terrible management and hire people that understand digital distribution, customer service, and basic human decency at a fraction of the cost of the current management.

Re:What's the big deal? This is a business...

[gorbachev]

I think the bigger issue is what this is going to do to the sales of EMI artists, whose fans are not the Walmart shopping kind.

I would expect some of their artists be VERY unhappy about this move...to the point that I would expect a few of them break their contracts over this. Assuming EMI doesn't concentrate entirely on the Britney Spears mass market type of music.

Re:What's the big deal? This is a business...

[Anonymous Coward]

When faced with the shear numbers Wal-Mart brings to the table

Presumably meant to indicate sheeple?

Re:What's the big deal? This is a business...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I think the "loyal" fans are a concern, if a disc doesn't go mainstream, at least there's a chance that the more loyal fans are going to keep the base sales up. Without those fans, sales will be more all-or nothing than before.

Also, who says that EMI has to self-distribute? I don't get this story, I thought distributors like Ingram were acting as an optional go-between between stores and the label. EMI doesn't have to worry about the overhead in dealing with the little shops, they can focus on self distributing to the the "big fish" stores and the distributors can handle the rest for them.

Re:What's the big deal? This is a business...

[Joe Mucchiello]

They've been doing this for decades! Name a recent band who has a hit album as their 5th or later release from a major label. Can't be done with more than a handful of bands that first hit in the 90s or later. It started in the 90s. Bands would get good advertising and good pushes for their first three albums and then they were on their own to pull in their existing fans. Today you get one album and then the labels move on the next group. But the trend started over 20 years ago. The only "mature" bands that get lip service from their label are the ones where the lead singers also get airtime on Entertainment Tonight. For some reason people care about what Bono has to say or what Madonna is up to so U2 and Madonna gets promotion dollars from their labels. Only the media darlings get label backing.

And frankly, if the labels started selling indie artists the "hardcore music fans" would call them sellouts and find other indie artists to listen to.

Finally...

[WiiVault]

I can rid myself of EMI. I generally avoid RIAA member released CD's, but occasionally will buy one from one if it is something I really want. One thing I refuse to do however is to buy from the Walmart, Target or BB's of the world. EMI has made a difficult choice for me, and it isn't in their favor.

Re:Finally...

[davidphogan74]

Pearl Jam dropped their label, and now will exclusively be in Target (as far as national brands go). Do you feel better now?

Monopoly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isnt selective selling indicitve of a monopoly?

Re:Monopoly?

[Kvasio]

In B2C - usualy yes; in B2B - not necesserily.

Of course they ould do it another way. In the distribution warehouse
a CD costs you $100, but if you have over $1 million turnover with them,
you get a 95% discount. Effect would be the same as not selling to small
stores.

Onestops aren't walmart, this article is wrong

[JudasBlue]

One stops are mid level distributors that carry product from multiple labels. Somewhere the person writing this article got very confused by what is going on here.

If you look at the article comments there is a guy there who is also pointing this out.

Not saying EMI isn't annoying as are most of the labels, but this article is seriously confused.

Re:Onestops aren't walmart, this article is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

so... RTFA's comments?

You're getting a little demanding, I mean, it's difficult just to read the whole summa-

Re:Onestops aren't walmart, this article is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I used to work at a music store and a "one-stop" is indeed a distributor.

Most independent record shops (including the one I worked at) usually buy new releases directly from the label (because of a minimum order requirement), but catalog titles are usually bought from one-stops since the quantities are too low.

Really horrible journalism to get the story so incredibly wrong...

Re:Think like a Music Exec (i know its difficult).

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? If your business was selling music CDs, you would really point your customers to a web site that competes with you and undercuts you on cost?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate that you don't run a business. At least not a successful one...

Re:Meh. Don't buy RIAA regardless of who's selling

[fishbowl]

I stopped buying EMI products the day the Harry Fox Agency accused me of being a criminal for putting my own work on the web.

Not only did I stop buying things from this company, I went from being an *avid* collector to them being *dead to me* and unlike some others, I never looked back.

At the same time, I started discovering independent music, *many* genres with artists who are far more interested in getting their message out than getting a 1/16th cent royalty from you. Many of these artists benefit from being discovered -- not by a record producer but by YOU, the person who might become a fan after listening, and who might actually attend a concert, not at a megastadium but at a club or a festival.

I don't really care what EMI does, or doesn't do. They are dead to me, and I do not believe in ghosts.

News Just In:

[julian67]

News Just In:

2nd hand gossip about unverified phone conversation to unknown persons passes for news at slashdot...oh wait...

the sex pistols were prophetic

[Potor]

"Too many outlets in and out"

Re:Think like a Music Exec (i know its difficult).

[GF678]

Good luck EMI. You have given me one more reason to pirate.

If you honestly disagree with EMI - don't pirate. Just avoid their content entirely.

If you pirate, you're basically demonstrating a lack of scruples for your position. You talk the talk, but won't walk the walk, and because of this you can't be taken seriously. People will just accuse you of being a cheapskate instead of someone who will actually put his foot down and go without, as opposed to cheating by pirating and still getting the content.

Sure, the different to EMI is the same - no money to them, but at least you'll avoid being labeled a hypocrite. Believe me, it's damn hard to go without when it's so easy to pirate, but if you REALLY want to take a stand, you have to take a little pain. At least initially.

Re:Think like a Music Exec (i know its difficult).

[Anonymous Coward]

You gotta think like a Music Executive to understand their logic.
Fixed Costs and shipping costs per CD shipped rise uncontrollably when sending it in small batches to mom-and-pop stores.
Their sale price is fixed. WHich means, EMI earns less from each CD shipped to corner store as its shipping costs eat up money.

Right. So. Their answer is obvious. Tell ALL the little guys to go fuck themselves, rather than say "Ok, you guys are paying the shipping for orders under X CDs."

And just try to find...

[Anonymous Coward]

uncensored versions at Wal-Mart.

Guess it's back to downloading music so that I can get it as the artist intended, not how Wal-Mart thinks it should be.

Grammar Nazi time!

[Anonymous Coward]

what used to be the staple of the music business

Am I the only one to notice this? "what used to be" should be "which used to be". I normally try not to make persnickety posts, but using "what" in place of "which" instantly makes me imagine the writer as a backwards uneducated hick who could tell you ten reason why "teevee wrasslin' is fer real" and ten reasons how "them moon landan's were fake". IMHO, it is one of those grammar mistakes that looks and sounds disgusting (most others I'm fine with). samzenpus, if your job is to write, PLEASE LEARN HOW.

Re:Grammar Nazi time!

[Anonymous Coward]

"ten reasons" plural
also enjoy my complete lack of grammar and i m1ght even throw 1n s0m3 delib3rat3 numerals

Re:Meh. Don't buy RIAA regardless of who's selling

[calmofthestorm]

Now we can feel even more superior about where we don't buy it: Walmart!

Just another way to skew statistics in future...

[Sousuke]

Small retailers: "Our earnings/profits are going down! Now we have to close!" RIAA: *points finger at piracy*

Re:Meh. Don't buy RIAA regardless of who's selling

[Omestes]

I'm inadvertently boycotting RIAA labels. Their hasn't really been an album released on a "big" label that has warranted my bandwidth or money in some time. I probably would buy something from them, if there was anything I wanted. Perhaps its my age, perhaps I have odd tastes, but I still haven't found anything new or interesting on a major label in some time. I manage to support a ton of small labels "accidentally" though.

