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?"

Comments

The music industry is retarded

[Anonymous Coward]

and that is no secret

Re:The music industry is retarded

[purpledinoz]

What's retarded is that is secret? Why is this secret? Why is the copyright treaty secret? The only conclusion I can come up with is that they're up to no good.

Re:The music industry is retarded

[jedidiah]

What do I want from them?

      a) No suing or prosecuting of non-commercial pirates.
      b) No DRM, No laws forbidding circumvention tools.
      c) Copyright terms that last no more than 30 years.
      d) Don't attempt to shakedown or otherwise control radio in any form (terrestrial, sat or net).

Don't give me the impression that I am building my own gallows if I give them my money.

Re:The music industry is retarded

[DinDaddy]

You've conveniently left out the fact that there is no opt out for the students. Their fees are increased to pay for it whether they want it or not.

Shall we extend this business model to the public at large and other content industries? Everyone begins paying a monthly fee of $100 and they get as many free movies, songs, books, newspapers, etc. as they want. No problem.

Re:The music industry is retarded

[DinDaddy]

Well, post first, RTFA second. I see they have changed that component of the plan to make it voluntarily participatory.

Re:The music industry is retarded

[Kashgarinn]

copyright terms should be 13 years at most. Otherwise I agree.

Blanket licensing is never legal

[erroneus]

The Canadians have their blank CD tax ostensibly because blank CDs are used to copy music. Great. But is it then legal to copy music in Canada? No. How does that even work?!

Doing this other blanket licensing stuff will enjoy similar respect in that anything acquired will be decidedly illegal until proven otherwise and even with proof, there is little doubt in my mind the recording industry will respect it as legal.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[TrancePhreak]

Last I heard it was legal in Canada to make a copy of a borrowed CD for yourself, as long as you don't sell it. This was the basis for the CD taxes.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[mirix]

What's exceptionally comical is that indie bands, burning CDs of themselves - still pay the levy to big music... wtf?

I do think it's made burning dubs de facto legal though...

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[Stereoface]

The idea with that is the Blank Media Levy- It's run by the CPCC, which is the Canadian Private Copying Collective. http://www.cpcc.ca/english/index.htm They're an extension of SOCAN, and the money generated from the sales goes back to the artists. It works out great for starving musicians, and in general yeah- Blank CDs are mostly used to copy copy written material. The fact is that Blanket licensing is already in use and in affect almost everywhere. Bars, Clubs, Shopping malls, Radio stations- they all pay blanket licenses to use music. The problem with this idea- letting users get a subscription to all the music they want. It has to expire. As an artist, no way would I let someone download my entire library of songs for a monthly fee. It's simply not fair. Also- if indie bands want to use burned CDs for music- they can get a rebate from the CPCC. I did it when I was starting out- used 500 CDs and got all of the rebate back... Something like 30 cents a disc back then. It really is a great system. For more information visit http://www.socan.ca/

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[Hurricane78]

But: Do we care?

No, really! Are we really so weak and pathetic to care, whenever the designated crazy person of the world goes on again, declaring him a new set of rights?

I don't see this ever happening.

Oh, those who have a very twisted view of what is "politically correct", and the weakest spines in the whole universe, will cave in so the dwarf.

But unofficially, everyone will simply ignore them. Hell, look at Sarkozy. Officially: "Oh hell yeah, we need the 3 strikes law". Unofficially he shares so much music, that he already got caught. Twice

I bet money, that every single one of those who are so pathetic to officially support them, are unofficially the biggest file sharers on the planet. I mean imagine you being the manager of one of the big four for a whole continent or country! Will you just leave that huge back archive laying around? LOL. No. way. in. hell! ^^

And the rest of us? We couldn't even follow their fucked up rules, if we wanted!

This whole itty bitty tiny industry that is the music reproduction and artist extortion industry (hell, the toilet seat industry is bigger!), is in its final throes. Acting all crazy and funny. Meanwhile the musician industry is growing, rising, and more successful that it ever was.

Great times lay ahead.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[Hurricane78]

Oh boy... I'm sorry for the typos. I swear, I proofread it. It's just that this is the first thing I did in the morning. I should have proofeaten my breakfast first, perhaps. ^^

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the Canadian Copyright Act, Canadians can personally make a copy of a CD from any source (original or not). This backup is for personal use, not anyone else to use.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[erroneus]

Individuals do not have access to government. Government is influenced by money. The corruption is plain and obvious for all to see and neither the government nor those who are influencing government with money are the slightest bit ashamed.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[belmolis]

In Canada it is legal, under Section 80 of the Copyright Act, to copy a recording for one's personal use. It is not legal to distribute copies.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[DeadDecoy]

The music industry created a loophole in Canadian copyright laws when it asked for a levy on blank audio media. These $0.21 to $0.24 levies on blank media raised millions of dollars for music publishers, but also legalized copying in the digital age, to the consternation of the music industry. Canadian courts have ruled that consumers have the right to copy any recording from the original copy even those they do not personally own. This consumer right has been extended by the courts to include peer-to-peer downloads.

Canadian Copyright Law
So Canadians are allowed to make copies regardless of ownership because they are already taxed for it.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[timmarhy]

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....

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[TheRaven64]

As an artist, no way would I let someone download my entire library of songs for a monthly fee. It's simply not fair.

Why not? Serious question. If I subscribe to a service with a monthly fee, it's because I want to be able to listen to lots of new stuff. If you're not producing new stuff, then once I've downloaded everything from you that I want then I won't pay you any more. How is this different to buying a CD? You don't get paid every time I listen to a CD and you don't get paid if I sell the CD to someone else later. If your music is good, then I'll want to download your next album, so I'll keep paying the subscription and when you release something new I'll download that too and you'll get more money. If it's not good then I won't download anything else from you.

The problem with the Canadian system is that there's a disconnect between the music people copy and the people who get paid. If someone likes a band and gives a copy to their friend, this is not recorded anywhere. If they sent a link to download it, covered by their monthly subscription, then it would be and the bands that produce the music people download would get more money.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[vadim_t]

It works out great for starving musicians

No, it doesn't. Wikipedia says this:

The Canadian Private Copying Collective has developed a methodology by which the proceeds are distributed to rights holders based on commercial radio airplay and commercial sales samples, ignoring radio/college airplay and independent record sales not logged by Soundscan.

Which means that if I copy your music, and you don't get played on radio, you don't get a cent from it. Celine Dion does though. Which IMO is completely bizarre and a perversion of how things should be. If somebody's going to get paid I'd rather it be the right person.

In other countries with the same system the money goes to local artists. So in Germany, a german artist would be getting paid for your music.

and in general yeah- Blank CDs are mostly used to copy copy written material

You must be kidding. Who carries burned music CDs around anymore? I buy CDs pretty much exclusively to burn Linux distros, my brother to distribute his own (graphics) work. Nobody uses CDs to pass music around anymore. They use portable hard drives, laptops, and so on, and carry their music on portable MP3 players. Most of those are taxed too, but the proportion is much lower than for a CD, and they're all rewritable so the payment is a one time one regardless of how much music goes through it.

I object on principle to this system and avoid buying CDs and CD-Rs because of it.

The problem with this idea- letting users get a subscription to all the music they want. It has to expire. As an artist, no way would I let someone download my entire library of songs for a monthly fee. It's simply not fair.

It's not a blanket license then, is it?

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[Stereoface]

The problem with the monthly subscription is that barely any of that would go to the artist directly- essentially you'd be downloading my music for a fraction of the retail cost. It makes no sense for me other then for promotion to give massive discounts on music. Hell music in general is already discounted so much as it is. I think a monthly subscription is only fair if when the subscription ends you lose access to my music. It's a long discussion whether musicians should give away money to promote themselves, but those kinds of people can't quit their day jobs very easy.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[Stereoface]

Well to be honest, if you don't get played on the radio- then you're not at the level to care about how important royalties are to an artist. That's fine. Indie artists and Niche artists have their following too, but generally to make a living off music you need it on the radio/charts. A correction on the SOCAN payouts- If you do get played, and counted by Neilson, your money sits with SOCAN until you sign up- if you haven't already. Your money doesn't go to another artist like you mentioned. They'll get payed for their own material.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[s4ltyd0g]

commenting to undo an erroneous mod

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[mister_playboy]

I buy CDs pretty much exclusively to burn Linux distros

Most distros can install from USB these days... it's way faster!

An older computer that can't boot from USB will need a CD, but that's the only reason not to use USB.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[vadim_t]

Well to be honest, if you don't get played on the radio- then you're not at the level to care about how important royalties are to an artist. That's fine. Indie artists and Niche artists have their following too, but generally to make a living off music you need it on the radio/charts

Radio stats don't necessarily match the popularity in other mediums though. Here radio stations keep playing various 80s stuff everybody heard 500 times before. So long radio stations keep playing ancient hits those people will keep getting paid, even if nobody cares anymore.

A correction on the SOCAN payouts- If you do get played, and counted by Neilson, your money sits with SOCAN until you sign up- if you haven't already. Your money doesn't go to another artist like you mentioned. They'll get payed for their own material.

We're talking about different things.

You're saying that the part SOCAN has to pay you according to how much you get played on radio doesn't go to somebody else if you're not signed up. Right.

But what I'm saying is two things.

