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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?"
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.
Sure they're scared of being sued! Just look at the track record.
You know, this wouldn't even be so much of a problem if the music industry (these publishers) charged a reasonable price for a CD that costs them a few cents to make. You know... a CD with 7 songs on it where 5 of the songs suck, 1 song is ok, and you really only wanted that 1 song you paid the $30 bucks for.
Instead, they want to sue Apple over royalties for the 30 second song previews on iTunes.
How's this for an idea. A band signs with a college instead of a record label. The college pays the band, everyone at the college gets their music for free.
Yeah, probably not the greatest of plans, but much better than a college handing it's own students over to the RIAA.
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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?
...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.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
wouldn't even be so much of a problem if the music industry (these publishers) charged a reasonable price for a CD
I don't think that $12-$15 (or a buck or two per track) is really an unfair price for even a half-decent CD, really (and I don't think many people pay $30). It may be vanishingly cheap to transmit bits or print them into plastic and foil discs, but it's a lot of work to create music. Paying for it is one good way to make sure the people who make it can keep doing it. Not that it's not good for artists to sometimes sell lower or even give music away, and not that I don't agree there's a lot of crap out there that isn't worth paying for. Just that the most common prices don't seem unreasonable to me given the work involved in making music.
The labels and publishers, on the other hand... increasingly irrelevant middlemen and control freaks who add a lot of overhead and a questionable amount of value.
Tweet, tweet.
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.
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.
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.
Free Martian Whores!
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.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
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.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
Man, if we come up with one or two more anecdotes, we might have some data!
Don T. Knowe and the Hoocares, I believe.
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.
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