Why Google Should Buy the Music Industry

Glyn Moody writes "According to one story about Google's attempts to launch its own music service, 'the search giant is "disgusted" with the labels, so much so that they are seriously considering following Amazon's lead and launching their music cloud service without label licenses.' So here's a simple solution: Google should just buy the major record labels — all of them. It could afford them — people tend to forget that the music industry is actually relatively small in economic terms, but wields a disproportionate influence with policy makers. Buying them would solve that problem too."

Comments

While they're at it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can they buy the movie industry too?

Re:While they're at it...

[PFI_Optix]

They probably could. I have another idea though that might be better.

If GooTube would use their awesome powers of awesomeness to publicly put pressure on the big media companies to lighten up about people using their content in freely-distributed videos. I'm not saying they should be okay with you posting the last five minutes of their latest blockbuster movie. I'm saying that they shouldn't pitch a fit when you choose to use their music in a video you make.

Here's a thought: wouldn't it be cool if you could use any song you wanted, so long as you linked to a place a viewer could buy that song online if they liked it? Look at how many videos have people asking "what song is that?" They want to know because they like it.

Copyright holders are missing so many opportunities to make money.

Re:While they're at it...

[PFI_Optix]

By "better" I mean to say "more plausible"

Don't be evil

[Anonymous Coward]

What part of "Don't be evil" do you not understand?

Re:Don't be evil

[WrongSizeGlass]

What part of "Don't be evil" do you not understand?

If Google would buy one or more of the music labels they would simply refine their definition of 'evil'. Many companies to it every day (and the Google may have already done it once or twice itself).

Re:Don't be evil

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say buying the legacy music industry and fixing them would be expressly non-evil?

Re:Don't be evil

[h4rm0ny]

Monopolies are bad.

Re:Don't be evil

[king neckbeard]

True, but we already have an oligopoly (major labels) that only exists because of state-backed monopolies (copyright), and the purposes of the acquisition would be to reverse the harm that said oligopoly has caused. In this hypothetical, Google might not even be trying to make any money off of the acquisition, since basically, the music industry's pigheadedness costs them more than the value of the music industry.

Re:Don't be evil

[AndrewNeo]

Buy it, flip it, sell it!

Re:Don't be evil

[CharlyFoxtrot]

They could buy one major and lead by example. It'd probably be all that's needed to drag them all into the 21th century. I'm not sure I'd trust Google not to use the opportunity to take a low blow at Apple though and that's one thing the industry doesn't need.

Re:Don't be evil

[theshowmecanuck]

Google is a business not a charity. What's in it for them? If you are so hyped on it, buy from Indie labels only. Start hyping Indie labels. You know, independent labels? More competition, not less.

Re:Don't be evil

[geekoid]

Or they'll turn it into a fair business that doesn't attack it's customers?

no no, clearly they must be evil.

Re:Don't be evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they'll turn it into a fair business that doesn't attack it's customers?

no no, clearly they must be evil.

That can't happen. The valuation of the music labels is too high for there to be any profit in buying them, then changing their business model so that they make less money. Remember, Google is a for profit company with shareholders. They can't purchase something expensive, hemorrhage cash on it, and expect the shareholders to accept that. It seems that the legacy business model of the labels just isn't viable with cost of reproduction and cost of distribution (even cost of storage) approaching zero. So, stop the lawsuits and even more piracy happens because folks aren't scared they will be sued. What else could they change to make the same money? Right, nothing - or they would have done it already. The label execs aren't stupid - it doesn't matter that some people here think they are. They aren't. There just isn't anything they can do to support that old model. And new models don't make as much money. So they try to protect the old one as long as they can.

Re:Don't be evil

[asdf7890]

Yes, but they could buy one major label and have it work in a less evil manner. If that turns out to be profitable and/or attractive to the talent then the others will be forced to follow suit to compete. There would have to be some compelling reason to give the the shareholders (and the only reason most of them will find compelling is "it'll make us a pile more cash"), of course, and Google would have to be careful not to change things to far from the beaten track too quickly lest they get hauled in front of a court to prove they are not abusing their position in other markets.

Re:Don't be evil

[geobeck]

It's "Don't be evil, not don't buy evil.

Re:Don't be evil

[king neckbeard]

The value is not in the labels themselves, but in removing the negative influence of the labels. WIthout that negative influence, Google makes more money.