First, if I pay $1 of tax on some CDs, and put some of your music there, and you don't get any significant airtime, that money doesn't go to you -- most of it will go to Celine Dion and other popular artists, even if it's your music what I'm storing. I consider that fundamentally unfair -- why should any of my tax go to people I don't care about? As a result I choose not to buy media, which means I don't pay tax, which means neither you nor she get paid.

Second, if I pay $1 of tax on some CDs in Spain, and put some music there, the money gets spread between local artists, and Celine Dion never sees a cent of it even if it's her music there. Spanish artists for some reason do get paid, while I absolutely don't care about their music and don't want to support it. Again, same thing, I consider this to be unfair and choose to act in such a way that nobody gets paid.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[TheRaven64]

You're confusing two issues then. Not paying the musicians is not fair, but this has absolutely nothing to do with the monthly subscription model. If 90% of revenues from the subscription went to the musicians and was divided amongst the ones that had been downloaded, would that be unfair? You are making blanket statements that you would never consider the monthly fee model for your music and in doing so are being as guilty as the RIAA in your unwillingness to adapt to more appropriate business models.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[Stereoface]

Oh well, I completely agree with you then. In that respect it isn't fair. But there are many different ways an artist can collect money from a fan or a potential fan. I think Canada is one of the better places for cultural support- ironically the place with the worst piracy rates- but hey I guess you can't have it both ways. I just think they should bring back the iPod levy. They used to have it- something like $40 ontop of every ipod- but now they don't have it due to the increase of legitimate online sales through itunes. It's fair too, I guess. But anyways back to the main point- the article is talking about giving Colleges a blanket license for music, and being able to prevent the students from being liable. That just makes no sense to me. What could they possibly gain out of that?

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[Stereoface]

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.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[vadim_t]

But there are many different ways an artist can collect money from a fan or a potential fan.

I agree with one and one only of them: the fan buys music from the artist.

I disagree with any taxes or any systems where any artist except the one's music I'm playing gets paid. It's simple - if anybody but you would get paid in exchange for me having your music, I won't pay anybody at all.

I just think they should bring back the iPod levy. They used to have it- something like $40 ontop of every ipod- but now they don't have it due to the increase of legitimate online sales through itunes.

No freaking way.

If they do that here, I'm not buying another player, and will listen to music from my laptop until I can figure a way of getting an untaxed player (such as shipping it from another country, or buying one while on holidays there)

It's fair too, I guess. But anyways back to the main point- the article is talking about giving Colleges a blanket license for music, and being able to prevent the students from being liable. That just makes no sense to me. What could they possibly gain out of that?

No, it isn't fair. I don't torrent music and refuse to pay for any such system. If such a system is mandatory whether I want it or not, I'll refuse to use it and complain until I get my share of the money back.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[maxume]

Well, if other artists are willing to sell their music at such low low prices, it may start making sense for you to do so (as you may well get more money if you sell some music at low prices than if you sell no music at all).

If you could collect $0.01 a day from 30,000 people, you aren't doing too badly there, even after paying income taxes.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[maxume]

3000 is probably the wrong number to use in that argument, you can get 1000 cds stamped (and printed and shipped) for $750, your sales better be awful incremental if burning blanks a few at a time makes more sense than risking the $750 for nice looking stamped discs. $1100 gets you retail ready packages.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[macshit]

Which means that if I copy your music, and you don't get played on radio, you don't get a cent from it. Celine Dion does though. Which IMO is completely bizarre and a perversion of how things should be. If somebody's going to get paid I'd rather it be the right person.

If there were any justice, Celine Dion would be required to pay us every time her "music" is played on the radio!

Not that mere money could undo the damage of course...

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[zach_the_lizard]

You can still make money in the only form that cannot be duplicated: concerts.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[realityimpaired]

The levy isn't paid to big music. It's paid to SOCAN, which in turn distributes the tariff to its members based on need. That indy band, if it's a member of SOCAN, will probably be getting more than they pay into the levy out of it.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[zach_the_lizard]

Government is influenced by money, but those in government are primarily influenced by a maintenance of their power. They also absolutely love to use this power, and love even more to acquire more of it for themselves. The bribes and corruption are only symptoms of this root cause.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[commodore64_love]

>>>I think a monthly subscription is only fair if when the subscription ends you lose access to my music.

By this reasoning, all my previous employers should continue paying me a residual fee for the rest of my life, just because I created some schematics for them. (Or else return the schematic to me.) I don't understand why artists believe they have the right to eternal payments, when none of the rest of us workers have that right. We work; we get paid. When we get fired or laid-off, we stop getting paid, and the employer keeps what he paid for. The same should be true for songs and singers

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[Interoperable]

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.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[ze_jua]

Same shit in France.

Every blank media (even extrenal hard drives, USB keys, flash cards and iPods!) have very big "tax" going to the SACEM (French RIAA), but it doesn't give us the right to use these blank medium to... record music!!

(In fact the system is a bit more complex, but the summary is correct).

Free bonus, the tax is indexed on the size of the media (in bytes, not in centimeter ;) !

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[realityimpaired]

I agree with one and one only of them: the fan buys music from the artist.

I disagree with any taxes or any systems where any artist except the one's music I'm playing gets paid. It's simple - if anybody but you would get paid in exchange for me having your music, I won't pay anybody at all.

My understanding is that most artists make most of their money by doing concerts. Especially when deals with the recording industry are concerned, the music industry as a whole is set up so that the corporate bastards get the money, and the people who are actually doing the creating get nothing.

There are a handful of radio stations that do their part to support small and indie artists. My personal favourite is Live 88.5 here in Ottawa ( http://www.live885.com/ ). Among other things they do, they run an annual contest that's akin to battle of the bands, but with increasingly large prizes with each round of the contest, from $5000-$250,000 in funding for an indie band. That's a lot of money for somebody who's just starting out, and they've actually helped make a few indie artists that're now getting mainstream play in other countries because of it.

But you need to keep in mind that, by and large, artists are being given the shaft by an industry that's set up to keep them producing work for a pittance. SOCAN does keep the levies they collect as part of the blank media levy on a separate ledger from the airtime royalties, and I agree with you that they should really distribute the blank media levy on basis of need rather than existing popularity. But I do not agree that they should stop with the levy entirely... as a country, we don't do enough to support our starving artists, and seem to really only recognize them when they've achieved popularity. Until that cultural bias changes, I will continue to support the blank cd levy as a form of voluntary taxation to support musicians. (and no, I'm not using that as justification to download/pirate... I actually don't pirate at all... my entire MP3 collection is stuff I've ripped from CD's that I have purchased legally... and a substantial portion of that is Canadian indie music... I'm actually listening to the new Fantasies album by Metric as I type this, and it's entirely possible that I have something Stereoface has produced, if he's telling the truth about having published CD's and being a member of SOCAN)

And I agree with Stereoface that a blanket license to all music is a bad idea. I can only guess that the RIAA is realizing that their campaign of terror isn't working, and that it's really giving them a bad reputation, and so they're trying to salvage what face they can before it all comes crashing down. I'm all for encouraging people to buy more music legally, but unless you can guarantee that a *significant* portion of the money I'm sending you is actually going to the artist, then I won't be willing to sign up for it. That's the reason I don't buy music online if I can help it... I have no way to guarantee that the money's actually going to the artist. If the artist is selling digital versions of their work through their own band website, then I will buy it... otherwise, I'm going to buy the CD... it may be a shittily designed industry, but at least that way I know that some of the money I'm spending is actually going to the artist.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[realityimpaired]

If you sign up for SOCAN, you can actually get reimbursed 100% of the levy that you spend on blank cd's to promote your own work. Since membership in SOCAN is free (as in beer) if you apply online, and costs only a one-time fee of $25 if you apply on paper, there's not any reason for an artist to *not* join SOCAN.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[magamiako1]

So what exactly happens in the absence of government? Or a Representative Democracy? Would abusive, rich, powerful individuals just disappear?

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[vadim_t]

But I do not agree that they should stop with the levy entirely... as a country, we don't do enough to support our starving artists, and seem to really only recognize them when they've achieved popularity. Until that cultural bias changes, I will continue to support the blank cd levy as a form of voluntary taxation to support musicians.

No. The levy is a perversion of the rightful order of things.

It doesn't support "starving artists", it supports whoever gets played on radio, and those generally don't need that much support as they're fairly popular already. The starving artists that barely get played if ever on radio don't benefit from it.

Supporting based on "need" (who determines it? how?) isn't much better. I don't want to pay people who aren't popular because they don't make good music.

Also, the amount of money that results from the money doesn't have that much to do with music. In some countries, hard disks are taxed. If some development results in the sales of hard disks going up significantly, every artist will get richer, even if the disks were bought by datacenters to store sales databases. That's wrong. Conversely, if the datacenters decide they have enough storage and stop buying more, artists will suffer, which is also wrong.

There's a very simple way of rewarding music creation: The artist makes a song and sells it, and I buy it. That way only the right person gets rewarded for the right act. They make better music, they get richer. They make crap, they don't get money. That's how it should be.

Until that cultural bias changes, I will continue to support the blank cd levy as a form of voluntary taxation to support musicians.

And I'll continue to oppose it, buy less than I used to before it existed, and find ways of avoid paying for it (legally).

