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Sony, Universal Hope To Beat Piracy With 'Instant Pop'
Hugh Pickens writes "The Guardian reports that Britain's two biggest record labels, Sony and Universal, plan to beat music piracy by making new singles available for sale on the day they first hit the airwaves hoping the effort will encourage young people to buy songs they can listen to immediately rather than copying from radio broadcasts online. Songs used to receive up to six weeks radio airplay before they were released for sale, a practice known as 'setting up' a record. 'What we were finding under the old system was the searches for songs on Google or iTunes were peaking two weeks before they actually became available to buy, meaning that the public was bored of — or had already pirated — new singles,' says David Joseph. Sony, which will start the 'on air, on sale' policy simultaneously with Universal next month, agreed that the old approach was no longer relevant in an age where, according to a spokesman for the music major, 'people want instant gratification.'"
After 50-odd years of people taping new releases off the radio, they've finally got their heads around the idea that releasing them for sale at the same time means that people will buy singles while they still like them. Now they just need to realise that people don't really buy singles any more...
That's unpossible!
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Aren't songs leaked into the pool of piracy before they're officially released anyway? (I know movies are.) How will this make any difference then?
Because in the Olde World they could have their slathering hordes drooling in anticipation and rage.
Now that we are DoItYourself, if they want to play all "high tower" that's why people began to tell them to push off.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
itunes is basically all singles?
Still, it's hard to believe the record companies were still doing that. More proof the entire industry is composed of dinosaurs.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
Now they just need to realise that people don't really buy singles any more...
I've never bought anything on iTunes or any of the other online music stores, but I'm pretty sure the business model for those is to sell singles for about $0.99 each and "albums" for about $9.99 each.
I'm pretty sure - since most albums contain mostly junk-and-filler these days - the individual songs that are popular end up selling very well.
So that a single would enter the charts at a high position, thus ensuring prominence and further sales.
Well OBVIOUSLY Sony. The main problem most of these old people have in the media industry is that they cannot get their head around the fact that they're in competition with piracy and it is a competition that they can win (even if they continue to charge). Look at Steam. Steam charges for games, but the level of service is high enough to justify the cost, or "you get what you pay for." The problem Sony and other media companies has is that they want to offer a sub-standard level of service to consumers while charging a premium rate - which shockingly consumers aren't happy with.
You can say whatever you wish about iTunes, but iTunes has proved that is the level of service is high enough, and the prices reasonable enough people will use that instead of pirated music - because they have the money and the hassle of piracy isn't worth the time/effort investment (people are lazy!). While some will always pirate, these say people have no money, and thus aren't really "customers" anyway.
This amuses me, I can imagine the moment in the Sony/Universal boardroom when someone came up with this idea and was treated like a genius, whilst the rest of the world has been pointing this out as part the piracy problem to them for decades now.
It's a big reason why people pirate music, movies, and even games. The disparity between US and European release dates of films for example has always been a big part of it- if the US has already had the DVD release when Europeans are being told in a few months they'll be able to watch some film with an awesome trailer, then what the fuck do they think people will do if they have the option? Sit waiting patiently, or just acquire a US copy?
Giving people an on-demand option at the same time as scheduled options such as radio based music or cinema based film is bound to help them out- you can't tease people by "setting them up" and then wonder why they went off and acquired the content their own way rather than continued putting up with your teasing. If people want something and you wont give it to them, they'll go and find their own copy from someone else which by and large, will be the likes of The Pirate Bay.
And you'd be (sort of) right. In 2009 more singles were sold in the UK than albums (source), although this does still represent more income from albums.
Still, the single is making a comeback, most probably due to singles being convenient for download, but impractical for a CD. Vinyl could be stacked. mp3s can be sorted in all sorts of ways. CD singles need to keep being changed.
Imagine if all their lawyers were making music instead of DRMing.and DMCAing people.
Look there is already enough crappy music in the world and you want lawyers to make more???? Geez .. get real and think of the children, who will end up listening to that "music". I'd rather have Natalie Portman dropping hot grits in my nether parts than hearing a bunch of legal types sing about how much better it could have been if we'd have gone back to Soviet Russia.