Re:Don't be evil

[hedwards]

I think Google should take a blow at Apple. It's not like St. Steve hasn't been behaving evil himself as of late.

Re:Don't be evil

[thisnamestoolong]

Who is talking about hemorrhaging money? Pretty much all of the evidence shows that if the record industry adapted with the times their profit margins would increase.

Re:Don't be evil

[darien.train]

I'm not sure I'd trust Google not to use the opportunity to take a low blow at Apple though and that's one thing the industry doesn't need.

Which industry? Music or computing? How does one qualify a low-blow?

Are you familiar with Apple's interactions with smaller companies such as CDBaby? Was that a low-blow?

I'm genuinely curious as to what you mean.

Re:Don't be evil

[DannyO152]

I suppose my first thought is, just be a label, don't buy a big one. You'll overpay for their catalogs, skewed toward Boomers, and which have a plausible licensing revenue stream for twenty years. Go back to the 50s, 60s, and even 70s and you'll see the key labels for generating decades spanning artists were led by independent music and business savvy folks. (Columbia is an exception, but it had an exceptional A&R man in John Hammond.)

We are now well into the first decade of blogs. Google can catalog them and find the bloggers who first spotted the talent that is moving up the food chain. Hire them as scouts. Hire the successful independents as executives. Go back to the basics of the pre 1990s record industry. Lower advances, give the artists a greater share of revenues, and use the money to develop the artists' careers. Get them performing, performing, performing. Promote via YouTube. Be international. Rhythms melody and groove can transcend language. Open up a music store and ignore the labels' catalogs. "We are selling tomorrow not 1974." If you can't have more, have better. Don't be hung up on licensing the petty crap. Oh yeah, get licenses for uses in film and movies, but don't worry if that YouTube video just got mashed up. (The kids probably aren't saying that any more, are they?)

Funny thing is, do that, be about the music that is about to explode, and the music fans among the labels' suits will be clamoring to be part of the excitement. Probably start their own things utilizing the web and, dare we say it, Google's advertising.

Apocryphally, a lot of people get their music from YouTube. Owning the place where people know to go is such a huge first step. Take the next. Be Temps. Keep on walkin' and don't look back.

Re:Don't be evil

[FlyingCheese]

Remember, Google is a for profit company with shareholders. They can't purchase something expensive, hemorrhage cash on it, and expect the shareholders to accept that.

... like Youtube?

Re:Don't be evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Music industry sole purpose is to extract money from the artists. They basically get paid "for protection", not unlike some real mafia, their cut is about 85% or more. You might hate Google, but I can't possibly see how this situation could get any worse. In any case Google's primary objective is not to profit from music sales, they have more profitable core business, this is a target of opportunity that fits their agenda, it would bring more audience and do some real good along the way.

Re:Don't be evil

[Dachannien]

The music oligopoly actually owes far more to the terrestrial radio oligopoly (and thus the FCC) than it owes to copyright. I don't mean that the oligopoly doesn't benefit from copyright - it does - but the key lies in the comparison to indie musicians and labels. Indie musicians and labels benefit from copyright just about as much as the music oligopoly, but they don't benefit at all from the terrestrial radio oligopoly that never plays their music.

Re:Don't be evil

[UnknownSoldier]

> Monopolies are bad.

No they aren't. Like anything else, they have the _potential_ to be used constructively or abused.

Currently, essential services, like Government, Electric Company, or Water company all have monopolies. Replacing them with corporations each with competing standards would be worse.

Re:Don't be evil

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Which industry? Music or computing? How does one qualify a low-blow?

The music biz, and a low blow would be something like locking Apple out of catalogues through pricing or by just not allowing them on iTunes. Apple's the one who for the large part made buying music on the net legit, popular and reasonably priced through the iTunes store. If Google moved in to the music business and they started to feud, carrying the fight from the computing industry over into the music business, it would strengthen the position of the traditional music companies that Apple has succeeded to cow into making concessions. That wouldn't be good for consumers I think.

I don't know of the CDBaby story. I googled it and it just came up with a one-sided story by the CDBaby founder, 7 years after the fact. I'm not saying it didn't happen that way, there's a ton of stories like that and Jobs can certainly be a ruthless bastard, but anyway it worked out OK for them in the end it seems.