I'm all for encouraging people to buy more music legally, but unless you can guarantee that a *significant* portion of the money I'm sending you is actually going to the artist, then I won't be willing to sign up for it.

Funny, that's precisely the reason I'm against the levy.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[sukotto]

Iirc, it's legal to download music in Canada. It's illegal to provide downloads

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[mcgrew]

From TFA:

On the basis of those initial talks, the colleges would pay the music industry a blanket licensing fee, similar to what radio stations pay to air popular songs. There was also discussion of the record labels' signing a "covenant not to sue" for any illegal downloading of their songs by users on participating campuses, he said.

If there's no sueage covenant, why in the HELL would any school even consider this hare-brained scheme? I hope the names of these schools (if indeed they exist; Warner is a lying sociopathic entity whose word on anything can't be trusted) are revealed soon so I can make sure my daughter doesn't go there (I hope it isn't LLCC; she's applying there). How can a university run by idiots be any good?

Think about it -- students can get RIAA material from their "service" but not indie material, but if they download indie music from morpheus (is "scatterbrain.mp3" a RIAA song? Some of the hundreds with that name are, hundreds are not) they get sued. I've been saying all along that the RIAA's war on file sharing was really just a war on independant music labels. Where are the Federal anti-trust police?

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[realityimpaired]

Good job actually reading what I wrote... specifically, the line right before the one you quoted. It's bad juju to quote yourself, but I think in your case I can make an exception...

they should really distribute the blank media levy on basis of need rather than existing popularity

But clearly, you didn't see it. So good job. Props. You deserve a cookie.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[schon]

Iirc, it's legal to download music in Canada.

Correct, but only if you are downloading it for your own personal use.

It's illegal to provide downloads

Incorrect.

There is no law against "making available", and "making available" is not covered under copyright. If you deliberately make copies to provide them to others, that would be illegal. If you make copies for yourself (by downloading or ripping them), and those copies just happen to be shared by filesharing software, that is not illegal.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[mpe]

The Canadians have their blank CD tax ostensibly because blank CDs are used to copy music. Great. But is it then legal to copy music in Canada? No.

Unless the music isn't for sale in Canada. Though this is more due to the Canadian judiciary being relativly sane than anything else.

How does that even work?!

More money for the (big) record companies.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[russotto]

So what exactly happens in the absence of government? Or a Representative Democracy? Would abusive, rich, powerful individuals just disappear?

No, of course not. They form a government, and things go on as always.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[tibman]

I can call the government and have a chat, anytime. Police, fire dept, senator's office, VA, and other stuff i'm sure. I guess i could call the FBI but i have no idea why i would need to? The president is wayyy to busy to talk to me though : /

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[Conzar]

So what exactly happens in the absence of government? Or a Representative Democracy? Would abusive, rich, powerful individuals just disappear?

Depends on the newly established system. If you consider the resource based economy, then cybernated systems will handle the "government" part which is mainly concerned with distributing resources. Corruption will be made irrelevant by the system. Right now, its profitable to be corrupt. But in a resource based economy, there is no incentive to be corrupt and not possible to "attain power".

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[IndustrialComplex]

Good job actually reading what I wrote... specifically, the line right before the one you quoted. It's bad juju to quote yourself, but I think in your case I can make an exception...

they should really distribute the blank media levy on basis of need rather than existing popularity

But clearly, you didn't see it. So good job. Props. You deserve a cookie.

I think he DID see it, since he DID reference it. He just didn't think it was that great of an idea.

Careful with snarks, they sometimes bite back.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[mcgrew]

essentially you'd be downloading my music for a fraction of the retail cost.

Since there's no packaging, no physical media, no cover art, not shipping, no retail overshead, it should be a fraction of the retail cost.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[Dragonslicer]

I don't understand why artists believe they have the right to eternal payments, when none of the rest of us workers have that right.

Because in most cases, that's how their contracts are worked out (except for the "eternal" part). It's called deferred compensation. You could try negotiating such a contract with your employer, where you get paid less while you're working 40-hour weeks and then get residual payments for a certain amount of time afterwards, but since that isn't standard practice in most industries, most employers won't go for it. Similarly, a musician could try to negotiate for a contract where they only got paid once and received nothing for residuals (screen writers, actors, etc. generally don't have this option, since the guilds have collective bargaining agreements). Also keep in mind that most employees either get a constant salary or are pretty much guaranteed 40 hours per week, so they have a pretty steady income. For most actors and writers, their income can be very unsteady, so it works out better for them to have their income spread out over time in the form of residuals. Musicians should have a somewhat more steady income, since it's easier to have a relatively constant performance schedule.

Think of it this way. Why should your employer give you paid vacation time? You should know that you won't get paid for those four weeks that you aren't working. Of course, then you would need to get paid more the rest of the year so that you have the money for those four weeks, so you end up making the same total amount anyway.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[Dragonslicer]

Blank CDs are mostly used to copy copy written material.

Why should musicians care if you put a bunch of text from a copywriter on a CD?

Pro tip: The word you were looking for is "copyrighted".

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[vadim_t]

No, I saw it just fine. My reply was:

Supporting based on "need" (who determines it? how?) isn't much better. I don't want to pay people who aren't popular because they don't make good music.

But, I just came up with a new argument. You said:

I will continue to support the blank cd levy as a form of voluntary taxation to support musicians

So what if that doesn't actually work?

Suppose you have a budget of $100 a month to buy music, which you spend on albums that cost $15 each. That gives you 6 albums.
Additionally, you buy 6 CDs to make copies to listen in the car, to keep the originals at home. The bulk price of a CD here is about $0.3, while the tax per CD is $0.25.
Which means, you spend about $1.8 on the CDs, and $1.5 on the tax.

Over a year, you'll spend: $21.6 on CDs, and $18 on the tax.

Notice how in a year, the tax adds up to enough to buy an album.

Now the question, which do you think is better? To spread the $18 between a lot of artists depending on popularity, or to buy another album from an artist you like?

I think that even if an artist earns just $1 from an album, they've got to be pretty damn popular for their share of the $18 to be a 5%. So they're probably not a starving artist in the first place. If you buy anything that's not from the top 10 charts, the artist you like would probably benefit more from another album, and would definitely benefit more if you went to a concert instead, which you could probably afford if you didn't buy the CDs at all, and instead just used a mp3 player.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[blueZ3]

You should read Martin Greenberg's Freedom (link to sample chapters at the Baen free library)

It contains a number of excellent Sci Fi short stories about the absence of government.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[countertrolling]

Individuals do not have access to government.

Yes they do!

Government is influenced by money.

The voters are more influenced by money. Otherwise they wouldn't vote for all that bling.

Stop with this fucking blame game! Government is corrupt because the electorate is corrupt.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[MadnessASAP]

Hard drives, iPods and tapes also get taxed. USB keys as well I think.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[sukotto]

How do you handle the case where you've shared your music folder, then you download a song for personal use? Do you keep multiple music folders? Some can be shared and others cannot? That seems kind of onerous.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[sukotto]

Here's the part where I wish /. had a brief "whoops, I didn't mean that" button. I misclicked "submit" instead of "continue editing" :-( (The "you must wait before publishing another comment" thing also sucks in this case)

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[Interoperable]

No they don't. There was proposed legislation to make that happen, backed by Big Content. Just prior to the legislation being passed, however, Big Content started campaigning against it because they realized that it would, in fact, legalize p2p sharing in Canada. The legislation never got passed and there remains a bit of a legal haze around the issue.

Quite frankly, I don't think Big Content cares what happens in Canada when they can make their point using American law suits. International treaties, sure, but not Canada in particular.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[stephanruby]

The problem with the monthly subscription is that barely any of that would go to the artist directly- essentially you'd be downloading my music for a fraction of the retail cost.

On a side-note, has any Indie artist tried setting up a monthly fee of let's say $30 (or more) as a blanket subscription fee for their biggest fans?

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[anyGould]

But anyways back to the main point- the article is talking about giving Colleges a blanket license for music, and being able to prevent the students from being liable. That just makes no sense to me. What could they possibly gain out of that?

Depends which "they" you're referring to:

The universities gain because it (theoretically) lets them off the hook for infringement on their systems (as opposed to now, where they get the C&D letters). Also, I wouldn't put it past them to put surcharges on the fee to give themselves a new revenue stream as well.

The record companies gain because they get a flat fee from each and every student at that school, regardless of whether they infringe, or how much. And that will add up to a tidy sum. Plus, I wouldn't be surprised if the lawyers are camped out at graduation when the "covenent" expires.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[Stereoface]

It's not like these SOCAN cheques are huge or anything. We're talking fractions of a cent multiplied by radio station demographics. It's quite possible that radio stations that do play local music routinely can be spotted more money then huge artists- in that area. And if a starting musician gets a check for $250 a year then it might not seem like much- but the idea with royalties is they get bigger over time.

Also in reality 5000 - 250000 dollars really isn't a lot of money at all. For an indie sure, but labels can and do easily spend more then 250k on records. Promotion work and tour costs are a huge factor.

Now a days labels do whats called a 360 deal- which means they get a chunk of live profits and merchandise sales as well. So that live money really isn't a lot either. A two month tour in Europe could easily cost 50,000, and most artists work at a loss.
But these 360 deals only exist because live is the only revenue stream that hasn't been affected by piracy and subsequently, people that choose NOT to pay for music.