So, here is my question, what has been released on a major RIAA label lately that has been worth listening to?

Most of the RIAA member labels are the McDonalds of music, they release passable crap, but never innovate or produce anything that smaller shops can't beat. As time goes on, most of the innovation comes from smaller labels, while the large ones pick up the watered down crap. This is in part that they shun controversial bands, or bands that cater to specific tastes. They only want the stuff bland enough to appeal to everyone.

Re:Think like a Music Exec (i know its difficult).

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Wait wait, wait. You think that EMI inconveniencing small business owners, who willingly sell their goods, is a reason for you to personally pirate?

Why don't you just admit now that you'll use any flimsy pretence to pirate?

Re:Think like a Music Exec (i know its difficult).

[freedom_india]

You are right.
My bad.
Its better to avoid EMI completely to prove the point.

Re:Think like a Music Exec (i know its difficult).

[freedom_india]

If your business was selling music CDs, you would really point your customers to a web site that competes with you and undercuts you on cost

When i don't have the product a customer wants, and there is no prospect of getting the product for him at a profit [for me], why would i want to go to the trouble of pointing that customer to Walmart or HMV store and thereby enable my competition to earn a profit at my cost.
Better that they too lose the money.
If i can't earn, why should i help my competitor to earn at my cost?
Care to explain?

Re:Think like a Music Exec (i know its difficult).

[freedom_india]

Actually i was over-zealous and angry. Kinda like the cop who arrested Gates Jr for swearing at him, even though MA has laws that specifically allow those swearing at cops even when confronted.
My bad.

We need more music education in schools

[Kupfernigk]

Educate kids, expose them to everything from Bach to bluegrass and widen their tastes. Make them realise the stuff peddled by the big chains is actually junk produced by performers whose only real merit to the RIAA members is that they are contracted to them. That will in the long term destroy the RIAA, because their business model works by trying to reduce the range of what consumers buy. The logic behind that being that they can create a monopoly only by restricting what the customers want. Anybody anywhere can put a group together and record something original or out of copyright, so the RIAA members want to ensure that there's no demand for it. Creating demand that they cannot manipulate, and thus creating competition, is the only real way to get rid of them.

Re:We need more music education in schools

[nyctopterus]

Making kids listen to a music in school is a sure-fire way to make it uncool and unpopular.

Perhaps you should reconsider?

[Mathinker]

I understand your current position, even if I don't agree. However, I think there is something you are overlooking, which is the collateral damage to society brought about by RIAA attempting to stop those "folks who infringe on their copyrights".

Do you actually believe that 100% of the hundreds (or perhaps thousands, there is no real way to know how many) of people who are contacted by RIAA for paying a mere few thousand dollars to settle out-of-court are all guilty?

You do realize that even for someone who is actually innocent, settling out-of-court is the financially correct decision to make in these cases? I'd like to refer you to the blog of attorney Jennifer Granick, who represented Michael Lynn in "Ciscogate":

At the point that you get sued, or even charged with a crime, it matters less what actually happened and whether you did something wrong and more what it takes to get out of the case as unscathed as possible. It's sad, but true, that our legal system can often be more strategy than justice.

Even if you are innocent, a few grand isn't going to pay for much work from a lawyer who is good enough to go up against RIAA.

There is also the matter of how distorted and dysfunctional copyright law has become because of lobbying by RIAA. Do you actually believe that it helps society (or even the record companies themselves!) that the term of copyright is so enormously long? It looks to me to be the opposite, even for them. If the term were only something like 10 years, I think that new artists recycling of works which still had some cultural significance would actually generate more music, and more interesting music, for the industry to push. And I doubt that the 10 year limit would actually change the recording industry's income by very much, the vast majority of their sales are either new acts or to people who wouldn't bother to waste time/effort looking for the free copy as opposed to just clicking in iTunes/Amazon/or similar.

Re:Perhaps you should reconsider?

[FishWithAHammer]

I understand your current position, even if I don't agree. However, I think there is something you are overlooking, which is the collateral damage to society brought about by RIAA attempting to stop those "folks who infringe on their copyrights".

Yes, because the "collateral damage to society" brought about by this is actually relevant compared to the fucking neoconservative right dragging us into wars or the batshit loony left spending my fucking money on idiotic social programs with no actual benefit.

I save my outrage for things that matter, you see; the RIAA does not.

Do you actually believe that 100% of the hundreds (or perhaps thousands, there is no real way to know how many) of people who are contacted by RIAA for paying a mere few thousand dollars to settle out-of-court are all guilty?

I would bet more for it than against it. I work part-time at a university IT shop, at a university where the RIAA has sent letters. I have known personally about a dozen of them and I don't believe that a single one of them is innocent.

I also don't really give a shit about the innocent ones, because those who are not innocent have the option of going to trial. Is it expensive? Yes (but as I note later, you can recoup these costs if you're actually innocent, by winning). Is it hard? Yes. Is it thankless? Yes. Does it mean not rolling over and taking the path of least resistance, in order to demonstrate that your name means something and that you're willing to fight for it? Also yes. If you're not willing to defend yourself, you might as well be guilty. You've already bought into your position as a thoroughly bovine slave, you've signed away your rights to take the easy path out. Deal with those choices.

I'm also probably jaded by Tanenbaum and Thomas-Rasset, the poster boy (and girl) of "we're innocent and being oppressed!" obviously having done it, and in the latter case probably guilty of obstructing justice to boot.

Mind you I don't think the RIAA's actions are effective or all that smart, but they're within their rights. You're entitled to boycott them if you choose to. I do not choose to.

You do realize that even for someone who is actually innocent, settling out-of-court is the financially correct decision to make in these cases?

I'm sure it is. But I don't have much sympathy for someone who won't stand up and fight for themselves. I don't pirate music. If the RIAA came knocking, I have logs and records that indicate this (and I have my CD collection, too, which doesn't help them any). And here's the thing that makes this most amusing to me: in the United States, if you're sued and the plaintiff loses, the plaintiff generally is assigned court costs if the defendant requests it. The money isn't as big a factor as Slashdot's wee little whiners would have you believe.

There is also the matter of how distorted and dysfunctional copyright law has become because of lobbying by RIAA. Do you actually believe that it helps society (or even the record companies themselves!) that the term of copyright is so enormously long? It looks to me to be the opposite, even for them. If the term were only something like 10 years, I think that new artists recycling of works which still had some cultural significance would actually generate more music, and more interesting music, for the industry to push. And I doubt that the 10 year limit would actually change the recording industry's income by very much, the vast majority of their sales are either new acts or to people who wouldn't bother to waste time/effort looking for the free copy as opposed to just clicking in iTunes/Amazon/or similar.

I agree entirely. I also don't really muster up the energy to care, because while that'd be nice, and I wouldn't at all be against it, I am a content creator too and indirectly benefit from their lobbying. I wouldn't mind too terribly having the length of copyright shrunken down, but whether or not it happens does not bother me either way.

Re:Perhaps you should reconsider?

[sconeu]

I understand your current position, even if I don't agree. However, I think there is something you are overlooking, which is the collateral damage to society brought about by RIAA attempting to stop those "folks who infringe on their copyrights".