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yes... thats right... music nowadays is not liked or wanted so people would download them illegally just to spite the musicians.
>>>why was a delayed release ever a good idea?
Same reason they delay DVD releases. The production companies are giving theater owners a chance to profit off the movies, otherwise people would just buy the DVD.
Likewise production companies were giving radio owners a chance to profit off new songs for approximately one month..... and now they've just taken that away because people will buy AACs instead of hearing their songs on the radio. Music Radio stations will probably be pissed (unless they go bankrupt first). Radio is in sad shape.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I wish they'd do this for TV series.
American Dad? Sign me up.
Californication? Sign me up.
Dexter? Sign me up.
Doctor Who? Sign me up.
Family Guy? Sign me up.
The Simpsons? Sign me up.
Just let me here in Norway get it same time as US air date. Just today I discussed the latest simspon episode with a colleague - and I mean the one that aired this weekend in the US. Fuck the european TV networks and do direct delivery and see what they're still willing to pay.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Singles these days get so much repeated airplay for so many weeks on the radio that by the time they're actually available to buy legally, by any means, I'm sick to death of hearing them. This is actually a good idea, though it will doubtless result in less "successful" singles (chart-wise) because the purchases will be spread over a longer period, as opposed to the usual first week rush.
Have you noticed that this radio executive has unilaterally expanded the definition of "piracy" to include recording a broadcast? He's just overturned the Betamax Case. Note the progression here: from piracy = mass producing copyrighted material for unlicensed sale (1980's) to piracy = copying a single recording from the Internet (2000's) to piracy = legally protected fair use (2011).
Yes, I know this story is from the U.K. where the laws are different, but I would be very surprised if taping a signal from the public airwaves is illegal there.
"Piracy" as used by music executives is becoming a buzzword with no meaning other than "people deciding to listen to music without buying it."
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Which isn't necessarily a bad thing: I don't begrudge the dinosaurs their existence per se; but when radio and TV have their scaly antedeluvian asses planted right in the middle of a huge swath of sweet, sweet RF spectrum with good propagation characteristics they had better start showing some serious worth, and fast(as much as they like to pretend that spectrum is their god-given property, it is supposedly allocated in the interests of we the people. We can, and should, reconsider the bargain if it seems to no longer suit our interests...)
While, unfortunately, the realities of politics mean that any new spectrum that becomes available will probably fall into the hands of telcoes, I would love to see radio and TV sold for scrap, and their entire bandwidth allocation dedicated to "wifi-but with a slice of spectrum that doesn't totally suck". The possibilities for medium to wide area mesh networking and all sorts of other cool stuff would be amazing.
I swear to Jeebus, I got to the end of the article summary and had to check my calendar to make sure it wasn't April 1st. Then I had to check the link to make sure it wasn't the Onion. I know we all thought these guys were dinosaurs, but this goes straight past incompetence, blows past malice, and lands straight in hug-me jacket territory. What sort of insanity is this? I stopped buying, pirating, or listening to Top 40 radio years ago; I get all my tunes from CC-licensed clearinghouses like jamendo.com or searching the Goog for CC licenses. This whole report just sounds like a discussion of 60's era soviet oppression- I know that's melodramatic, but it's got that same weird dissonance of separation of time and culture.
No OS on the planet can protect itself from a user with the admin password. - Yvan256
Online sales of singles has got me interested in throw-away music again. When I was a teenager I used to DJ a lot - nothing 'creative', just parties, 21st, weddings etc.. You could get a newly released single on 7" for 99p (UK) so before a gig I would go and spend 5-10 pounds and enjoy turning up with a handful of new records. For years CD singles have been 2.99 - 3.99, so I've waited until compilation albums came out (like the NOW! series) to get 40 songs for 15.99, of which perhaps 10 I really want to play.
Just recently I've done a few weddings and parties, and I've been able to go to Amazon and buy singles for 69-99p, and the prices don't go up after two weeks. I'm suddenly really enjoying DJing again because I can turn up with the tunes that everyone wants to hear, and I don't care if I will never play them again after 6 months. Plus if I've forgotten to buy a track that everyone's requesting, I can fire up my broadband dongle and buy it there and then.