What most people don't get is that these levies, the entire point is that it's a cultural thing. check out http://www.factor.ca/ to see all the bands currently getting money from the government. Most acts you've probably heard of, and they wouldn't be able to go on tour without such things as these levies.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[Stereoface]

If you bought all digital, I can see that point- but as soon as you wanted a physical copy to buy live or in store (hypothetically you become a fan) were does that artist get the money to pay for the packaging?

You want an artist that has good songs, so you can buy them for a buck off iTunes, but then you also want to have neat album art, music videos, online content and merchandise to buy live? You can't have it both ways. The money comes from the overhead on the packaging. Like I said- if the Coruss company pays mechanicals to me @ 9.1 cents a track, then I'd consider it a digital single and an equal in value to an iTunes sale. But if they don't- it's like giving my work away for free.

If there's no money to make hard copies- I mean what do you do at a live show?
"Hey, guys if you like our music- buy it off iTunes, and if you want our shirts, buy them online too!"

A huge point of going to a live show is to buy the physical stuff. And yeah it's crazy expensive, but that money helps pay for the production costs. But again if you just want the track- and NOTHING else, then you're not really a fan of that artist in the first place.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[speedlaw]

note that states tax drugs. Illegal Drugs. Failure to pay tax is an additional charge beyond possession.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[vadim_t]

It's not like these SOCAN cheques are huge or anything. We're talking fractions of a cent multiplied by radio station demographics. It's quite possible that radio stations that do play local music routinely can be spotted more money then huge artists- in that area. And if a starting musician gets a check for $250 a year then it might not seem like much- but the idea with royalties is they get bigger over time.

I don't see what that has to do with anything I said. I'll restate my argument in a more condensed version:

If you're a music fan, then you should not like the levy, because it forces you to spend part of your money on paying people who aren't the ones you wanted to give money to. For instance, if you're a big fan of celtic music and buy exclusively celtic music CDs, why in the world would you want to have your blank CDs support gangsta rap? It doesn't make sense. Any of your money that has to go to Eminem is money you can't give to your favourite artist.

If you don't care about music, then you shouldn't like it either, because why would you want to support it with the media you bought for your weekly backups? If you wanted to give money to a musician you'd have bought their music.

If you're an artist, you probably shouldn't like it either, unless you're on the top, because every dollar your fans pay as a tax is a dollar that gets arbitrarily distributed among popular artists, when you could be getting most of that instead. The thing is, people have a limited amount of money to spend on music. Adding a tax doesn't make people pay more, it distributes money differently. And if you're a starving artist with dedicated fans, that distribution isn't in your favor. Additionally, some people like myself get annoyed at this state of things, think "screw those assholes", and decide to spend that money on something else instead. So you end up worse off.

Now a days labels do whats called a 360 deal- which means they get a chunk of live profits and merchandise sales as well. So that live money really isn't a lot either. A two month tour in Europe could easily cost 50,000, and most artists work at a loss.

Then you signed a stupid contract, and I don't see why is that anybody's problem but yours.

What most people don't get is that these levies, the entire point is that it's a cultural thing. check out http://www.factor.ca/ to see all the bands currently getting money from the government. Most acts you've probably heard of, and they wouldn't be able to go on tour without such things as these levies.

Again, you seem not to understand my point of view. I do NOT care about those bands. I don't care about the music industry itself. I care about very specific artists I like, and couldn't care less about what happens to the rest of them. I actually do think that if a band can't make enough money it shouldn't get anything from the govenment -- it should simply go bankrupt, like any other business that can't attract enough interest.

check out http://www.factor.ca/ to see all the bands currently getting money from the government. Most acts you've probably heard of, and they wouldn't be able to go on tour without such things as these levies.

That's not a good thing. That's horrible. Why is my money paying for bands I don't care for? The government shouldn't give them any, and if that makes them unable to go on tour, they should be unable to go on tour. Period.

I repeat, there's only one thing I approve of here: You make a song, I buy it, and you get my money. That's it. You shouldn't be getting paid because I buy CDs, or ipods, or have an internet connection. You should be getting paid only when I pay for your music.

Anything else just pisses me off, and your attempts to present it as a good thing only annoy me more and turn me off buying any more music.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[WNight]

That just makes no sense to me. What could they possibly gain out of that?

The perception that such a license is mandatory.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[Stereoface]

I'm just saying that because of the devalued nature of today music- people can't tour solely with their own product sales. There simply isn't enough money from that these days, which is the whole point of those non-profit organizations.

I know what you mean when you say that you don't like when money goes to an artist you don't like. However it's not about artist VS. artist, it's about the music industry as a whole. And yes, you did say you don't care about the music industry- that's fine and all, but you can't have it both ways.

You make a song, I buy it, and you get my money. That's it. You shouldn't be getting paid because I buy CDs, or ipods, or have an internet connection. You should be getting paid only when I pay for your music.

The fact still remains that CD's, ipods, and internet connections are popular for music piracy, and therefore some revenue should be generated from them to make up for the lost sales. Now, CD's are used for legitimate purposes, of course. But the illegitimate uses of CDs, iPods and Internet- far far outweigh the legitimate ones.

And it's only fair to provide SOME compensation to people trying to make a living out of content creation.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[vadim_t]

I know what you mean when you say that you don't like when money goes to an artist you don't like. However it's not about artist VS. artist, it's about the music industry as a whole. And yes, you did say you don't care about the music industry- that's fine and all, but you can't have it both ways.

Yes it is?

I don't support industries. I support products I like. Eg, I don't buy books for the sake of the "books on computer stuff" industry, I buy books from authors that write well on things I'm interested in.

The fact still remains that CD's, ipods, and internet connections are popular for music piracy, and therefore some revenue should be generated from them to make up for the lost sales. Now, CD's are used for legitimate purposes, of course. But the illegitimate uses of CDs, iPods and Internet- far far outweigh the legitimate ones.

No. If you can't manage to sell enough, that's your problem and nobody else's. Not the CD manufacturer's, not my ISP's, and certainly not mine.

If you attempt to force a compensation, I will attempt to force a compensation in the opposite direction. I don't *need* to buy music, so you can't really force me to pay, though you can annoy me enough that I refuse to pay anybody in the music industry a cent. There's plenty free (legal) music online I find perfectly acceptable. Also, I believe compensation to be inherently wrong, and whether you make money or not has nothing to do with it.

And it's only fair to provide SOME compensation to people trying to make a living out of content creation.

No. It isn't. You don't deserve any compensation. You're certainly welcome to try to sell your stuff, but you're not owed a profit, nor any compensations if people don't want to buy it. If it doesn't work you should consider earning money in some other way.

I'm completely serious when I say I value my internet access, unrestricted access to my computer and freedom in general far above music. I'll gladly do without the entire music industry if I must to avoid restrictions on my connection, and this tax nonsense.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[Stereoface]

I'll gladly do without the entire music industry if I must to avoid restrictions on my connection, and this tax nonsense.

You don't have to avoid the music industry like the plague or anything. You'll always have your connection, just know that any minor tariffs or taxes when it comes to media are going towards the culture of your country. It's just an effort to combat the loss of revenue from people that never pay for music. What they do pay for is the internet connectivity. You can live without paying for music- but you really can't live without the internet.

I would argue that whatever the monthly fee of the internet, that people will pay for it. That they HAVE to pay for it. Just like Gas. So it just makes sense to get money from it.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[vadim_t]

You don't have to avoid the music industry like the plague or anything. You'll always have your connection, just know that any minor tariffs or taxes when it comes to media are going towards the culture of your country. It's just an effort to combat the loss of revenue from people that never pay for music. What they do pay for is the internet connectivity. You can live without paying for music- but you really can't live without the internet.

Yes, then it'll be a minor tax for the movies, and another minor tax for news, and another... no, NO WAY. I will do everything in my power to prevent such a thing from happening.

Fortunately most people can see where such things are going, and such proposals have been shot down so far. Any politician proposing such a system won't get my vote. Any ISP proposing it will see me switch to a competing one that doesn't. Any artist supporting such a measure will never, ever see a single cent from me in any shape or form.

I would argue that whatever the monthly fee of the internet, that people will pay for it. That they HAVE to pay for it. Just like Gas. So it just makes sense to get money from it.

I would argue that such a thing makes you a parasite, living on other people's money whether they want it or not. And sooner or later they'll see you as such, and decide they'll be better off without you. You're not doing yourself any favours by pretty much declaring yourself as one.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[Stereoface]

Well the artist/parasite, is just trying to get paid from the only place that people actually pay for services. It's not about squelching the user, it's just about fairness. If you're going to use your internet connection to get illegitimate content, then you should be paying extra for your service. And were talking on a federal level- even if you switched ISPs you'd still pay. I mean you should just admit to yourself that you really don't want to pay for any music again, and eventually no one will make music right?

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[ajlisows]

Yeah, but I burn things like Linux Distros and OEM Windows Discs (Just discs, no cracks) and give them to friends/family/people who pay me to work on their machines so they can either try Linux or reload windows without going through some nonsensical restore disc that the manufacturer provided. I have no problem giving people discs that cost me a nickel or two but I don't want to be giving away $5 flash drives.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[vadim_t]

Well the artist/parasite, is just trying to get paid from the only place that people actually pay for services.

You have no right to such a thing.