Re:Don't be evil

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Why would it be a bad thing for them to (sorry) take a bite out of Apple? Apple has done nothing but bad lately.

Not in the music biz they haven't. Apple's been able to force the traditional music companies into making concessions and IMHO has been a pretty positive force for modernization from a consumer perspective.

Re:Don't be evil

[timeOday]

they would simply refine their definition of 'evil'.

...as if a concept like "evil" could simply be defined once and for all.

New situations arise all the time. The chances of google and any given individual (such as yourself) agreeing every time are nil, regardless of intentions.

So, is "don't be evil" completely worthless? No, but it is going to be judged by the principals of the company, not Internet-wide consensus.

Re:Don't be evil

[rtb61]

So much cheaper for Google to buy the US government and simply shorten copyright terms back to the original period on a global basis. Google seems to do well in a open market. As for the investment in buying the US government, it is pretty obvious you can get double or more it back in tax payer subsidies once you've made the purchase so, double plus bonus.

PS the 'don't be evil' was changed by goggle to don't need to be evil' some time back. So they just need to get back their investment in subsidies and no extra, whilst changing the copyright period. Whilst their at it they could also drive a major cut in defence spending directing a portion of that money into universal fibre to home broadband.

Think about it, a small fraction of what is spent on US military spending, year in and year out, would cover a one time payment that would provide universal broadband that would last decades.

Re:Don't be evil

[Anonymous Coward]

It would take Elon Musk type ballz to pull this off, but who knows what Larry is capable of without Eric holding him back. Honestly, they could do just as people suggest, buy it, dismantle it as they profit off it, and become ubiquitious. Then they could move on to TV, and one by one turn into the media singularity and charge a flat fee for access to anything, anywhere without all the stupid rules that were developed for a pre-internet world.

The world is a better place without the entertainment lobby.

Re:Don't be evil

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea that the major music labels are a monopoly, is one of the weirdest things I have ever heard of. If you add up every single one of them -- hell, let's throw the indie labels in too -- do they approach 1% of music yet? I seriously doubt it.

Re:Don't be evil

[calmofthestorm]

They can turn part of the company non-profitable if getting it out of the way makes some other part of the company more profitable. That's the idea here.

Re:Don't be evil

[Riceballsan]

Indeed if I bought a lybian slaughter house and turned it into a homeless shelter, would that make me evil? There are ways the music industry can be both profitable and beneficial, if Google teamed up with or made their own spotify for instance, There are countless good services that were making money for the music industry, but were shut down becuase the labels considered them a threat to the current procedures that are dying anyway. Unfortuantely I doubt it will work that way, the labels will claim their price as 50x what it is worth, offer it to google for say, 10 billion dollars per artist.

Re:Don't be evil

[twebb72]

They could buy one major and lead by example.

Intel got to Will.I.am first!

Re:Don't be evil

[king neckbeard]

While I don't disagree that the radio oligopoly has contributed to the divide, I would question the ability of large recording companies to form without copyright. A lot of why terrestrial radio never plays indie music is because of payola, which is because majors have the money to do that because of copyright.

Re:Don't be evil

[ynp7]

Who cares about Apple? The world is better off without them.

Re:Don't be evil

[Compaqt]

Well, Cisco spent a half $bil on FlipKam, and just wrote it off.

Re:Don't be evil

[nabsltd]

Pretty much all of the evidence shows that if the record industry adapted with the times their profit margins would increase.

The same holds true for the movie industry.

The music companies basically handed over a huge chunk of potential profit to Apple instead of opening their own online store. In the same way, the movie studios let every other company make a lot of money renting movies (with Netflix being analogous to Apple for music) instead of taking the profit for themselves.

The reason both industries did this is that when they previously tried to do similar things, they made it so useless to consumers (*cough* "Plays for Sure" *cough* DIVX *cough*) that nobody wanted it. The "creators" of content in both industries are suffering badly from trying to maintain absolute control of their content, while at the same time other companies are making a fortune off giving consumers what they really want.

Re:Don't be evil

[davester666]

Not really.