For me, being able to buy the music that everyone's listening to on the radio will be a major step forward. Of course, I'll keep buying albums of the bands that I really like (NOT dance music!!), but I'm really glad I don't have to have piles of compilation CDs just to have a reasonable mix of music most people will dance to.
A St. Louis radio station, KSHE, is the first FM stereo rock station dating back to the late sixties (I don't remember the date, but they became my favorite station the first night they aired as KSHE-95.
From the start they played album sides, whole albums, etc, moreso when they were new than now; the 7th Day show, when they play seven full CDs uncut and uninterrupted on Sundays, is the only remnant.
Years later I was married and going to college and KSHE played Ted Nugent's new album, Stranglehold. I recorded my copy off the air. Mind you, this was decades ago before anything was digital.
My then-wife and I went to a bar in Wood River that always had great bands, cheap drinks, and no cover charge. The band took a break and we went to the car to smoke a joint (again, this was back in the stone age).
I may have been the first person ever to put big speakers in a car, and had the hatchback popped open with Stranglehold blasting.
It attracted the band, who were amazed that I had a copy of this long-awaited album two full weeks before it was available in a record store. The whole damned band piled into my Vega for more pot.
A memorable night. But needless to say, I didn't have to buy a copy of that album, or a lot of other albums that KSHE played before they were available.
I still tape stuff off the radio, only now I use a computer rather than tape. You usually get a better quality rip than you can download, legal or illegal, and the legal piracy is a lot less trouble than the illegal downloads.
If you want top-40 music, just plug your radio into your computer and sample for a couple of hours. You'll usually get the entire 40 songs on the list, and it's a matter of a few minutes to cut them into singles and convert to MP3.
Stupid record lables...
Free Martian Whores!
When "music with originality, creativity, and integrity featuring talented musicians using actual instruments without autotuning bad vocals" becomes available, that will just become pirated as well. If you don't like a song, why bother pirating it? Besides, there always has been "music with originality, creativity, and integrity...," only that they're not marketed with a massive budget, so you'll have to look harder for them.
I once had a signature.
Why even make full CDs?
The CD is obsolete, so produce singles from one-hit-wonder bands and don't bother with filler, at all, ever.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
To break first week sales records?
Jonathanjk.com
I actually think they just have to give up on selling copies of music after it's released ... Putting a whole CD onto torrents is just way too easy.
Just because something is easy, that doesn't make it right. Believe it or not, there are many people out there who like to pay for things to encourage the future production of said things.
Be it music, clothes, cars, or software, this model of producing things then pushing it down peoples throat with advertising just sucks.
I kind of agree, but do you seriously think it will ever change? The answer is "no". Producing things is good for one thing, and without advertising we often wouldn't know about these things. With the internet and viral/word of mouth marketing becoming so easy, the advertising landscape is changing, but it's still advertising. A lot of cool stuff has gone overlooked over the years because of lack of decent advertising.
which is totally what she said
Not true.
We jest, but in fact this is precisely how the entertainment industry has worked for decades, if not over a century.
1. New technology which impacts entertainment comes out.
2. Industry fights tooth and nail to eliminate it.
3. Industry adopts it and winds up embracing it so thoroughly that they make even more money than before.
The time between step 2 and 3 varies, but the end result is always the same. The only time this hasn't been the model followed is when the technology is developed hand-in-glove with the entertainment industry (eg. DVDs) or it is only practical for big companies to set up and produce (eg. CDs before the advent of CD burners).
It happened with recorded music (artists complained that nobody would want to see them play, eventually started selling their own music), it happened with radio (who will buy the record if you can just listen to the radio? Eventually the radio became a marketing tool), it happened with videos (who will go to the cinema when they can tape the movie? Eventually they sold pre-recorded videos), it happened with compressed digitised audio (who will buy the CD when they can pirate it online? Yet today we have a whole slew of online music stores).
I guarantee if CD burners had become cheap and half-decent five years earlier than they did, we'd have had the music industry trying to ban them too.
They're a huge pain.