Yes, because the "collateral damage to society" brought about by this is actually relevant compared to the fucking neoconservative right dragging us into wars or the batshit loony left spending my fucking money on idiotic social programs with no actual benefit.

Actually, yes. It is relevant, and possibly more important than the "fucking neoconservative right draggin us into wars". Congress authorized the war (whether that's an actual declaraion is a matter of debate and possibly semantics).

The fallout from extended copyright defeats the purpose of copyright as stated in the Constitution (Article I, Section 8): "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" (emphasis mine).

If the collateral damage actually restricts such "progress", then copyright, as currently provided, and lobbied for by the media companies is in direct violation of the Constitution, and any in Congress who do not act to correct it are in violation of their duties to uphold and defend the Constitution.

Re:Perhaps you should reconsider?

[FishWithAHammer]

Sorry, I'm more interested in things that matter. Which probably sounds more flip than I intend, but I'm not too worried about it.

After all, lots of things infringe on the Constitution. The IRS comes to mind.

Re:Perhaps you should reconsider?

[Mathinker]

OK, after we finish this thread, I'll try not to bother you again about this if my half-senile brain will remember.

There was one very peculiar inconsistency in your reply. You make the good point that the innocent need to fight or deal with having not done so. However, you rag on Tannenbaum and Thomas-Rasset because they're guilty. OK, I'm willing to assume that they're guilty for the purpose of replying. It still seems to me that you're being hypocritical to denegrate their choice to fight having to pay thousands of dollars for their choice of infringing on RIAA's copyrights. They obviously just don't believe that they deserve to pay that much, and are taking what you put out as the admirable choice, to fight. (The obstruction of justice issue, BTW, has little to do with the amount of damages Jammie deserves to pay.)

And before you reply with "it's the law", well, as another poster has already pointed out to you, it was the "law", passed by Congress, that we go to war because of the "fucking neoconservative right". And you somehow manage to be outraged about that, eh? (BTW, did you actively do anything to oppose that? Because, based on your post, if you didn't, you should classify yourself as a "thoroughly bovine slave" and stop whining about it here on Slashdot.)

> The money isn't as big a factor as Slashdot's wee little whiners would have you believe.

Attorney Jennifer Granick doesn't whine here, as far as I can tell. Somehow I trust her wisdom on this issue a bit more than yours.

Re:Perhaps you should reconsider?

[FishWithAHammer]

There's no inconsistency here. If you're guilty, taking the settlement gets you out from your obligations as a copyright infringer without killing your future. If you're innocent, you have no such obligations and so as to not fight is immoral.

EMI were once a wonderful company

[Cougem]

EMI were a wonderful company once. They were not a mere record label, they were a leading electronics company. They developed the UK's first transistor-based computer, but arguable even more important is they helped Hounsfield develop his CAT scanner. The first CT machine was no the Siemes/General electric stuff we see today, it was an EMI. EMI have developed a machine that will probably save more lives than any drug (bar anti-biotics), for a tiny price (per scan).

How the mighty have fallen.

Re:EMI were once a wonderful company

[bill_mcgonigle]

They were not a mere record label, they were a leading electronics company.

I remember when Apple was like this too.

MS is doing poorly?

[Sycraft-fu]

Is this based on real data, or stuff you made up?

Looking at MS they have a P/E of 14.7, making their stock price low (20 is pretty normal). They have a 25% profit margin, cash way in excess of debt, and a 40% ROE. How is this "doing so poorly?" They are making tons of money, DESPITE the recession. They are not one of the tech companies in the red, and many are these days.

Yes, Apple is also doing great, however that doesn't mean MS is doing bad. They both can succeed, and are it seems.

Please let's try to keep facts straight here. "Doing bad," in the business world would mean that your company is having some real financial trouble. AMD is doing bad. They are losing money left and right, and were even before the downturn. Thus there is worry if they'll be able to stay in business. That is doing bad. Making a profit, and a healthy one at that, in a recession is not doing bad, that is doing great.

Re:MS is doing poorly?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

I'm sure MS will continue to make more money, but overall, they don't seem to be very successful with many of their products. Look at the Zune, not to mention the V word. Perhaps you and most business people measure the success of a company by how much money it makes, but I don't. I also include how much it gives back to society as whole in terms of culture, technology, etc.

Re:MS is doing poorly?

[Anonymous Coward]

and microsoft hasn't give tons to society in terms of culture, technology, etc? why don't you go finish jerking off to steve jobs? Vista sold more copies in 2 months than OS X sold in an entire year, but it's the dramatic failure? XBox has certainly not been a failure. What has apple given to society except a bunch of holier than thou douchebags?

Re:MS is doing poorly?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are more machines running Vista than there are running any version of the Mac OS.

Re:MS is doing poorly?

[Sycraft-fu]

Ok so you've found a product, the Zune, which hasn't done wonderful. Ok, great. Let's see what else they have:

There's the Xbox 360, currently the 2nd best selling console of this generation. It also has a good attach rate (meaning people buy lots of games for it).

There's Windows of course, runs on over 90% of all the computers out there. They are THE default OS for most people.

There's Office, pretty much the first last and only word in business productivity software. Even if you use a Mac there's a reasonable chance you use Office.

There's MS SQL Server. It is more or less Oracle's main competition these days. It is one of the few SQL servers that scales up for the extreme high end (like 64 processor servers with petabytes of data). Not a huge market for that, but MS has a good share of it.

There's Visual Studio. It is probably the sole best development environment out there. It is Windows only, but then Windows is 90+% of the market so very useful. You find that the majority of Windows software gets written in it since it is so slick.

There's their keyboards and mice. They are very popular, especially in the ergonomic market. Logitech and MS are the big names in terms of aftermarket keyboards and mice.

There's Bing. Retarded name, but fairly popular search engine. Google is, of course, the biggest, but Bing is gaining on Yahoo and may soon be #2. Not a wild success, but not a failure.

Near as I can tell, MS is over all doing quite well. They've got a few products that are leaders in their fields, a few that compete will in their fields, and so on. They seem to be making money and over all making products that sell. That they have a few failures isn't relevant. All companies have some failures.

Re:MS is doing poorly?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

I agree that the Xbox is pretty popular, although it has had it's share of problems. Given that MS is a monopoly, their OS and Office suit are always going to rake in the dough, even if the products themselves aren't that great. Bing is interesting, but too early to judge yet, IMHO. I agree that they are still making money, but that seems to be about it. Not much in the way of innovation.

Re:MS is doing poorly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Apple pisses you off, so they can't be all bad.

Re:Meh. Don't buy RIAA regardless of who's selling

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll happily buy RIAA music. At the used CD shop, of course.

Re:Think like a Music Exec (i know its difficult).

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Oh.

Well, I guess I was a little over-zealous and angry myself. Sorry about that.

MOD UP !!

[Anonymous Coward]

ÂNo seriously, for once I RTFA, and P is correct. The slashdot article, championed by samzenpus, is another example of preaching to the choir - stirring up a hornet's nest just to .. fuck , I don't know, just because he can.
Walmart and Best Buy, listen carefully, ARE NOT "ONE-STOPS", and even TFA linked from the TFA points that out.
Many independents have been using "onestops" for 20+ years already. In addition to direct sales from the majors.
The onestops don't have the depth of product that many independents seek, but this is just all a normal business response.
You can buy whatever you want from Amazon and other web stores - the entire "traditional" chain is losing profits, and everyone gets heated up because EMI rationalises its direct sales channels.
Fucking twerps - you're all happy you can buy through the web, then get all upset when it becomes harder to buy in brick-and-mortars.
Make up your fucking minds - this is NOT an excuse to pirate - this is the NATURAL consequence of e-retailing.
Dicks.