1. They couldn't band together to make a universal store selling all their music because it would be unlikely to pass antitrust law. And who would know that to get the latest Jewel CD, they have to go to the Warner Brothers music store [or whichever label owns the sub-label she records with]. So there needs to be a separate corporation that sells everyones music, not controlled by them. Of course, now the labels wish Apple didn't have so much market share, preventing them from truly gouging consumers. But methinks if someone else, like Amazon for example, had Apple's market share, the labels would have similar problems [see Amazon's dealing with ebooks/book publishers].

2. The labels make MUCH higher profits on songs sold through Apple than songs sold via CD. There's more middlemen taking more cuts of the final price. Only total revenue is down because people aren't buying 9 crappy songs to get the one they want. Of course, the labels would prefer that Apple takes no cut, and require that you purchase all 10 songs.

Re:Don't be evil

[davester666]

And just to reply to the PlaysForSure part, Microsoft did learn from Apple about that as well. With PlaysForSure [which of course, it wasn't a brand name, would have to be changed to MightPlaySometimes], Microsoft said here's a tool to apply DRM to your content, you decide how you want to screw your customers. And the labels did, and they all decided to screw their customers differently, and on different stores, so on any store you had to carefully check what the DRM was for each individual song [as even songs from a single label would have different rights].

With the Zune [and the Zune store], Microsoft copied Apple's store with having the same rights for all songs, and remarkably similar pricing. I'm sure it was just a coincidence.

Re:Don't be evil

[AJWM]

Not in the music biz they haven't.

Apple (the computer company) has been somewhat restrained in that area by an old lawsuit by Apple Records (the Beatles-founded music company).

Re:Don't be evil

[Anonymous Coward]

I laughed.

Re:Don't be evil

[Vectormatic]

going by RIAA court cases, they will claim probably more then 1000x what they are actually worth..

But what would stop google from doing a hostile take-over? all it takes would be to convince a few key share-holders that the music industry is going down and they wont see a good return on their investments anyway, give them twice the tradingprice per share, and you can be the owner of a recordcompany quicker then you can actually say record company.

Shareholder greed is their motivation, and can in this case, be their weak spot

Re:Don't be evil

[w0mprat]

They could buy one major and lead by example. It'd probably be all that's needed to drag them all into the 21th century. I'm not sure I'd trust Google not to use the opportunity to take a low blow at Apple though and that's one thing the industry does need.

There, fixed that for you. Right now the music industry is Steve Job's bitch, and he gets to take a big cut of everything they sell. Apple has pwnership of 70% of the digital music industry, and Google is thinking a few steps ahead and doesn't like the future it sees, an Appleverse which it can't monetize. This is it's reason for Android, making sure Apple isn't a monopoly that can shut it out of a market on a whim. It doesn't like the potential threat to it's future profits if Apple retains it's control of digital music, this is the point of Google's music service IMHO.

Re:Don't be evil

[Patch86]

What if they just bought half the music industry, fixed it, then massacred the other half in the market place? That other half would soon change their ways to become competitive, given no other choice.

That, or Google would become the trend-setter among big "new media" companies, and their peers would soon follow suit to buy whatever's left (I'm sure Apple and Amazon would both like to play that game).

Re:Don't be evil

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Selling music doesn't help Google's bottom line, which is 96% advertising revenue, though. If curtailing Apple's dominance is all they're after an alliance with the Amazon MP3 store would make more sense. Then it'd be Android + Amazon vs iOS + iTunes. The way Apple has been trying to move into ebooks Amazon might welcome it.

Re:Don't be evil

[h4rm0ny]

True, but we already have an oligopoly (major labels) that only exists because of state-backed monopolies (copyright)

Well, copyright law and the public's general willingness to pay the asked for price for the music. Copyright law does not produce a mandatory tax that everyone must pay. The companies exist because people have considered their product something they are willing to give money for.

Also, monopoly isn't really the right word. Copyright law doesn't grant a monopoly on producing music to anyone. It limits the rights to reproduce specific pieces of music. Apple doesn't have a monopoly on O/Ss because copyright law grants only them the right to reproduce their own O/S. They can't call up Bill Gates or Linus and tell them they're not allowed to produce an O/S. A "monopoly" on reproducing a particular song is no more a "monopoly" than that given to Oracle being the only company allowed to distribute the Oracle database.

and the purposes of the acquisition would be to reverse the harm that said oligopoly has caused. In this hypothetical, Google might not even be trying to make any money off of the acquisition,

I think your faith in Google's benevolance is quite alarming if you're suggesting they might buy a major music label without the intent to make money off it. I also think you'd be very disappointed to learn that music still cost money as if Google wasn't making a decent profit of it, the artists would sign up with a different label that did make them some money.