It's not about squelching the user, it's just about fairness

No, it's about UNfairness. You're talking of guaranteeing your own income through legal means, even if the entire planet decides they don't want to pay you anything.

That's what makes you a parasite -- you're talking about making it impossible for society to decide that they don't find your services worth paying for.

I mean you should just admit to yourself that you really don't want to pay for any music again, and eventually no one will make music right?

I already explained -- the only way I'm willing to pay is on a one to one payment basis: you make it, and I buy it.

Apparently in your world, if there's a group of people making swords, and people for whatever reason decide they don't want to buy them, the government should institute some sort of tax to ensure they get paid anyway, as to preserve the fine swordmaking tradition, even if nobody has an use for them anymore.

In my world, the government does no such thing, and the swordmakers go out of business or figure out something else to do, such as switching to making kitchen knives.

And come on, "admit to myself"? There's nothing to admit, I outright stated several times here that I think that if people won't pay voluntarily for your work, then you should consequently get no money. And if that makes you stop making music, then yes, you should stop making music.

Re:Blanket licensing is never legal

[mcgrew]

If you bought all digital, I can see that point- but as soon as you wanted a physical copy to buy live or in store (hypothetically you become a fan) were does that artist get the money to pay for the packaging?

You're not paying attention and I'm starting to doubt you're a musician, or you'd know how damned expensive musical instrumants are. Having 1000 CDs professionally duplicated and packaged is CHEAPER THAN A DRUM SET. If you can afford a couple of good guitars, a good tube amp, PA system etc you can afford to record and duplicate.

A CD should cost more, MUCH more, than a download. What does the bandwidth to stream or download a song cost? A penny maybe? A dime for a download is more than enough. Since a CD with cover art and jewel case must cost the labels a dollar or less (it costs $2 per CD for lots as small as 1000), there is no reason why you should have to pay more than $5 for the CD. That's what my musician friends sell theirs for.

A huge point of going to a live show is to buy the physical stuff. And yeah it's crazy expensive

Five bucks for a CD and ten or fifteen for a t-shirt is NOT "crazy expensive". Getting paid 9.1 cents a track for a download IS.

Anonymous Cowards?

[plastick]

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.

Re:Anonymous Cowards?

[zach_the_lizard]

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.

Well, since all valuation is subjective, I don't think anyone can come to a fair price. What you see as fair may to me be horrendously expensive.

Re:Anonymous Cowards?

[jedidiah]

Nonsense.

The DVD market is a very effective counterexample. There is a WIDE range
of prices between formats and different works of various ages and levels
of popularity.

You've got The Wizard of Oz selling for $50 while an 18 month old action
movie is in the bargain bin for $5. "Classics" or cult hits with a
dedicated fan base continue to fetch higher than retail prices while the
"Top of the pops" quickly get devalued.

The price of the actual physical product is quite meagre. People get real
snail spam for disk printing services for individuals in small lots that
make the studio prices seem like highway robbery. Nevermind the net for
transmitting the data. The net allows everyone to know what things like this
really cost.

Kids text messaging each other that a movie is lame while watching it on
opening night are far more of a danger to Hollywood than cam captures.

The free flow of consumer information is far more dangerous than the flow of the data itself.

Re:Anonymous Cowards?

[pwfffff]

This analogy is completely valid. How is the RIAA supposed to pay for the jet fuel that powers their artists unless you buy their CDs?

Re:Anonymous Cowards?

[jedidiah]

Such an "objective" notion of value really doesn't do an industry based on IP any good.

Once people realize that there is a fixed cost for engineering and a near-zero cost for production then the inevitable devaluation begins.

The "labor value" of production is zero and the "labor value" of engineering is negligible.

Let's turn it around.

[NoPantsJim]

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.

Re:Let's turn it around.

[somersault]

The college pays the band, everyone at the college gets their music for free.

You have a strange definition of 'free'. Plus, that's just one band. This is nothing like the college handing its students to the RIAA. Read the article.. the spokesperson actually speaks some sense, apart from his bullshit about "being excited which price point is optimal for the recording artist" or whatever he said. Presumably that means the cheapest they can pay them while still keeping them onboard.

This kind of service is a *good* idea, it's just the fact that it's being controlled by the RIAA that is scary.

Re:infinite, free music for a one time fee?

[Anonymous Coward]

Won't most of the students get sued the day after graduation, when they are no longer associated with the college and haven't deleted their music collections?

What about...

[Andorin]

...the people who don't listen to music, or don't want to financially support the RIAA, or have any other reason to not want to pay for this license? Is there an opt-out option? A quick glance through TFA didn't say so either way.

Re:What about...

[L4t3r4lu5]

There are people who don't listen to music? That's probably the saddest thing I've ever heard.

As for the rest of it, that's the nature of Taxation. Everyone pays because everyone can benefit, and it's up to them if they choose to. The cost won't be covered by only some paying. Plus, there's the deficit to be made up from people unable to pay.

Tax isn't bad when it's done right; I.e., when the revenue raised is appropriated appropriately.

Re:What about...

[Andorin]

There are people who don't listen to music? That's probably the saddest thing I've ever heard.

Okay, so I meant the RIAA's music. Or music that isn't included in this deal. I, personally, listen to independent music that probably wouldn't be found in their catalog.

As for the rest of it, that's the nature of Taxation. Everyone pays because everyone can benefit, and it's up to them if they choose to. The cost won't be covered by only some paying. Plus, there's the deficit to be made up from people unable to pay. Tax isn't bad when it's done right; I.e., when the revenue raised is appropriated appropriately.

Except that taxes are normally set by governments... when corporations can tax the public, we're screwed.

Re:What about...

[nine-times]

What about this:

The most unusual feature of Choruss is that users would be able to download any song in the collection to their own computers, with no restrictions. Unlike Apple's iTunes, which charges about a dollar per song for unrestricted downloads, this would be an all-you-can-grab song buffet. Want to make CD's? Sure.

What if they want to make CDs, and then they want to sell those CDs? Copyright only governs the creation of a copy, but once a copy is created you're generally allowed to sell it. Does the license forbid such reselling? Is it enforceable?

Re:What about...

[russotto]

There are people who don't listen to music? That's probably the saddest thing I've ever heard.

You need to get out more. Or watch international news. Or local news in any large city. Or those Christian's Children Fund commercials with Sally Struthers. There's far sadder out there than not listening to music. Some of us just don't enjoy it.

As for the rest of it, that's the nature of Taxation. Everyone pays because everyone can benefit, and it's up to them if they choose to.

And the case for using taxation for specific forms of entertainment is...?

Re:What about...

[stapedium]

So who are the people who will be "unable to pay"?
I want to be in that group and still have access to unlimited downloads.
Of course then I would be stealing from other students rather than the RIAA.

Re:What about...

[nine-times]

For the record, I would pretty well assume that the license does forbid every selling or giving away your copies, and that if that's not legal, Congress will make it legal and if it shouldn't be enforceable, the courts will enforce it anyway.

I'd still be interested if someone has more informative answers to my questions, but in a larger sense I was trying to call attention to the increasingly confusing terms of ownership in our society. When I "buy" a CD, I own the CD. If I buy the same album as a digital download, have I bought the digital download? No, I've bought a license to copy cache that digital download or copy it into RAM or some other kind of nonsense. But if my hard drive gets wiped out, do I now have the right to download that song again from some other source? If I burn the album to CD and then erase it from my hard drive, is my ownership of that CD on the same terms as if I had bought the CD in a store?

Yeah, I'm sure that you could sit down and read the terms of your license and pay a lawyer a ton of money to explain everything to you, and then you *might* come to an understanding of what you've actually bought when you buy something online. If you're lucky, a judge might even agree with that understanding that you've formed. If you're really really lucky, that understanding might still be valid a few years from now. Now there's this new licensing scheme, but will the people who pay for it understand what strings are attached?

Not that I don't find this idea appealing. Jim Griffen is quoted in the article saying, "If you find a way to make it faster, easier, and simpler to pay, we think people will pay," and I very much agree with that. It may be that some pirates won't pay regardless of what they do, but there's just no way to stop all copyright infringement. What these companies have to do is make their products convenient enough and cheap enough that the amount you have to work to circumvent their legal distribution methods isn't worth the money you'll save.

For example, I don't go to movies very often and I never buy them, but I do pay for a Netflix subscription. Sure, I could save $13 a month by hunting around bittorrent sites, but I'd rather pay the $13 and save myself the trouble. Now if Netflix offered DRM-free high-quality HD H264 downloads instead of streaming, I'd be willing to pay more for the service, but it wouldn't cause me to buy fewer movies. At this point, movie studios don't see a single additional cent from me by restricting the movie downloads to "streaming only" vs. DRM-free downloads. It's just a worse service so I'm willing to pay less for it.

Re:What about...

[L4t3r4lu5]

The people who can't afford broadband connections in the first place.

Re:What about...

[Z34107]

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.

Re:What about...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a benefit for students who want to pay for their music. Rather than pay for every track on iTunes or Amazon, they instead get unlimited downloads from Choruss instead. Whether that's a better deal or not depends on how much music they download. The students who would have preferred not to pay still get the benefit of a central location to get presumably consistent quality files, and the peace of mind that they won't be one of the unlucky ones the RIAA goes after.

Re:What about...