Re:MOD UP !!

[Artifakt]

Agreed, I've read the original article, the summary here is seriously skewed, and most of the comments aren't reflecting what has really happened.

      But I have to wonder about your claim this is not an excuse to pirate. As you point out, "the onestops don't have the depth of product"

      So, if I want something that's 'in the deep abyssial trenches of the mighty product ocean', it's less and less likely to be available on a physical medium in my area. If they don't want to sell item X to me, I'm not a customer for it, from their point of view, not just mine.
      Then, they want a high enough price for the non-physical version, at lower audio quality, without other support such as liner notes, album art, and preferably with DRM, they are effectively pricing that too to say "customers go away, we don't really want you".
      Some of this makes a pretty good excuse to pirate, or at least a reason for the government to stay out of enforcement. Just like region encoding. If the distributer insists on there being region encoding, and then doesn't sell the product at all in certain regions, they've basically said they don't regard those people in those regions as even potential customers - so they can't have lost any sales, can they? Even if I grant all claims that the piracy is still both immoral and illegal, if there was zero market, the pirates did zero damages.
      Where we may not see eye to eye on this is how completely this counts as a refusal by the companies to do business. A lot of people seem to think that offering digital versions at any price counts as still being interested in providing the goods to a potential customer. I don't think so. To make a bad car analogy, if gas sells for about $2.50 a gallon in your area, and you ran across a gas station that had some unusual gas formula that had some minor advantages and some major disadvantages to use, but they want $25.00 a gallon for it. I think most of us would drive past, saying "Well, they obviously don't want me as a customer", and some of us, like me, would add "... or anybody else either.". At some level, a bad enough price gouging counts as saying you have no intention of actually doing business at all, and if you're not actually in business, you've got some nerve demanding the government enforce the laws protecting your business.

How can you get money to the artists?

[Maquis196]

There are a few bands I listen to that I want to get the album's for but according to riaaradar; they mostly under riaa labels. Is there a way to get their music without giving the label a penny?

Like buying from their site? Downloading it for free and donating said amount to them somehow?

I'm going to a Lacuna Coil concert tomorrow in North London (and their music isn't riaa tainted) but they are probably the only ones.

IQ 60 = no job in Music Business

[Anonymous Coward]

Proof that above a certain IQ, you cannot find a job in Music / Copyright business

Less access lead to piracy

[Khenke]

I actually don't want to talk about piracy (since neither side can understand each other), but inability to get hold of "your special interest" CDs force people to piracy, as I will show here.

I was on a education for 8 weeks and meet a person who truly was against piracy, really angry against pirates (of music, he didn't care at all about movies and so on) as he are a true music lover.
He spend his life devoted to listening to music, all he was talking about.
We had a great time arguing over the subject of piracy, me trying to explain why I do pirate music (I have bought nearly 500 CDs in my life too), as mostly because its an easy way to find new groups and so on, he protecting the music creators (and to some degree the record labels).

But the really interesting part is that at the end he confessed that, against all he really believe in, he had downloaded a album from the Internet the last day.

Why?
He had spent weeks trying to find a place where he could buy it and failed, except for a few $100 from US I think it was (we live in Sweden). And as far as I know it wasn't an old and rare out of print album, just a hard to find album.

What can we learn from this?
That my convenience level against my morals are favoring me to piracy a lot easier, not that I don't want to pay (I really do), but no one wants my money in the way I want (to buy) my music.

But also that, in my guess, EVERY ONE can consider piracy when it gets too hard or expensive (for them) to get hold on the music they want.

For example, for the teenage people 15 min and $20 is both too hard (yeah, they are used to a lot easier access to life then when I was there some 20 years ago) and too expensive.

And I do think the music industry is wrongly making this a battle instead of an opportunity.

Re:Less access lead to piracy

[jimicus]

That my convenience level against my morals are favoring me to piracy a lot easier, not that I don't want to pay (I really do), but no one wants my money in the way I want (to buy) my music.

There's got to be a business opportunity right there. Producing a CD, printing the album cover and shipping on demand. There are on-demand publishers, so whyever not?

Re:Meh. Don't buy RIAA regardless of who's selling

[Anonymous Coward]

So, here is my question, what has been released on a major RIAA label lately that has been worth listening to?

I'm not sure whether Sony actually have a monopoly on current Spanish (as in the country rather than the language) rock, but both La Oreja de Van Gogh and La Quinta Estación are on their books.

Re:Think like a Music Exec (i know its difficult).

[djfake]

Why wouldn't you just ship freight collect to the small shop? And charge a handling charge for "small orders"? Mod down parent (hardly insightful).

Re:Think like a Music Exec (i know its difficult).

[Anonymous Coward]

100% correct.
They cannot look any further than next quarter results.

Concerning their longterm vision ("Vision? What's that?"), a music exec once answered me, when we proposed them to become a virtual ISP so they could easily sell their own MP3's to their vISP-subscribers:
"All this Internet, Bah, That's only a hype ! Watch my words, in 6 months the Internet doesn't exist anymore!"

Ok, this was back in 1999. So, you could eventually excuse the guy because internet was quite new at those days ...

Some years later ... 2007 to be exact ... another Copyright-business exec calls me:
" Hey, I have found THE SOLUTION TO SOLVE ALL THAT PIRACY ... "
"Euhm, yeah, tell me ..."
"Well, you know what, We will do some lobbying so to ABOLISH THE INTERNET ..." (sic)

PS: I have worked some years at the other side of the fence (for the copyright business) to try to set aside my prejudices I had against them.
I have to admit my prejudices have been re-enforced and I am very proud that I'm out of there / back into ICT.

Dovetails nicely with Apple "Cocktail" rumors.

[Shag]

There's been buzz this week about the labels having finally persuaded Apple to offer a digitally-distributed "album" including liner notes, videos, ring tones, etc.

So if you're the labels, you create the digital package, let Apple (and presumably others, either right away or down the line) distribute a gazillion copies at no incremental cost to you... and you ship a container-load of CDs to WalMart for people who're still using 25-year-old technology.

Looks like they're just preparing for the shift away from rotating-spindle physical media. :)

Wholesalers?

[abigsmurf]

Isn't this just EMI saying they'll no longer send out small shipments because it isn't viable for them so you have to buy from a large wholesaler instead?

I thought this was standard practice for most industries.

Pirate bay

[Cur8or]

is totally taking down the industry, will be said. I guess this will just cause people to buy their music digitally.

Re:Think like a Music Exec (i know its difficult).

[Heddahenrik]

Every time someone pays $20 for a simply file-copy, a little bit of the Internet dies. This is because the incentive for the ones who over-charge this operation so heavily will increase and eventually they can basically afford to break Internet down (or make it so that you have to get everything via YouTube or Spotify like services where you are controlled).