Re:Don't be evil

[h4rm0ny]

Okay. There exist "natural monopolies" which is the usual term for these things. I'll rephrase my comment to the more accurate, but less pithy: "Except in the case of natural monopolies, of which the music industry is not one, monopolies are bad."

If there were only one company that artists, sound engineers, et al, could go to for employment, that would be a seriously fucked up situation.

Re:Don't be evil

[h4rm0ny]

What if they just bought half the music industry, fixed it, then massacred the other half in the market place? That other half would soon change their ways to become competitive, given no other choice.

I have to ask what "fixing it" means. Because if it means making less money, then artists don't have a good financial incentive to sign on with Google's label and that would very quickly lead to the collapse of Google's music label.

Re:Don't be evil

[king neckbeard]

Also, monopoly isn't really the right word. Copyright law doesn't grant a monopoly on producing music to anyone. It limits the rights to reproduce specific pieces of music. Apple doesn't have a monopoly on O/Ss because copyright law grants only them the right to reproduce their own O/S. They can't call up Bill Gates or Linus and tell them they're not allowed to produce an O/S. A "monopoly" on reproducing a particular song is no more a "monopoly" than that given to Oracle being the only company allowed to distribute the Oracle database.

No, it's a monopoly, but it's a more limited monopoly than the kind typically prosecuted in anti-trust cases, and since it's largely a dirty word in the context of modern economics, terms like 'intellectual property' have been pushed by those with vested interests. Apple has a legally backed monopoly on producing OS X. Oracle does have a monopoly on their database software as well.

I think your faith in Google's benevolance is quite alarming if you're suggesting they might buy a major music label without the intent to make money off it. I also think you'd be very disappointed to learn that music still cost money as if Google wasn't making a decent profit of it, the artists would sign up with a different label that did make them some money.

The money they could make is small fries compared to their normal business operations. It's similar to Google's acquisition of On2. The primary purpose of buying On2 was to make sure there is a royalty free codec available. For the acquisition, the primary purpose is stop the record industry from fucking things up with the next DMCA, CTEA, etc.

Finally, a highly profitable music label and artist welfare don't really have that much in common. Like I said, the money that Google could make off of a record label isn't that large in the context of their entire operation, so the profits are secondary. Since the profits produced there are secondary, they have a chance to not be as awful as the other companies to the artists, which would be a good thing for the artists. Artists outside of established superstars generally don't make profits off of records anyway. The records essentially function as advertisements for merchandise and live shows, and Google might even do a far better job than the record labels at that.

Re:Don't be evil

[Anonymous Coward]

It would take some serious effort on their part to be more evil then the music industry currently is. Even considering they'd have a monopoly.

Re:Don't be evil

[bill_mcgonigle]

If there were only one company that artists, sound engineers, et al, could go to for employment, that would be a seriously fucked up situation.

Not really, it could be a music nirvana. I'm sure you could imagine a benevolent and profitable music powerhouse. Abusive monopolies are bad. But abusive monopolies can only exist with the support of governments, so it's not really the abusers who are the root problem.

Lacking government intervention, if a monopoly starts misbehaving, with prices or services, that opens the door for competitors to step in and provide alternatives.

Re:Don't be evil

[bill_mcgonigle]

I have to ask what "fixing it" means. Because if it means making less money, then artists don't have a good financial incentive to sign on with Google's label and that would very quickly lead to the collapse of Google's music label.

Well, knowing Google, it means a low-profit-per-transaction but high volume business. Instead of making 4 cents on a song at iTunes, they make 0.5 cents per song impression at Google. But they sell a thousand times as many song impressions as they did iTunes songs.

Re:Don't be evil

[h4rm0ny]

And with that post, I have finally given up on Slashdot. I will allow it to continue to sink into the small echo chamber of people spouting illogical arguments and unquestioned articles of faith at each other that it is determined to become.

Adios, Slashdot. I'm done here.

H.

Re:Don't be evil

[Uhhhh oh ya!]