[Sirusjr]

I agree with the part about people who don't listen to music licensed by the RIAA. I listen to tons of music out of Europe and Japan and a number of American groups that aren't on RIAA labels. Are they going to offer me music from Chinese, Japanese, and European artists?

Re:What about...

[BJ_Covert_Action]

From TFA:

Another substantial change from the early days of the proj ect is that the licenses now would be with individual students rather than with colleges—although on some campuses, student governments or other groups may agree to pay the fee on behalf of students.

It's not a direct answer, but could be relevant. If the licensing scheme is with individual students now, I would bet that the students have to sign or agree to something in order to participate. Thus, if they don't want to participate, ideally they just could avoid that license agreement. But you are right, the article is scant on details regarding that particular aspect and it wouldn't surprise me if any opt-out option that was there got mired and intertwined with some other form of student registration contracts and agreements that make it very difficult/near impossible to opt out.

Re:What about...

[Z34107]

It's a deal for the students who want to pay because their purchases are subsidized by the other students.

Tuition is expensive enough; it'll be a cold day in Redmond before I pay for a pirate's iTunes subscription.

Re:What about...

[anyGould]

Unfortunately, it's likely to be a mandatory fee, regardless of whether you agree to the license terms or not.

Awesome.

[weston]

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.

Awesome. And the band gets an education from the college, instead of the record industry!

Though to be fair, I'm sure the record industry is a very educational experience...

RIAA is more hated than IRS

[Etylowy]

And music was supposed to be entertainment..

Music's worth it; labels aren't.

[weston]

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.

Re:Music's worth it; labels aren't.

[TheRaven64]

Fair price is a misleading question. The real question is whether they are pricing their product in the best way to maximise profits and I strongly suspect that they are not. I pay about the cost of an album every month to a company that lets me rent DVDs (two at once, as fast as I can watch them and post them back) and stream an unlimited number of TV shows and films. In comparison with this, an album seems stupidly expensive. According to iTunes, I haven't listened to any of my albums more than 128 times and very few more than 30 times. There aren't any that I've been listening to with 100% of my attention, so in terms of money per time spent entertained, music is much more expensive than video.

At the current prices, I'll buy 2-6 albums per year. If you priced an album at $1-2 then it would be an impulse purchase. If I heard a song I liked on Radio Paradise, then I'd buy the rest of the album to see if I liked it. Perhaps I'm unusual, but I suspect that I'm no. The cost of producing music has dropped a lot in the last few decades, but the cost of buying it has not. Meanwhile, the cost of other forms of entertainment has dropped a lot and music seems proportionally much more expensive. I've read a couple of studies indicating that around 5-15/track is the optimum price for maximising profit when selling music but the music industry seems to think that 99/track is the right price (which is fine) and that they should expect the same number of sales that they'd get with 5/track (which is completely unreasonable) and then blame piracy for their failure to adapt.

Coincidentally, Ars published quite a nice round up on this subject today.

Re:Music's worth it; labels aren't.

[koiransuklaa]

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).

/me raises hand...

Normal CD price here is 20€ which at current rates is $29.5. Add to the insult the fact that there are no web stores that would sell non-DRM music to a linux user in Finland (I'd love it if someone proves me wrong, btw).

Re:Music's worth it; labels aren't.

[hairyfeet]

If we had a free market and sane copyright terms I would agree with you. The way I usually end any argument about "artists rights" and the *.A.As is this-

Steamboat Willie is STILL under copyright. The man has been worm food (or a Popsicle, depending on whom you believe) for going on half a century but one of his FIRST works, one made when airplanes were made out of cloth and antibiotics were still but a dream, is STILL under copyright.

If we hadn't had the public domain stolen from us thanks to treasonous bribery we all could go to a nice public domain website and download all the music up to the mid 70s for absolutely free. Artists could use that material to create new and exciting works by remixing, sampling, and using snippets in their original compositions. Instead thanks to treasonous bribery in all likelihood your grandchildren, if they are very lucky and live to be VERY old, might actually one day see the music of Jimi Hendrix and the Stones make it into the public domain. That is of course if that damned mouse doesn't cause copyrights to simply be extended forever, again thanks to bribery.

So while I haven't heard shit from an RIAA artist I would bother even stealing, I say if you like it please steal the fuckers. After all they have stolen from you, me, our children, our families, by robbing our public domain from us to fill their greedy pockets. The copyright system was a CONTRACT nothing more. In return for a LIMITED copyright We, The People, got a richer public domain. But the contract has been broken, and until We, The People, are again allowed a place at the bargaining table all rights granted by that contract should be ignored. Considering they are ignoring our end of the contract, why shouldn't we do the same?

Re:Music's worth it; labels aren't.

[nine-times]

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

It's not horrible, but I think part of what ticks people off is the impression that the record labels save lots of money by distributing online and also get a bigger cut of the price, and yet they keep the price the same and sit around complaining about how they're not making enough money. I don't think people are quite as upset about paying the $10-$15 for an album as they're upset about that money going to, as you say, "increasingly irrelevant middlemen". The perception is that, if you cut out that middleman, the price could drop significantly without diminishing the amount actually going to the people making the album.

Is that fair? I don't know for sure. If anyone thinks that perception doesn't reflect the reality of the situation, then I'd love an alternate viewpoint.

Re:Music's worth it; labels aren't.

[EvilIdler]

http://www.klicktrack.com/klicktrack/home have Memento Materia and other strangeness.
MP3s at highest bitrate. About the rates of iTunes.

http://www.emusic.com/ might or might not accept you. They seem to be doing a lot of strange things to non-American visitors, but their selection is wide enough to lie for ;)
Plain MP3 or XUL-based downloader. Cheaper than iTunes.

http://magnatune.com/ for independent artists.
FLAC, Vorbis, MP3, AAC, WAV. No iTunes comparison, but you can either buy downloads or CDs cheap for listening, or you can licence it for other uses.

Other online music stores: Google a bit for ways to get a US-registered debit card and mailbox :)
I fully support lying and cheating to get the music - we're sitting here with money in hand, but they won't take it.

Re:Music's worth it; labels aren't.

[jedidiah]

When I was in college, I didn't buy "new" music. I bought it USED and at seriously discounted prices. The used music stores on campus did brisk business. It should be little surprise that those with the least amount of cash are spending the least. The whole "problem" is just more visible now.

A kid has never had to pirate in order to deprive the label of it's cut.

The labels were living in a bubble caused by a format change and an attempt to kill off the single.

Well, the single refused to die & there is no new format they can shove down our throats.

Re:Music's worth it; labels aren't.

[mpoulton]

Add to the insult the fact that there are no web stores that would sell non-DRM music to a linux user in Finland (I'd love it if someone proves me wrong, btw).

www.gomusic.ru

Re:Music's worth it; labels aren't.

[mcgrew]

Perhaps I'm unusual, but I suspect that I'm not

Well, I'd do the same and I'm pretty unusual, I suspect you are too.

Why is it I can buy a DVD for $5 but a CD is $15-20 (or more)?

Re:Music's worth it; labels aren't.

[TheRaven64]

The gist of your argument is that you understand the demand elasticity for DVDs better than the people whose livelihood depends on maximizing their profits

Yes, basically. And, given the fact that they have falling profits, have consistently failed to adapt their business model to changing economic realities, and keep chasing 'solutions' like DRM that can't possibly actually work even in theory, I don't see that this is a particularly unlikely. But don't take my word for it, look on Google Scholar or your favourite academic search site and you'll find professors of economics who have published detailed analyses indicating that music is not priced correctly to maximise profit.

Re:Music's worth it; labels aren't.

[CrashNBrn]

I agree, new music generally is reasonably priced. Here in Canada second-hand CD's ~$10 (or less) and new CD's ~$15-$18. The problem I have is that older music is far more expensive: $20-$30. In any normal business costs go down over time not up -- the music industry works backwards in this regard.

Re:Music's worth it; labels aren't.

[Inda]

I used to write music at school. I even have a GCSE qualification in music.

Writing music is easy. Writing music is quick too. Someone at the top of their game could knock together a decent tune in a day. Another day to add some words. Another day for some polish.

The only reason I can see for long timeframes is that the artists are not at the top of their game and hence should not expect as much as the get... or expect everything they get.

Re:Music's worth it; labels aren't.

[weston]

I used to write music at school. I even have a GCSE qualification in music. Writing music is easy.

Was it easy before you invested the time in studying it?

Writing music is quick too. Someone at the top of their game could knock together a decent tune in a day. Another day to add some words. Another day for some polish.

Perhaps I'm just not on top of the game, but my experience is that writing something compelling and then creating a good performance of it often takes longer.

Re:Music's worth it; labels aren't.

[ThatsNotPudding]

So what's fair market price for 8 to 10 tracks that are nothing more than garbage filler demanded by the record company to 'fill up the CD tank'?

Re:Music's worth it; labels aren't.

[anyGould]

The only reason I can see for long timeframes is that the artists are not at the top of their game and hence should not expect as much as the get... or expect everything they get.

Sanity check: how much money have you made selling your music?

Re:Music's worth it; labels aren't.

[koiransuklaa]

oh wow, thanks for everyone who pointed out the error in my ways. I'm pretty sure Netanttila and DNA used to use a horrible system that wouldn't work on non-IE browsers previously so this is really good news.