Allofmp3.com might be cheaper, but it's still evil and charge too much for a simple copy that really doesn't cost anything. And they only share their income with Russian artists, so buying from there it isn't even an inefficient way to donate to your favourite artist.

I suggest the music stores start to sell other things than data-copying. Merchandise, tickets, social events (musicians coming there to talk), coffee, beer, guitar-lessons and so on. The entire CD-copying and iTunes industry that only copy small files can actually be replaced by a few band or fan-paid servers.

So everyone would be better off if we just stop wasting money on plastic pieces and over-expensive digital shops and instead spent the money on concerts and donations to the musicians and writers.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

I am looking so forward to when current old media Dimwits running the company Die. then hopefully the new ones will have a clue and listen to the customers really wants not what they think the customer wants..

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Sam36]

I think about this in other sectors too. Lets give it another 20 years and see.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[SoulRider]

Unfortunately that wont happen. The current crop of dimwits will make sure that the new crop of dimwits are just as dimwitted as them. They have a legacy to maintain after all.

Re:Think like a Music Exec (i know its difficult).

[nigral]

You gotta think like a Music Executive to understand their logic.
EMI's CEO has proved his tactical sense for next quarter results is strong, while his strategic business sense is as low as the IQ of his Turd.

His next salary/bonus will be calculated according to the results of the next quarters. So will the values of his stocks.
Why would he cares about where EMI is in a few year?

When was the las time you heard a CEO say: "I was wrong 5 years ago, so i'll quit my job and give back my big bonus."

N.

No thanks

[Sam36]

Mega chains, mega money, mega crappy music

The next phase:

[Drakkenmensch]

To sell all music through a single outlet, manned by a lone grizzled customer service veteran with no knowledge of current artists past the old days of Music Hall, in an unmarked secret location guarded by snipers.

Then blame pirates for waning music sales and sue the asses of anyone who owns electronic devices that could be used to store MP3s.

Distributors?

[The Second Horseman]

The article doesn't say that they're halting sales to distributors, it just says that they're halting sales to indie stores. Don't most smaller shops buy through a distributor anyway?

I used to buy music and listen all day

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to buy music and listen all day to help me concentrate at work. My CD collection growth stopped 15 years ago when more important things happened in my life. 10 years ago, I converted all my CDs into MP3s, loaded them onto a central server in the home and about 10% onto an MP3 player. Streaming music anywhere in the house has been possible for 8 years.

I haven't listened to music of any form in over a week. AM news radio is my daily commute choice.

My wife thinks music is just noise, so even Barry White doesn't get any playtime.

I think this happens to almost all of us as we get older. Music becomes less and less important and irrelevant to our daily lives. New music much more so, since it doesn't bring back memories.

This EMI news makes ZERO difference to me. Nobody in my home has purchased music of any type in over 10 years. Music distribution companies need to go the way of the IRS - gone. Artists can sell their music online without the middleman and control their own license terms, allowning their customers reasonable re-use. Music artists need a standard license agreement for their electronic sales. Think GPL.

Re:I used to buy music and listen all day

[realsilly]

Well, you certainly make a valid point about where Music sits in the importance of someone life, and I can definitely agree to your scenario, but I can tell you that as life throws a person a curve and they suddenly find themselves out of there normal routine, Music comes crashing through the wall of chaos and can provide some stable grounding. What I mean is that people like nostalgia when life gets tough, and sometimes they will go to any length to find that old song that reminds them of better days.

Independant Music retailers seem to have a great deal of customers from what I've experienced. The selections are vast and the sales persons are fairly knowledgable. I personnally would prefer to own my own CD's and then convert them to digital media as I choose too. While I appreciate the mobility of the digital media, it is so easy to see it lost. One corrupt hard drive and Bam!, years of downloaded (legal) content is gone. But owning the CD's makes it easier to recover the loss.

The scenario that I've seen is that places like Walmart, which I refuse to shop at, feel that they only want wholesome items sold in their stores. This limits music selections down to what a few people feel is appropriate. Independant music stores are non-biased for what they sell, in my opinion.

My issue, is that Music on CD's has become more expensive when it should have come down in price a little. I don't feel music should be free. I believe that artists should get a great slice of the pie for their creations. But a hard-working stiff like me, can only afford so much.

So I believe that the Music industry has really followed a poor model in getting their products out to the masses. Had the industry opened up their business model to a more expansive medium, I don't believe they would be chasing after all the lost revenue, but would have become better equipped for the next form of technology in the future.

So the more narrow the market, the more people will do whatever they can to find what they like, and while you do not see the importance of music during this phase of your life, things will one day come full circle and it will find importance in your existence once again. I just hope you'll have an easier time trying to find your musical memories than where we're headed.

But then again, this is just my opinion, take it for what it is worth. /peace

Re:I used to buy music and listen all day

[selven]

The GPL equivalent for non-software IP is Creative Commons

Good move...

[Arimus]

Not.

Think the music industries has shot both feet off along time back (anti-sharing rants and malicious prosecution, crap music) one hand (over priced crap music) and has now persuaded someone to shoot the remaining hand off.

You've got to wonder at the mentality of people in charge... are they deliberately screwing up so they get a nice big fat pay off in return for buggering off into the distance?

Shops like Spiller's in Cardiff are a dying breed of independent specialist music retailers and this move will just hasten their demise followed by the demise of the big record labels (we can but hope).

Re:Meh. Don't buy RIAA regardless of who's selling

[zippthorne]

If you hate them, you should sell your collection. That way someone who might have bought new will instead buy your pre-owned copies and they'll miss out on the revenue.

zzzzzz-p

[JackSpratts]

the relationship record manufacturers have with one stops is similar to that of soft drink makers and bottlers, in the sense the one-stops do much of the physical distributing (but unlike bottlers usually not the packaging), and they can go back a hundred years. often controlled by families, these one-stop owners have attended record exec's weddings and funerals for generations. they go to their kids' graduations and basically do what anyone does to maintain and nurture relationships that have become both professional and personal over the decades. this russo piece (that zp then clumsily re-worked) is long on breathless prose but short on important context. or any context. indies have always bought from one-stops, even chains for that matter. they are integral to the business. this isn't news. it isn't even interesting.

- js.

Great news for Australia and parallel importers

[Anonymous Coward]

If they did this in Australia or NZ, then the small places would be allowed to import form anywhere.
The manufacturing' protection carrot would also, probably will be withdrawn. One expects this is a face saving one/off tax/profit manipulation move..
.
CD Sales in Australia

Australia mostly allows parallel imports on most items, meaning shops can source CD's from China, Indonesia but apparently not India and Bangalore for books (where books are 1/20th of the price or less).
However something fishy is going on - CD imports are not here in the numbers expected For a brief period there was top 20 - all under $10. This moved to $20 then $30 - for a new release CD - WTF..
DVD imports with 'feature films' are technically still restricted - but not CD's.

In order to maintain their business here, many 'new' CD shops are also selling 'used' CD's that appear new, but actually stale label stock clogging up warehouses.

Any chump can see potential new tax saving/minimization aspects in the new US scheme. EMI sets up new distribution shop, which pays some incredible fee - that goes to some tax free EMI entity, and a cross guarantee of picking up and 'losses' - IRS will be the only looser in this arrangement, as record companies are rarely fingered for non arms-length transactions, and pocket the loot paying even less tax. Small time distribution at much higher prices, also makes tax rackets harder to get away with.