"This song/movie/video isn't available in your region due to licensing restrictions"
This is amazingly common in Europe. Which is very stupid, because if I can't buy it legally, the most logical thing to do is to pirate it. If I can't pay even when I want to, the logical conclusion is that they just don't want my money.
it was definitely money well spent.
Not if you live in a country where you don't need a license to serve liquor and listen to music at your own private and personal wedding.
Why is it that authorities need to have all this control? It pisses me off.
That would be 2 am Monday morning for you guys.
I guess you missed the point by miles. This isn't the Cataclysm release where people go batshit crazy to get online within ten minutes of release. I'm not talking about it being aired a few hours or even days earlier or later. I'm talking about it taking months and years and sometimes not at all.
Typically the first season is aired only in the US. If it's a success then that season is typically sold to EU networks next year so we're a full season behind. Since for the most part they can't catch up - with some exceptions during the author's strike - they stay a year behind. Even if they stretched the seasons they'll be completely out of touch with season endings and such and they can't send two full seasons in the time the US sends one.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Beating piracy is easy. Pay musicians their fair share so they will make music with originality, creativity, and integrity featuring talented musicians using actual instruments without autotuning bad vocals. You know, music that people actually want to BUY.
Wait, what? I ... um... missed the logic here. People download music without paying for it because they don't like it? I mean, if I don't like music I... erm, don't bother wasting my time with it. But maybe I've been doing something wrong?
My guess is they wanted to try out a single before pressing actual copies of it. Especially vinyl (these policies stem from that era of course) is relative expensive to press and distribute - you want to be somewhat sure that your product is selling. Otherwise you end up with large stacks of unsold records, or you don't have enough if a song proves to be an unexpected hit. With CD's the costs are lower, but still significant.
Now with iTunes that whole distribution and upfront printing cost is gone of course. If a song doesn't sell, well too bad for those 5 MB of iTMS' disk space wasted.
Amusing as the parent's post is it does make a serious point: the record companies are changing their business model - they're doing it slowly and reluctantly, but nonetheless they are doing it. Here's my prediction of the reaction:
- This will have no statistically significant effect on piracy
- "The record wasn't available yet" will persist as a reason for piracy for a year or so among people who could have taken advantage of this
- Pirates who previously used this justification will move onto another
Why points 2 and 3? Because the vast majority of "explanations" that are given by pirates are post-facto justifications and actually have no significant connection to the real reason that they pirate, which is that it means that they can get music for free and they probably won't get caught.
I find that the sort of stuff that ends up on the radio, which is mostly pop and hip hop, has a very short shelf life anyway. Most of it is low-quality consumable junk. It's tailored for mass appeal; people go nuts over it for that first month or two until it becomes grating. That means if people haven't bought the music during that short window they're likely never going to buy it. I'm shocked stupid music executives have taken this long to catch on to this.
What bothers me about the pervasiveness of buying individual songs is the loss of albums with a cohesive theme or outright concept albums. There's nothing to stop musicians from producing them, but if people aren't going to buy the whole thing I bet a lot of people will be a lot less inclined to bother making them. Financially, it probably makes sense to release individual songs from time to time instead of working on an entire album all in one go.
+1000 It's funny how willing people are to give away their liberty. Would you also willingly pay a fee to give your friends beer and listen to your stereo in your home?
I was thinking pretty much that. There would be no "piracy concern" today if they caught on a long, long time ago.
What makes people copyright infringers? Now, there are three reasons:
1. Price.
2. Availability
3. "Because it's possible".
You cannot beat 3. But these people tend to be rare, at least originally. Who would start their infringing career with the idea "there's so much musik out there, gotta have it all". In case you're infringing, ask yourself: Was that my motivation in the first place? That I want to have ALL the music out there, whether I like it or not? Of course, once you're in there, why not get that album too, it's there, download takes a few seconds, who cares, click "add" to the list of downloads.
There's little hope to beat 1. Making records and CDs cost money. And while the medium itself is dirt cheap, the fixed costs behind it are huge. Making music much cheaper is quite possible: Axe the studio behemoth behind you and you're out a ton of cost. Since studios ARE that behemoth, you won't see that from studios any time soon. But hey, originally, before people turned to torrents, they bought the CDs too. Of course, once they found torrents they instantly noticed that it would be WAY cheaper to cut out that "buy the record" step between "want to have it" and "listen to it".