I doubt google would try to block apple out of the music business, one because it would just lead to more court cases against google and 2 because google has shown that they rely more on creating a superior product than cutting down the competition. Second, apple brought the music business in to current times but has been holding it back since. ITunes offers lower sound quality compared to many other digital sellers. They have been jacking up the price, they have made sharing your music and just transferring it to other devices of your own a huge pain, and offer no cloud type services. I would be happy if Amazon took over over the music industry, they cant be any worse than the people currently in charge. The only problem is I don't think google should only buy one label. That would lead to all the labels being bought by different companies and then a new place for the tech companies to war. Can you say iphone exclusive songs.

Re:Don't be evil

[Kvasio]

"Don't be" != "Don't embrace"

Re:Don't be evil

[Dachannien]

Actually, I tried to explain that that's not what I meant. Yes, big music relies on copyright, just like indie music does. But it isn't able to leverage copyright to crush indie music the way it can leverage big radio.

Re:Don't be evil

[MattBD]

I love the way that major record labels have driven many smaller independent labels out of existence, just as large music chains like HMV have driven independent record stores out of business, and that's just market forces, yet when they feel their business model is threatened by filesharing they're demanding that governments pass new laws to protect them and criminalise their customers. The sooner the major labels die choking on their own metaphorical blood the better.

Re:Don't be evil

[datsa]

Don't forget nuclear power plants...

Thats

[MrQuacker]

so crazy that it might just work.

Re:Thats

[MrHanky]

It's so crazy that it would inevitably lead to anti-trust bullshit and Google would be split into search and a bunch of different record labels. In other words, it wouldn't happen.

Re:Thats

[icebike]

Why buy what is broken?

All Google has to do is BECOME a music label, by offering better contracts, more royalties, better artists rights, world wide reach, world wide digital distribution. Add DRM free any-platform playable formats via a free on-line music locker. Allow you to download to any device having your Google credentials installed, and stop worrying about the piracy. Partner with music stores (remember them?) or Best-Buy type geek stores or Walmart, for burn-to-cd (or stick, or MicroSD) while you wait for those people wanting physical media without doing it themselves.

Sign a few big names, and watch people jump ship from the labels. Artists are just as sick of the Labels as the rest of us.

Few companies have Google's reach. They are about the only company that could do this, but even they would need partners for world wide direct to media outlets. At least until they put up Google Media Kiosks in every mall.

Re:Thats

[Anonymous Coward]

I read your post with interest because it made so much sense. But after thinking about it, I realized that even though Google might seem to hold the same ideals that you and I do, their upper management suits probably hold much different views and would be as uncomfortable with such generous sharing as the major record labels are. Just look at former Google CEO Schmidt's past interviews.

Re:Thats

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd consider buying a record label because you're buying a catalog of existing recordings, contracts with current artists for their future recordings, and a bunch of employees who know how to do all the marketing and distribution. (Not that you necessarily want them to do exactly what they've been doing before -- but it's a lot easier than hiring them one by one.) Even if it's partly broken, it might be faster and cheaper than starting your own publishing business from scratch.

Re:Thats

[Anonymous Coward]

won't work. Have you seen what Adsense did for advertisements? Made it dirt cheap to advertisers. Which in turn leads to fly-by-night scams being advertised. Oh snap, can't have that now can we.

The same would happen for music. Let's say, they bought all the music labels... not the independents, just the big ones like EMI , dump all the music into DRM-free high-definition (if available) copies, put it in their own store (Remember ringtones? OMG people paid 5$ for what amounted to 30 second midi files.) Then let everyone buy what they want at the quality they want. mp3/ipod lossy quality for 99 cents, 4.99 for "HiFi" lossless 24/96 tracks meant to be used for mastering, or Karaoke versions that don't have the vocals, so you can (auto-tune) your own version.

I mean, jeez the apple store does need some 1:1 competition. Even if Google can't buy all of them, they could buy the majority shares/hostile-takeover all the recording companies they can, re-organize them so that all Google retains all the rights music assets, then spin the companies back off sans-assets, and instead the music companies then have to license the music from Google for physical CD's.

It's an over simplification, but I think it gets the point across. Let the independants sell their music on the GoogleTunes store at better rates than the RIAA alone would ever do. Read up on all the stores about how the RIAA makes artists earn practically nothing from CD sales. All their money comes from live concerts and merchandise.