The Future.
Amazon made a difference to traditional retailing models. The next logical step will be stores that offer buy it now - or drop shipping - say direct from China - or from each other, sidestepping 'tame, tied wholesalers'.
Under NAFTA - some may wonder why there smaller shops don't turn around and buy off Canadian or Mexican wholesalers, if this stunt is pulled.

Re:Think like a Music Exec (i know its difficult).

[Anonymous Coward]

EMI's CEO has proved his tactical sense for next quarter results is strong, while his strategic business sense is as low as the IQ of his Turd.
Good luck EMI. You have given me one more reason to pirate.

It's obvious you already have made up your mind that pirating music is justified. This is not one more reason, it's one more justification to take the hard work of many other people because it is cheap and easy. "Dear EMI, I like your product, because I want to listen to it, and I do not have the talent, skills, or money to make it myself. I just don't want to pay for it, cuz you're evil, and music should be freeee, you can't 'own' it."

Justify it in your head all you like, The RIAA and you would make a perfect team.

Feet to shoot

[HikingStick]

One wonders when the Music Business is going to run out of feet to shoot?

Seeing as they are a bunch of snakes, I don't believe they had any feet with which to begin.

Bullshit Misleading Spin on True Situation

[Dogtanian]

Deliberately posting as near the start of the discussion as possible to link to this comment which makes clear that this whole story is blatantly misleading and relies on misintepreting EMI's position.

From a post by 'chpthrlls' in the zeropaid thread via the linked comment: "First of all "One Stops" DOES NOT mean Wal-mart and Best Buy. A one stop is a distributor that buys from the labels and sells to retailers. Most indie stores get their product from one stops anyway."

Even before I'd read the correct explanation, I'd already realised that this didn't sound plausible, even for the death-wish record industry. My initial guess was that EMI were making them buy through their distributors (as normally happens anyway) and someone had- either through ignorance and/or a vested interest in their own position- misinterpreted this as the "story" that we were presented with.

I was right, and I'm neither a genius, nor work in the music industry.

If I spotted this, why did Wayne Rosso, ZeroPaid or Slashdot themselves not figure this out and spend five minutes checking the facts?

Oh yeah, I know. Never question it if it makes a good story, even when it's blatantly fishy to anyone with an ounce of common sense.

Re:Bullshit Misleading Spin on True Situation

[Anonymous Coward]

Shh! Don't go spreading the truth around here. It's Slashdot, where the news for nerds is as slanted as the news for the right-wing bigots on Fox.

Re:Bullshit Misleading Spin on True Situation

[phelix_da_kat]

Thanks... I can now stop reading the rest of the post..!! :-D

Re:Bullshit Misleading Spin on True Situation

[CastrTroy]

Very true. As someone who is quite familiar with the way the distribution chain works, I was surprised that small retail stores were buying directly form EMI to begin with. I would assume that, like in many other industries, that small retailers would buy off distributors, who ordered in mass quantities. I worked for a small shop once (although not in music) and my boss often told me they could go down to the local department store and get products cheaper there, when they were on sale, then buying them directly from their distributor. It's a little unfair to the small businesses, but when you take into account all the extra shipping, management and tracking costs that go into shipping products out to these small businesses, it would make sense that it would cost them a bit more for the product.

Re:Bullshit Misleading Spin on True Situation

[Anonymous Coward]

I do this at my store all the time. I go to another bigger store, where items are cheaper than my distro, and buy them there. I mark 'em up and sell them. I keep the receipt and on the last day I can, I take back the unsold stuff and start again.

It sucks but it's cheaper than the distros.

Re:Bullshit Misleading Spin on True Situation

[Vastad]

I want to give you a mod point but you've already maxed out, so I'll say thanks for making that post as I personally don't know enough about music distribution to have noticed it was fishy.

You're a tool

[Anonymous Coward]

The music industry will stop shooting itself in the foot as soon as consumers grow a spine and boycott the industry's products and what it is doing. But that's not going to happen in a world where everybody thinks they can earn a living by auditioning for Idol in Missoula or Liverpool.

Cheap op-amps in portable CD players

[tepples]

It's a bit of an irony that they go for "loud". CDs have a superior dynamic range than LPs, yet going for "loud" wastes this.

The loudness race started in earnest with Sony's Discman and other portable CD players. A lot of these used a cheap op-amp to drive the headphones, and discs had to be loud in order to be heard over outdoor noise.

Re:Cheap op-amps in portable CD players

[greed]

My Discman could drive a set of Sennheiser headphones quite well, if you turned off the AVLS defect (automatic volume limiting system). (My 'phones were less sensitive than the crap that came with the player, so the AVLS would start muting at regular volume levels. Volts != dBa at the eardrum.)

That's including CDs from before the Loudness Wars. Actually, that's especially CDs from before the Loudness Wars, as that's when I had a Discman and not a Rio Volt CD MP3 player.

If you lived in a jurisdiction where AVLS could not be switched off, that would suck with a good pair of 'phones. Or even bad. Big Brother is screwing you.

Re:Meh. Don't buy RIAA regardless of who's selling

[TJamieson]

your pre-owned copies

I hate to be so pedantic, but can we all just go back to saying used instead of pre-owned?

FM is still king

[tepples]

New business models are developing that permit musicians to raise money directly from investors and still maintain ownership of their copyrights and master recordings.

Until prices for mobile data plans fall to the point where people can hook up a phone and listen to Internet radio while in a car, bus, or train, I don't see how these business models can compete with major labels' access to commercial FM radio in promotion of music to commuters.

Re:FM is still king

[castironpigeon]

Have you listened to the radio lately? Besides NPR I really have no idea what value there is to it anymore. Unless you live in a big city you have a couple of pop hip-hop stations and a couple of pop country stations and they're all owned by the same broadcasting company. They play the same loop of 5 songs over again for months before finding 5 more songs that sound virtually identical to replace them with. And despite the fact that they all claim hours of uninterrupted music they somehow sneak in advertisements or commentary after every few songs.

I'll pass on that. There are plenty of great places online to discover new music and if a band is smart they'll let me download their music for a few bucks right on their website. Then we can cut out the radio stations and their monopoly, cut out the distributors and their monopoly, and just have me, the band.... and the telecom monopoly. Not a perfect world, but certainly better than radio.

Okay, everybody slowdown.

[ZombieSquirrel]

Yeah, we all hate the big record labels, but this sounded a bit too much even for the soulless, capitalist music industry, so I looked it up.
Read this: http://www.prefixmag.com/news/emi-distribution-changes-smaller-and-less-abrupt-t/30814/
It turns out that this effects only a small number of indie stores and they are not going to be filling shopping carts at Wall Mart--they are going to be ordering from third party distributors.
However, if it feels better to hate, please disregard.

Call the RIAA by name: WE SU

[KWTm]

EMI is one of the big four RIAA member labels, along with Sony, Universal, and Warner.

On a slight tangent: the RIAA is a nice big scapegoat name that people can hate while its member companies dodge the bad press. I've always thought that we should come up with a nice acronym/nickname for the Four Big Labels so that people can keep them in mind when they reference the RIAA, but a suitable acronym only occurred to me just now: "WE SU", because they sue everyone!

So now Warner, EMI, Sony and Universal can have their new slogan: "RIAA: WE SU!"