I can stop using UK proxies to shop at Amazon, awesome.

Re:Music's worth it; labels aren't.

[koiransuklaa]

I have no need to talk to insulting, uninformed ACs who cannot read but just for the information of others:

I went through the results and found nothing new. The mentioned sites belong to three categories:

• "indie" -- these are nice (I already use amie street), but not what I was looking for
• iTunes -- not for linux
• not available in Finland -- amazon, walmart, emusic, etc.

The other, informative, replies to my original post actually told me that some finnish shops have realized their mistake and scrapped the activeX implementations they were using. The info this AC provided was worth exactly zero.

The really interesting part of the article...

[supersat]

... is this paragraph:

Noank Media, a company based on a Harvard University research proposal, is working on a blanket-license program that would charge colleges and other institutions a flat fee. Users would install software that would count every time they played a song, for the purpose of distributing royalties to the musicians.

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?

Re:The really interesting part of the article...

[Andorin]

They'd better have a Linux version. Or are you going to have to run Windows or OS X if you buy into this license?

Re:The really interesting part of the article...

[user4574]

Whether they have some kind of intrusive metering software or not, what I'm wondering is how they think they can pull off paying out per-play royalties to artists from a flat-fee, unlimited-download subscription model. The maths, they don't add up.

Re:The really interesting part of the article...

[Anonymous Coward]

More to the point....I listen to music on my computer all the time, but *I'M* the only one listening.
Since I've already "purchased" the music, why the h*** do they think I want to pay MORE each and every time I listen to it?

so they are going to GIVE AWAY the music, and only charge for the listening? don't think that will work too well.

Re:The really interesting part of the article...

[jellyfrog]

They're not charging for the listening... they're distributing the payments you have already made ($ per month) to artists depending how much you listen to them. ie. if you listen to one band 50% of the time, 50% of your monthly $30 will go to that band.

Re:The really interesting part of the article...

[mathx314]

Even more likely: only Windows. When I came to college I was offered a subscription to Ruckus, a now-defunct service where you could download music for free but only listen to it before your subscription expired at the end of your time at school. Of course, everyone with a Mac or Linux (yeah, there were a few) were out of luck.

Re:The really interesting part of the article...

[EvilIdler]

OS X? Dream on. They'll tell you the same as they do when you want a Linux version: Tell you to install Windows. The fuckers.

This system is as usual initiated by people who don't know anything about technology. You'd think they at least knew about iPods (generic MP3 players might be a stretch - the average person over 50 is a technological moron ;). Hacks to stop the counter will be ready by official launch day.

evil

[smoker2]

Huh, Choruss sounds a lot like My Precioussss ...
figures.

Re:Man, silly world...

[maxume]

Part of it is that we look around and see silly things like roads, so apparently some of the money is being spent on the things they say it is being spent on.

Re:Man, silly world...

[zach_the_lizard]

Where I live, the roads are inadequate and decaying, making me wonder how much, if any, of the tax money is going towards the roads. The road work I see is almost always devoted to paving the same section of road over and over again, even when said section is silky smooth. One such section has had this done three or four times since I've been driving on it. Another section with a massive pothole has been left untreated for years. So what money goes into the system is very poorly allocated.

Re:Man, silly world...

[Interoperable]

There's an independent organisation to distributed the levies to big content producers. They'd be pissed if the government spent the money first.

Re:Man, silly world...

[maxume]

Read the parent comment again (and your own apparently), it is a screed against taxes of any form, not against the Canadian cd tax.

Cornell University, the first to deny :-)

[Laxator2]

Just to remember one thing, when Microsoft pushed their Windows clusters (yes, there is such a thing) Cornell was the only university which bought such clusters and forced their students to use them. This time I am sure they did not sign up to the "project" ...

Re:Thank you, RIAA...

[mcgrew]

Six colleges are setting it up now, but they refuse to have their names released

The music industry says there are six colleges, but the six won't let their names out? How are they supposed to keep a service used by all their students secret?

I call bullshit on these lying bastards. Everything the RIAA labels do is based on a lie, starting with the lie that P2P costs sales when every study says "pirates" spend more on music than anybody. Well, P2P does cost RIAA labels sales; if you buy two or three indie CDs, that's money you don't have to buy an RIAA CD.

And thank you, reverendbeer, for pointing out that these lying bastards DON'T own rights to all music. They don't. We need to call these lying sociopaths out at every opportunity.

Re: tax on iPod (in Canada)

[An anonymous Frank]

I remember when I bought my first iPod there was a form I could fill and send in to get the "blank media" tax refunded.

This was some years ago so I don't know if it still works that way.

Re:Still feeds the beast

[Golddess]

Don't you still need a copy of the DRM'd version though? Also, not all previously bought DRM'd music is available in the current iTunes store.

Here's two other anonymous cowards

[Anonymous Coward]

I know two Universities testing this...because I have set up this turd.

University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Purdue

Re:Man, silly world...

[jedidiah]

Where I live the gas taxes are supposed to pay for the roads but any new freeway is setup as a toll road.

Where's that gas tax money going again?

Did someone drink up the road repair fund?

You laugh but that happens in some places...

I have a dream...

[hatemonger]

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.

Re:I have a dream...

[businessnerd]

If they want to make a million dollar music video, they get a loan from a financial institution.

Interesting thought, but you just come right back to a record company model. Let's say you're a financial institution in the business of giving out loans. An artist comes to you saying that they want to shoot a music video to promote their debut album. You are likely not going to give this artist any money unless you can be convinced that this artist will be profitable and be able to repay the loan. So what determines whether or not an artist will be profitable? Ideally whether their music is any good, or in line with public tastes. So now the financial institution of scouting artists. This is exactly what a record company does. They scout artists and provide financial backing, but offer zero liability to the artist. With a loan, the artist is on the hook to pay it back. Which would you choose?

Re:I have a dream...

[hatemonger]

Fair, although I've never seen much value in music videos anyways. And I've been especially confounded by the need to spend millions of dollars on them.

Re:Still feeds the beast

[kevinmenzel]

You don't need to still have the DRM file, it apparently works off of purchase history not the contents of your music collection. And though not everything is still around (you have to pay an anual fee to put content on the store), they do an OK job at providing upgrades for more popular content, for example, the U2 collection is no longer avaliable, but they did release an upgrade for it.

Re:Man, silly world...

[Golddess]

And roads are funded by gasoline tax NOT the compact disc tax, so your example is completely and totally irrelevant.

Um, actually that makes GP's example very relevant.

"Why do people think taxes are used for what they say they are?"
"Because other taxes, such as road use taxes, actually go towards road repairs."

Now if you had said that the taxes collected via the road use tax just ends up in a bucket with all the other taxes, which gets spent on things like roads, police, garbage collection, recycling, etc, regardless of how much each one brought into the bucket, then you'd have had a point.

Also I paid nearly $25,000 in taxes last year.

That figure is meaningless without some idea of your pre-tax income. For all I know that may only be half your weekly income.

Re:Still feeds the beast

[pwfffff]

Send me the, um, twelve dollars and I'll even do it for you!

No extra cost!

Re:Man, silly world...

[kthejoker]

Man, if we come up with one or two more anecdotes, we might have some data!

Re:Man, silly world...

[pwfffff]

So go beat the crap out of your city councilmen; what the hell are you telling us for?

Re:Still feeds the beast

[Tetsujin]

Last music CD I bought: Can't remember

Who recorded that?

Re:Man, silly world...

[Tetsujin]

Where I live the gas taxes are supposed to pay for the roads but any new freeway is setup as a toll road.

Where's that gas tax money going again?

Well, see, they need to pay for the construction and ongoing maintenance and operation of that toll booth, and they need to build the road bigger to handle all the backed-up traffic waiting to pay the toll...

Re:Still feeds the beast

[An ominous Cow art]

Don T. Knowe and the Hoocares, I believe.

SOCAN acronym expands like Big-O weaponry...

[Tetsujin]

The levy isn't paid to big music. It's paid to SOCAN, which in turn distributes the tariff to its members based on need. That indy band, if it's a member of SOCAN, will probably be getting more than they pay into the levy out of it.

That is one fucked-up acronym right there...

"Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada" = SOCAN ...Huh? Shouldn't it be SOCAMPOC? What is SOCAN? "Society Of (composers, authors, and music publishers of) CANada"? "Society Of Composers, Authors, (and music publishers) of Ncanada"? Couldn't any society in and of Canada be called SOCAN?

Re:infinite, free music for a one time fee?

[mcgrew]

But seeing as the whole industry is going down the tubes anyway

No, the industry isn't dying, just changing. The major labels are no longer needed by anybody; they're the only ones who will die. The artists, engineers, instrument makers, songwriters, and everyone else will be better off.

Re:Man, silly world...

[PachmanP]

That figure is meaningless without some idea of your pre-tax income. For all I know that may only be half your weekly income.

If you looked at the gp post, I would say his pre-tax income was nearly $75k. Ya know something about a third of his income blah blah blah...

Re:Man, silly world...

[Obfuscant]

Part of it is that we look around and see silly things like roads, so apparently some of the money is being spent on the things they say it is being spent on.

The existence of a road doesn't mean the road was built using taxes collected to build roads.

