Slashdot Mirror
Colleges Secretly Test Music-Industry Project
An anonymous reader writes "The music industry is still pushing Choruss, a controversial blanket-licensing scheme, but it is far less innovative than first described. Six colleges are setting it up now, but they refuse to have their names released because the issue is a political landmine — and who wants to be associated with the recording industry?"
Sure they're scared of being sued! Just look at the track record.
You know, this wouldn't even be so much of a problem if the music industry (these publishers) charged a reasonable price for a CD that costs them a few cents to make. You know... a CD with 7 songs on it where 5 of the songs suck, 1 song is ok, and you really only wanted that 1 song you paid the $30 bucks for.
Instead, they want to sue Apple over royalties for the 30 second song previews on iTunes.
How's this for an idea. A band signs with a college instead of a record label. The college pays the band, everyone at the college gets their music for free.
Yeah, probably not the greatest of plans, but much better than a college handing it's own students over to the RIAA.
Name...That...Autocomplete!
wouldn't even be so much of a problem if the music industry (these publishers) charged a reasonable price for a CD
I don't think that $12-$15 (or a buck or two per track) is really an unfair price for even a half-decent CD, really (and I don't think many people pay $30). It may be vanishingly cheap to transmit bits or print them into plastic and foil discs, but it's a lot of work to create music. Paying for it is one good way to make sure the people who make it can keep doing it. Not that it's not good for artists to sometimes sell lower or even give music away, and not that I don't agree there's a lot of crap out there that isn't worth paying for. Just that the most common prices don't seem unreasonable to me given the work involved in making music.
The labels and publishers, on the other hand... increasingly irrelevant middlemen and control freaks who add a lot of overhead and a questionable amount of value.
Tweet, tweet.
the cd tax is so flawed it's not funny. only artists who sell over a certain number of cd's ever see a cent, so if i'm a local band who produces an album, burns it to 3000 cd's to try get some kind of exposure, your album is actually taxed and some cocksucker affliated with *AA profits off it via the tax you paid....
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
What? How do they expect that to work? Are service providers going to force me to install some metering software? How will it count plays on portable music players?
Well if they were just offering a streaming service then all you'd have to worry about is Performance royalties. But in this case they're offering to give you the file. If this Choruss company is going to give me my Mechanical royalties (9.1 cents) on every song distributed then I'm happy, but if it's a blanket just to save them money as music resalers- then it's pointless. I can already get everything off itunes and the royalties are paid out properly.
I think it only applies to music that's put onto media covered by the levies, it's ambiguous whether it covers p2p downloaded content on your iPod and it remains illegal to upload music so no seeding.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
Imagine an ideal world where artists make their own music; they pay for their own recording and mixing. If they want to make a million dollar music video, they get a loan from a financial institution. Music distributors like MTV and radio stations go out and find music rather than contractually accepting whatever the large recording companies decide will be popular. Whenever I pay $10 for an album, it all goes to the band. And, since we're talking about hypothetical ideal worlds, I'd wave a magic wand so that modern music wouldn't suck.
I attended an IT conference last year where Choruss was discussed. Given the regard we /.ers have for the technically-minded, I was surprised at the attitudes other college's IT directors had towards this system.
The main complaints they had about music piracy were having to deal with RIAA notices and bandwidth sucked up by P2P. My own campus is fairly enlightened - not-too-terrible packet shaping and a per-MAC address bandwidth cap. Each student gets 1 Mb/s and any relevant RIAA bitch notes.
Other campuses managed to do little better than wet themselves every time they got an RIAA letter and hadn't heard of any network management. Some didn't know how to implement any kind of QoS or packet shaping and saw all their bandwidth disappear into a black hole no matter how fat their pipe was.
These schools saw Choruss as a wonderful idea. It will end the RIAA notices, and no one will P2P ever again! Additionally, students would love them - for only yet another mandatory fee tacked onto their tuition, they can download all the music they want!
It was attractive because it made their lawyers happy and promised to mask the gross incompetence of their IT departments.
It is not a good deal for students. Those who don't listen or purchase RIAA music will still have the mandatory Choruss fee on their tuition. Those who do listen to such music also get no benefit. If they pirate all their music, having to pay extra for what they get for free provides no value. If they pay for all their music, there's no need for Choruss.
DATABASE WOW WOW
Don T. Knowe and the Hoocares, I believe.