I dont think this is going to fly.

[jskline]

The business model by which they are relying has died a couple years ago and isn't coming back. I don't know who is running the show there, but they obviously have a complete and total disconnect from the world. The only possible way to recover from that business model is to exclude all of their stuff from the likes of ITunes, Rhapsody, Napster and others, and try to force everyone to buy through their "chains" or channels. Not going to happen. Artists by which they have contracts with, will have a legal means to break the contracts and move on somewhere else that is supporting them.

This might be the method they use to bury the thing in the sand so that they can simply walk away from it forever. Then it's someone else's headache.

Re:Meh. Don't buy RIAA regardless of who's selling

[Colonel Korn]

EMI is one of the big four RIAA member labels, along with Sony, Universal, and Warner. I stopped buying their shite ages ago, and I don't really care if I'm not buying it from a little store or a big one.

Buy them as much as you want as long as you're buying used. Most independent record stores have a great used collection. In Berkeley I can generally find used albums of the semi-obscure bands I follow that still release through the RIAA labels within 2-3 weeks of the original release. Why? People probably buy the CD and rip it and immediately sell.

Must be said: SEX PISTOLS

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Their song, EMI.

There's unlimited supply
And there is no reason why
I tell you it was all a frame
They only did it 'cos of fame
Who?

E.M.I.
E.M.I.
E.M.I.

Too many people had the suss
Too many people support us
An unlimited amount
Too many outlets in and out
Who?

E.M.I
E.M.I
E.M.I

And sir and friends are crucified
A day they wished that we had died
We are an addition
We are ruled by none
Never ever never

And you thought that we were faking
That we were all just money making
You do not believe we're for real
Or you would lose your cheap appeal?

Don't judge a book just by the cover
Unless you cover just another
And blind acceptance is a sign
Of stupid fools who stand in line
Like

E.M.I
E.M.I
E.M.I

Unlimted edition
With an unlimited supply
That was the only reason
We all had to say goodbye

Unlimited supply (E.M.I)
There is no reason why (E.M.I)
I tell you it was all a frame (E.M.I)
They only did it 'cos of fame (E.M.I)
I do not need the pressure (E.M.I)
I can't stand those useless fools (E.M.I)
Unlimited supply (E.M.I)
Hello E.M.I
Goodbye A & M

Wow, talk about sending people off to Bittorrent..

[plazman30]

Wow, you actually WANT me to download my music illegally if I live somewhere in the middle of Nebraska. What kind of stupid move is this?

The little independent music store is the BEST place to buy music.

Fight back. Go to Amazon.com and buy USED CDs only. When you buy a used CD, you get a legal copy, and the RIAA gets SQUAT.

What about the independent record stores?

[SkipFrehly]

I feel like this is just another attempt to destroy the independent record store. My room mate runs one of said stores, since the sales of CDs have dropped out, he's had to modify his inventory first from new CDs to used CDs, then used CDs to used CDs and DVDs, then new and used CDs and DVDs, then vinyl, then stereo equipment, toys, music magazines, movie posters, and finally to buying electronics to sell on eBay. The cd section of the store is dwarfed by the DVD section, which is overshadowed by the vinyl section, but CD sales still account for the 'rent' money.

So if the independent has to buy off of chains like Walmart, then what about Walmart's censorship policies? Will I ever be able to buy subversive CDs ever again? Or will this just be the beginning of yet another middle person in the supply chain, once again causing the prices of new CDs to rise?

My band has decided to just stay out of it. We're going the Ben Folds route; release everything on 7" vinyl singles, with an available digital download. That way they get their album artwork, and the files to go on their iPods and such.

On the other hand, though, it makes deviously good business sense for EMI to work this way. By limiting themselves to large volume wholesale, their job becomes increasingly easier, so you really can't blame them for being shrewd.

I'm still gonna have to go get my pitchfork and torch on this one though, as a card carrying independent musician, I am fundamentally opposed to anything EMI does, or any of the other big four for that matter.

Obligatory Sex Pistols Reference

[RevWaldo]

EMI

There's unlimited supply *
And there is no reason why
I tell you it was all a frame
They only did it 'cos of fame
Who?

E.M.I. E.M.I. E.M.I.

Too many people had the suss
Too many people support us
An unlimited amount
Too many outlets in and out
Who?

E.M.I E.M.I E.M.I

And sir and friends are crucified
A day they wished that we had died
We are an addition
We are ruled by none
Never ever never

And you thought that we were faking
That we were all just money making
You do not believe we're for real
Or you would lose your cheap appeal?

Don't judge a book just by the cover
Unless you cover just another
And blind acceptance is a sign
Of stupid fools who stand in line
Like

E.M.I E.M.I E.M.I

Unlimted edition
With an unlimited supply
That was the only reason
We all had to say goodbye

Unlimited supply (E.M.I)
There is no reason why (E.M.I)
I tell you it was all a frame (E.M.I)
They only did it 'cos of fame (E.M.I)
I do not need the pressure (E.M.I)
I can't stand those useless fools (E.M.I)
Unlimited supply (E.M.I)
Hello E.M.I
Goodbye A & M

* apparently not! - RW

Music is a delusion!

[David Gerard]

"We own all the back catalogs we've been buying up," said EMI, "and YOU CAN'T HAVE THEM! And we'll sue your grandmother's ass if you try going around us!"

Richard Dawkins spoke in favour of the perpetual unavailability of music, as per his new book The Art Delusion . "'Music' appears to be an entirely subjective phenomenon with little or no objective measurements possible -- much like any other brand of snake oil or balderdash. Music seems to be a sort of virus on human consciousness, parasitically sapping the collective intelligence of the human race." He defended his own attendance at his local church's Christmas carols: "I'm only putting them at their ease so they let their guard down while I work on plans for mass re-education camps for the sufferers of musical appreciation."

Re:Wow, talk about sending people off to Bittorren

[sn00pers]

This is happening a good part because of illegal file sharing. IF the sales from indi stores are atoo low to justify the distribution costs, why do you think those stores aren't selling enough? Because they too cannot compare to free downloading. If your competition is theft, you cannot compete. Now if you're busy stealing and not buying from those indie stores, then it's YOUR fault, not the people you are stealing from. When you buy a used CD, the label and artist already made their profit from that CD to one person and it continues to be held by one person. That's how it should be. When you steal, and distribute it to millions of others to steal, profit is lost. Cuts have to be made form these losses to thieves, and stuff like this happens. Thanks to the thieves. So yes, fight back. Stop thieves from destroying music.

Re:Meh. Don't buy RIAA regardless of who's selling

[FishWithAHammer]

Just as an example, Astralweks is an EMI imprint.

There are others, but I don't feel like going through my collection right now.

Re:Wow, talk about sending people off to Bittorren

[jskline]

So; what you are suggesting is that once these are sold to an end user, they go to the grave with that user??? How silly a model that is.

Re:Meh. Don't buy RIAA regardless of who's selling

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to be so pedantic, but can we all just go back to saying used instead of pre-owned?

For all of those CDs still in the shrink wrap, purchased by someone and resold, which clearly have not been *used* anymore than the CDs you buy *new* at Walmart.