Re:Thats

[postbigbang]

Which is why it makes more sense for Apple to do this. They have more cash. Unless SJ retires-- he has lots of media relationships (boards, the first iTunes deals) to make it work, while retaining some semblence of profitability. Oh, wait......

Re:Thats

[icebike]

Say they didn't buy ANY labels. Why bother?

Out compete them.

You've made no vargument as to why what I described won't work.

Re:Thats

[wamatt]

All Google has to do .....

Oh and invent cold fusion, cure cancer and end all wars.

Or they could buy a label.

Hmmm .. choice choices.

Re:Thats

[Anonymous Coward]

A friend told me a story about a high level MS discussion. MS Money is a competitor with Quicken which has a firm hold on the finance management side of bank agreements and MS was trying to make inroads in getting banks to push their software. They were having trouble convincing a bank that Money would be a necessary option to offer their customers. The solution was "then buy a bank."

I'm not clear enough to recount the details and wasn't there so I can't vouch for the veracity of the exchange, but I can tell you that the moral of the story makes sense. If you can't get the relationship you want with a group of businesses and you have something consumers want, then buying one of the businesses can solve a lot of problems. If your product is appealing to consumers, then you've got competition fostered where there was little before. It forces the other businesses to either compete or loose revenue as consumers move to the new offering. Even if the other businesses still don't start offering your product on the terms you prefer, the consumer wins because the market now has a more appealing choice.

Google doesn't need to buy all the record labels or even all the big players, it just needs to buy enough of an inroad that what was previously unnecessary sacrifice of profits becomes a choice between competing or loosing completely. When Amazon and Google are offering something that consumers are flocking to instead of having to deal with the record labels, then the labels will either negotiate or die.

I honestly don't know which would be better for consumers.

Re:Thats

[Anonymous Coward]

so crazy that it might just work.

The music industry is corrupt inside and out. They cheat the artists, they cheat the IRS and then -- for fun -- they cheat each other.

Re:Thats

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is the music industry has control over the majority of music today. Overcoming that might take 50 years. If you want to resolve the issue once and for all buying the industry might work if the fines involved exceed the worth of the industry and the profit from it would be worthwhile.

Re:Thats

[icebike]

Why buy an empty shell?

Re:Thats

[iluvcapra]

Why buy what is broken?

The libraries aren't broken, that's what Google wants. The good music is stuff that's older and established, and for Google to stream that they have to make a deal with the labels, who aggregate the key rights holders.

All Google has to do is BECOME a music label, by offering better contracts, more royalties, better artists rights, world wide reach, world wide digital distribution.

Big G could care less about new music, artists have to be found, promoted, and then once they finally get popular they just start their own labels and sell the music themselves. Nobody wants to get into the recording industry now, all of this wrangling is over music that the record companies hold the key distro rights to. Because of utterly destructive copyright extensions in the US, the music business is now 95% about controlling library rights and 5% developing new acts. Occasionally there are co-branding deals with retail outlets a la Paul McCartney and Starbucks, but these are just for sales, not for distribution, no "big acts" worth their beans ever signs away rights, let alone to a Google.

What does Google know about entertainment promoting? That's what production is now; it isn't just as easy as putting up a ton of music on YouTube, 90% of music promotion is telling people what to like, and Google has shown very little skill at consumer marketing or trendsetting; just because they know how to get millions of people to use free stuff doesn't mean they can figure out how to sell people coolness, hipness or identity. You suggested they market music, and "selling cool" is what marketing music is.

Re:Thats

[DurendalMac]

This is already happening to an extent with existing music services. Some folks are making good money on the iTunes store without ever talking to a record label.

Re:Thats

[Anonymous Coward]

The hard part of the music industry is not distribution. Especially not for google. The hard part is sifting through the piles of crap to find the few good acts. If you think the music industry doesn't do that well, then go through an "indie" website where anyone can distribute their stuff and see if you can sift through that for longer than 10 minutes.

Re:Thats

[orkysoft]

The big labels have an effective advertising structure: they own many radio stations that play their songs. People aren't just going to buy songs from the Google Music Store that they haven't heard about before, except if they're the "if I know about it, it's too mainstream for me" type.

Re:Thats

[crossmr]

Being a label isn't just about setting up a website for bands to sell their music through. It's also about promoting acts, setting up tours, appearances, interviews, etc. Managing an act takes time and dedication. Tours are often fronted by the labels. I can't see google turning around and laying out cash to send bands on tour.