So what's left is 2. And this is IMO the core reason why many people started with torrents altogether. You hear a song on the radio and you like it. You go to your record store and realize that this record is not available for sale, but it's announced for +6 weeks. BUT YOU WANT IT NOW! It's a new tune, a fresh song, you like it, you want to hear it all the time. Not just the twice per hour the radio station plays it.
And here is usually where a friend points you to torrents. Welcome to copying, forget buying.
Now, this COULD have solved the problem 10 years ago. But that horse left the barn and died peacefully somewhere on a grassy hill already.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You've heard of geoblocking, right?
I only play in places that have their own PPL. It's not a business, usually I'm just playing for friends, I make them aware that a license is required and leave it to them to sort it out with the venue.
These marketing geniuses are telling me that if I'm worried that people might not buy my product, I ought to offer my product for sale?
Damn! Why didn't I think of that?!?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Yeah, it shocked me too. It's almost like they'd reached sapience all of the sudden. I wonder if a black monolith took pity on Sony and played "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" through cafeteria speakers?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
You don't want Doctor Who at the same time as the US air date. You want it at the same time as the UK air date.
There are all sorts of subscription models that make sense, but they seem unwilling to even consider.
For example, how about selling DVDs in advance? People could buy a DVD at the start of the season, get an empty package, and get streaming without commercials a day early, and have a DVD mailed every month or so and fill up the box. (Or you could buy at any time and get DVDs to that moment.) This would seem perfect for cult TV shows that sell huge amounts of DVDs but don't have amazing ratings.
How about letting people download encrypted TV shows in advance to computers, with commercials, and then releasing the key at the moment the show airs? They could even do the right local commercials so the advertisers get their money, and have DRM to delete the show after a week. It looks exactly like broadcast TV, but, hey, you don't need cable or receive digital TV or anything, and you could do it the next day if you'd missed it. Software to do this could even be embedded in DVRs...imagine if you could scroll backwards and pick a show 'to record' that already aired, and be told it would show up in an hour or so. Or if you pick too many shows at once it downloads one of them instead of recording. (Or, hell, it just downloads them regardless, and just pretends to show them live.)
Which, yes, people would crack it...which would give them a digital copy of the show with commercials, as opposed to a digital copy of the show without commercials that they can already download illegally, so that's hardly a loss for the network. The episodes could, however, have perfect encryption before the show airs...that's not DRM, that's just actual encryption you can't get past without the key.
Combine those two ideas, and people with 'advance DVDs' could get with a downloaded copy without commercials. You buy an advance DVD, your DVR (Which has access to that information.) starts downloading that show in advance, without commercials, and shows you that instead of the on-air show. Just magically. And that copy stays on your DVR until you delete it, and you can go get it again if you want.
The problem is that industry is a mess of contracts and people who use them as excuses to avoid doing anything at all to change the system. It is, frankly astonishing that Hulu happened at all, but they really are pushing to not have that be the television paradigm.
In fact, because of all the contracts between broadcasters and networks, the first people to do stuff like this are probably going to have to be a cable network, who don't have agreements with broadcasters about commercials, with a new series with contracts specifically written for handling stuff like this.
And it's going to totally fuck up syndication deals too, but, frankly, those are on the way out. No one's going to watch reruns like that in the future...they'll just demand 'An episode of BtVS I haven't seen in a while' and get that episode with instantly inserted ads from the people who hold the 'syndication rights'. They're not just going to fill the extra airwaves with old shows. It will function more like 'free, ad supported, on demand programming'. (Which will actually work a lot better for the advertisers, but is going to be nearly impossible to figure out how to do for current shows, legally.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Or, better yet, movies. The movie you just watched in the theatre should be on DVD/Blu-Ray for $5 on your way out. How often have you been blown away by a movie in the theatre, only to realize days later that it wasn't so great after all. Why not capitalize on the post-theatre excitement? Studios would make bank!
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
A wedding isn't playing songs to attract customers, and therefore profit. It's playing the song to enjoy it privately.