Such items are clearly pre-owned, but unused. I will not distort the usage of the word 'used' to make some incorrect grammar nazi happy :P

Oblig. Rotten

[Anonymous Coward]

There's unlimited supply
And there is no reason why
I tell you it was all a frame
They only did it 'cos of fame
Who?

E.M.I. E.M.I. E.M.I.

Too many people had the suss
Too many people support us
Un unlimited amount
Too many outlets in and out
Who?

E.M.I E.M.I E.M.I

And sir and friends are crucified
A day they wished that we had died
We are an addition
We are ruled by none
Never ever never

And you thought that we were faking
That we were all just money making
You do not believe we're for real
Or you would lose your cheap appeal?

Don't judge a book just by the cover
Unless you cover just another
And blind acceptance is a sign
Of stupid fools who stand in line
Like

E.M.I E.M.I E.M.I

Unlimted edition
With an unlimited supply
That was the only reason
We all had to say goodbye

Unlimited supply (E.M.I)
There is no reason why (E.M.I)
I tell you it was all a frame (E.M.I)
They only did it 'cos of fame (E.M.I)
I do not need the pressure (E.M.I)
I can't stand those useless fools (E.M.I)
Unlimited supply (E.M.I)
Hello E.M.I
Goodbye A & M

Re:Meh. Don't buy RIAA regardless of who's selling

[PylonHead]

You don't actually think you can shove a genie back in a bottle, do you?

Or...

[AndrewNeo]

"Screw the rules, I have money!"

Re:Meh. Don't buy RIAA regardless of who's selling

[Omestes]

I suppose there is still some such out there on RIAA labels, but much less than there were ten years ago. There was a time that all the music I purchased was from major labels and RIAA signatories, but now I'm hard pressed to think of the last time I bought an album from an RIAA company.

I am rather confused to see that Kraftwerk is signed to an RIAA label for distribution. I suppose I forgot that we can't completely cut the RIAA out just because their HUGE back catalog of older good music, from back when their companies were relevant/useful.

Usage: cd [-L|-P] [dir]

[starglider29a]

Obviously, yer a Mac User! (Command-UpArrow to you)

Re:Meh. Don't buy RIAA regardless of who's selling

[LionMage]

For all of those CDs still in the shrink wrap, purchased by someone and resold, which clearly have not been *used* anymore than the CDs you buy *new* at Walmart.

Point well taken, but I think the guy was just railing in general (and in a very minor way) against the creep of such weasel-words as "pre-owned" into our lexicon. It's not a grammar nazi thing -- in fact, this isn't an issue of grammar at all, it's one of diction. The term "pre-owned" was invented by marketroids and used car salesmen to take the stigma off of the merchandise that the word "used" confers.

That the term "pre-owned" can be interpreted as being a broad superset of "used" is a happy coincidence, but I should note that the dictionary definition of used includes the meaning of "not new" and "previously owned," so there's nothing incorrect about using "used" to mean "not new." Just in case you doubt me:

previously used or owned; secondhand: a used car [from Random House]

And also...

Not new; secondhand: a used car [from American Heritage]

(I love how they use the same example phrase in both citations.) So there's nothing tortured or incorrect going on here, and the GP was not wrong in his usage. If anything, you're torturing the word "used" by narrowing its meaning unnecessarily.

Re:Meh. Don't buy RIAA regardless of who's selling

[LionMage]

For all of those CDs still in the shrink wrap, purchased by someone and resold, which clearly have not been *used* anymore than the CDs you buy *new* at Walmart.

Point well taken, but I think the guy was just railing in general (and in a very minor way) against the creep of such weasel-words as "pre-owned" into our lexicon. It's not a grammar nazi thing -- in fact, this isn't an issue of grammar at all, it's one of diction. The term "pre-owned" was invented by marketroids and used car salesmen to take the stigma off of the merchandise that the word "used" confers.

That the term "pre-owned" can be interpreted as being a broad superset of "used" is a happy coincidence, but I should note that the dictionary definition of used includes the meaning of "not new" and "previously owned," so there's nothing incorrect about using "used" to mean "not new." Just in case you doubt me:

previously used or owned; secondhand: a used car [from Random House]

And also...

Not new; secondhand: a used car [from American Heritage]

(I love how they use the same example phrase in both citations.) So there's nothing tortured or incorrect going on here, and the GP was not wrong in his usage. If anything, you're torturing and distorting the word "used" by narrowing its meaning unnecessarily.

The Idiot Blogosphere Strkes Again

[fm6]

It's not an article it's a blog posting. As it's source, it gives another blog posting. What's the source for that one? Yet another blog posting, this time with no source at all.

This is where I should insert the usual rant about Slashdot editors not just blindly posting whatever crap people happen to send in. But we've all done that 100 times, and they've never paid attention.

Re:Meh. Don't buy RIAA regardless of who's selling

[Anonymous Coward]

Well maybe. If you rub it the right way and make a good impression.

Feet? Who said anything about FEET?

[jdickey]

With the new, RIAA-approved, liquid-sodium-cooled BFG 33-1/3, the EMI executives can, without rising from the comfort of their Aeron chairs or even wrinkling their Savile Row suits, lay waste to the entire anatomy of battalions of roaches^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcompeting industry execs with ease. This is, of course, in addition to the legions of customers whose faith in the free market, not to mention their pocketbooks, have been permanently damaged by the BFG 33-1/3.

At this point, all we can do is fervently hope that The Best Government Money Can Buy will screw up catastrophically and actually take remedial action in the public interest. Vast amounts of RIAA/MAFIAA money have been invested in "campaign contributions" to avert just such a calamity,

Re:Think like a Music Exec (i know its difficult).

[freedom_india]

Look, i had already said it twice: i got over-zealous and am sorry for suggesting we pirate because EMI can't sell me the CDs.
If you had cared to read the responses of others before typing your response on an RIAA-owned computer, you would not have responded dumbly once again.

EMI works with lots of indie retail

[geesherman]

story is false. EMI works with lots of independent retailers. They still press vinyl!

geesherman

[geesherman]

story is false -- EMI works with lots of indie stores. check this out http://starkmagazine.blogspot.com/2009/07/quick-moment-to-respond.html

EMI Supports Indie Stores

[geesherman]

EMI works with lots of independent retailers. They are still pressing vinyl out of the Capitol Studios for indie retail and have a huge vinyl re-issue program!

Re:Wow, talk about sending people off to Bittorren

[plazman30]

As far as the record label is concerned, they believe that used CDs should be illegal, because they don't make any money off the sales of used CDs.

I disagree with them. A CD is physical property I own and can do what I want with it.

If an artists sells CD directly on their web site, I will buy them. Otherwise, I try to get used CDs, because I am NOT funding the RIAA, if I can avoid it.

I will happily help the artist make a living by buying concert tickets, though I am getting sick of having to pay the Ticketmaster tax to go see an artist.

When it comes to entertainment, everyone wants their cut. ASCAP now wants a cut of ringtones because ringtones are "unauthorized public performances of recorded music."

The whole thing disgusts me.

Re:Meh. Don't buy RIAA regardless of who's selling

[TJamieson]

The term "pre-owned" was invented by marketroids and used car salesmen to take the stigma off of the merchandise that the word "used" confers.

BING! You hit the nail right on the head. This crap started with car dealerships first, I think in the early 90's, and it exists solely to make people feel better about buying a car that isn't new. Anyway, enough thread-jacking for me. :-)