In our fair city, our roads are (were) falling apart. One main bit of road was mis-constructed twenty years ago and the joints in the concrete were now misaligned. This wasn't dangerous or harmful, but it resulted in "thump thump" noises as you drove over it.

Instead of using gas tax revenue to fix the roads, which is the alleged purpose for gas taxes, our city government created a "transportation maintenance fee" which was added to city-run water bills. The over-intelligent city bean counters came up with some numbers saying that each household was making X number of trips using the roads and so should be paying some tax^H^H^Hfee for that use. X is something like 7 or 8. (I go to work. I go home. Sometimes I go to the store before going home. Some days I go nowhere. Seven trips a day? My ass.)

Anyway, this fee has been in place for several years now. It was two or three years before they even touched the road that they created this fee to fix, and then they only fixed a few hundred feet of it. It was another year before they did more. It is now finally all fixed. We're still paying the fee. But it's really a tax on drinking water.

In the meantime, I might add, the part of the road that runs next to a major retail development and was damaged by that retail construction was repaired by that construction company. The main intersection on that road was rebuilt because it changed from three-way to four-way to handle a new residential development. In other words, major parts of the problem road were rebuilt using SOMEONE ELSE'S MONEY ANYWAY.

Here's the short version: tax money that is intended to repair roads (gas tax) often goes into the general fund and pays for anything the government feels like doing (like painting murals on privately owned businesses or providing a mobile stage used at privately run festivals), and taxes created in their place to pay for repairing roads STILL don't go to repair roads and don't end when the roads are fixed.

Re:infinite, free music for a one time fee?

[BJ_Covert_Action]

I know no one RTFA but you could at least make an exception for a story about parts of the recording industry attempting to update their business model (the mantra we have been chanting for how long now?)

No problem. Even after students stop paying the Choruss subscription fee, they will be able to keep all the songs they have downloaded. "They get to keep them the rest of their lives," as Mr. Griffin put it. That differs from some subscription music services, which allow access only while users are active members of the service. What's to stop students from paying for one month and downloading the whole collection? "Nothing," said Mr. Griffin.

Other folks at other companies considering similar models even go on to say:

"We're not going to stop file sharing—it's probably going to happen in one form or another, and it's probably folly to try and stop it," said Charlie Moore, a Noank official who has traveled to campuses in the past few months to drum up interest. "If we're able to use consumption data to compensate the rights holders of a particular recording, then we think we've got a handle on a fair and equitable model for rights going forward."

That is a beautiful bit of reality right there and a much improved level of insight regarding the file sharing world by recording industry insiders. This may not be the best solution yet, I don't know, but at least these folks are trying to do something productive for both their business and their customer base (college students) rather than attempting to bankrupt the latter while clinging to an outdated version of the former. I find the attitude quite refreshing myself.

new site legalpiratebay.com

[cellurl]

I am opening a new site
http://www.legalpiratebay.com/

Details:
First download is free.
Then, You have to join with $10 (paypal). Goes into your account.
Download a movie: $0 - $0.60
Download a song: $0 - $0.60
Download other: $0 - $0.60

The money gets mailed annomyously to specific places [customer chooses from our list].
Choices:- African children Fund.
Choices:- Specific people associated with the movie/song/game.

It will not honor TakeDownNotices and operate in Russia.

-jp

Cost of production isn't the issue

[weston]

I do. The cost of everything about making a record album have dropped dramatically in the last few decades, while the price of CDs has remained what it was.

In real terms, I'm not sure that's the case. CDs were around $12-$20 in the late 1980s. They're the same cost now, but a late 1980s dollar had more purchasing power.

In 1975 it cost a musician $200 to record one demo, for a demo the price now is essentially free. Studio costs have dropped to the point that any band that can afford musical instrumants can afford to record.

The cost of production technology has definitely dropped dramatically, but it's not really the issue I'm referring to. It's the cost in human labor to refine the skills necessary to compose something compelling and produce a high quality performance.

Re:Cost of production isn't the issue

[mcgrew]

It's the cost in human labor to refine the skills necessary to compose something compelling and produce a high quality performance.

As opposed to the cost of training anyone to program, or do anything else? There's nothing special about musicians; I've been playing guitar since about 1966. I have a lot of very talented friends who have recorded CDs and whose performances are the highest quality, but they're not rich either. 19 out of 20 artists signed by the major labels don't sell diddly squat, yet they had to get the same training and cost the same as the occasional winner. Sorry, but your argumant isn't the least bit compelling.

Five bucks for an RIAA CD is more than enough.

Re:Cost of production isn't the issue

[weston]

As opposed to the cost of training anyone to program, or do anything else? There's nothing special about musicians;

There's nothing unique about having a specialization, but by definition, there's something special about musicians: they have a specialization.

I've been playing guitar since about 1966

Maybe because I've only been playing for 14 years it still seems hard to me.

I have a lot of very talented friends who have recorded CDs and whose performances are the highest quality, but they're not rich either. 19 out of 20 artists signed by the major labels don't sell diddly squat, yet they had to get the same training and cost the same as the occasional winner.

In other words, even for most people who develop this specialization, it's still a losing economic proposition.

Sounds like de-valuing it further isn't likely to make things any better.

Re:Cost of production isn't the issue

[mcgrew]

Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Programming a computer is as hard for most musicians as playing guitar is for you. There's nothing special about it.

In other words, even for most people who develop this specialization, it's still a losing economic proposition. Sounds like de-valuing it further isn't likely to make things any better.

Giving something away doesn't devalue it at all. In many cases it makes the thing more precious; a Christmas gift from a loved one is far more valuable than the same object if you'd bought it yourself.

It doesn't hurt a musician a bit to spread his music around, unless he sucks at it. Nobody ever went hungry from piracy, but many have starved from obscurity. Read the forward to Cory Doctorow's best selling novel Little Brother. You can buy it at Amazon or Barnes, read a copy checked out of the library for free, or just go to his web site, he has all his books posted there, for free. Because he understands (and explains) that getting your stuff in front of people is the only way to make money off of it.

The more you give the more you get. If I hear a great song I'm going to look for another one. Two great songs? Time to buy the album. Read a great library book? Time to buy another one from that author.

If all you're about is money, stay away from art. Even though art costs money, the two should never be together. You may make money making art, but you can't make art by trying to make money.

Re:Cost of production isn't the issue

[weston]

Programming a computer is as hard for most musicians as playing guitar is for you. There's nothing special about it.

I also think computer programming is hard, but that might be because I've only been doing it for 25 years. :)

I'm being a little tongue-in-cheek here: my experience is that the longer I spend on refining any skill, the more I find that *mastery* seems elusive, the greater capacity I have to appreciate the difference between my own skills and people who are farther along the road, and the depth of the investment really required to get there.

It doesn't hurt a musician a bit to spread his music around

I completely agree with you that it's often to their advantage -- in fact, I think I noted in my original comment in this thread.

But I think this is really different from the arguments that music is cheap to create and therefore shouldn't be seen as being as valuable as $10-$12 for an album or $1/song. Because this:

f I hear a great song I'm going to look for another one. Two great songs? Time to buy the album.

only creates a winning economic proposition for the artist if at the time someone decides to buy, they're willing to pay more than peanuts.

You may make money making art, but you can't make art by trying to make money.

I also agree with this as a general philosophy -- not just for art, for anything. You can't do your best work if all you've got in mind is the bottom line, whether it's code, medicine, law, or art.

The flip side is that in order to get to a level of mastery, you have to spend a *lot* of time. If your life is already set up such that you don't have to sell your time to take care of yourself, that gives you a fantastic platform to pursue whatever you like with artistry and craftsmanship in mind rather than rewards. Most people aren't that lucky, and that's the root of the day job, but every hour you work there is time you're not spending refining your skills and sweating over your next creation. People who can figure out a way to get paid for working on their art can spend more time becoming better at it and making better work.

Re:infinite, free music for a one time fee?

[ThatsNotPudding]

Or even better: "Stay in school, kids! OR WE'LL SUE YOUR ASS".

Re:Thank you, RIAA...

[Jawn98685]

...every study says "pirates" spend more on music than anybody.

Citation, please.
Look, I hate RIAA and it's members as much as anybody, and they are "lying bastards", but let's not muddy the waters with hyperbole and unsupported claims.

Re:Thank you, RIAA...

[mcgrew]

http://news.cnet.com/Study-File-sharing-boosts-music-sales/2100-1023_3-898813.html

http://nme.com/news/44688

http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=25462&mode=threaded&pid=225929

http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/01/20/dutch.study.file.sharing/

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090828/0444096038.shtml

Actually there was one study that showed the opposite -- it was done by the IFPI. It took all of one minute on Google to find those citations.

On the definition of Q

[jonaskoelker]

Since there's no packaging, no physical media, no cover art, not shipping, no retail over[]head, it should be a fraction of the retail cost.

1/1 is a fraction :p

Re:On the definition of Q

[mcgrew]

So is 2/1, and that fraction is just as stupid.

Re:infinite, free music for a one time fee?

[Dr. Hellno]

Yes, I agree. When I said "the recording industry" I meant the labels, not the artists (and even the engineers, who I guess do a lot of the recording?) who I consider to be part the music industry. By all accounts, the music industry is doing swell even as the recording industry coughs and wheezes its last.
By the way, didn't mean to be a troll. I like the plan in a vague sense, even though it doesn't sound particularly sustainable.