Re:Thats

[icebike]

Right, because google never fronts money for anything? Rolls eyes...

Re:Thats

[Anonymous Coward]

Google doesn't like owning content. They like others to have that cost. They prefer to just make money off content they don't own.

Re:Thats

[darien.train]

His comment looked like paid Russian soft-trolling to me.

Re:Thats

[iluvcapra]

Vision of things to come: Google A&R guy brings $85,000 check to local garage band, tells them to spend it as they please to promote their band, but to make sure to remind their audiences that their band is only "in beta" and that their presence at the event has already been reported to Google Buzz and AdSense.

Re:Thats

[crossmr]

Effectively representing acts requires a lot of manpower and skill. Google would have to turn around and hire a bunch of the people they just put out of business. You certainly don't send a programmer in to manage dozens/hundreds/thousands of bands.

It isn't even wholly about the money. It's everything. You don't just flip a switch and say "Hey we're a record label".

It might be trivial for google to set up a site model for bands to sell music through, but it certainly doesn't make them a record label.

Re:Thats

[aztracker1]

I have to agree there, I also don't think that Sony would sell off it's stake in the media companies, and don't think Google can outweigh Sony on that regard. I do think Google could probably buy out a few of the smaller labels, and offer better incentives to new artists, as well as artists going off contract. Buying and leveraging MGM (though movies & tv more than music) would be a good business decision as well, since a lot of music licensing winds up tied up in negotiations with the movie industry.

Re:Thats

[icebike]

Promoters and tour organizers are not the evil portion of the music industry, nor are they usually employees. They are usually separate companies.

Not every segment or every person in the music industry is evil.

Re:Thats

[crossmr]

The labels organize and foot the bill for all of that. If google replaces the labels, they'd have to replace that as well.
Which means google would have to turn around and start making judgment calls about acts, etc. and that is non-trivial work.

Re:Thats

[AK Marc]

Buying an existing player in a market is cheaper than entering the market. Buy one or more, then out compete them. But you need to get your foot in the door, and startup is often more than the cost of the existing companies, especially in an "old" industry.

Re:Thats

[AK Marc]

Because the empty shell is full of contracts, experienced employees, contacts, and a large catalog?

Re:Thats

[icebike]

Your argument seems to be that it must always and everywhere be as it is today.

If that is your view, there is no point discussing the issue with you, and you have no basis for complaint about the status quo.

Re:Thats

[icebike]

That must be why google bought Alta Vista, and then leveraged that to buy yahoo and dog pile.

Re:Thats

[AK Marc]

Sure it's trivial. You toss them on YouTube, see the response, and respond accordingly. Take the "I think we can make you big if we can get you to sell out" creations out and we might have less Brittany (sp?) Spears and Spice Girls, but more of the ones with actual talent.

Re:Thats

[Anonymous Coward]

But the music industry are more likely overvalue everything when selling.

So it would be a bad deal.

Google didn't buy a search engine, nor did they buy hotmail to get into webmail.

Facebook didn't buy MySpace.

Re:Thats

[AK Marc]

I didn't argue that no one should ever start a business, and instead should only ever buy existing companies. That's stupid, and thus your comments implying I said that are even more stupid.

Almost anyone that's ever started a business has gotten 5 years into it, considered selling it, and noticed that they put much more into it than they could get for it if they sold it (thus meaning that it would be cheaper for a newcomer at that point to buy that company than to build their own to the same level). Obviously, that's a generality that's right only 90% of the time, and there will be a few companies that will be worth much more than it took them to get there, like Google. But that's the exception, otherwise we'd have 1000s of Googles, and we don't.

Re:Thats

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like, a content provider and a content channel merging together? Like AOL & Time Warner? Like Comcast and NBC?

I would be likely to agree if they were buying out competition, but the production of media is not their primary field. If anything, Google's track record of being more open and fair than many others would show that they would not limit the use of the media by other unaffiliated channels.

Re:Thats

[Anonymous Coward]

Please Google please. We are counting on you.

Re:Thats

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a dumb idea. They'd loose money with you guys stealing all their stuff!

Re:Thats

[king neckbeard]

Because buying that empty shell means that empty shell will quit holding back progress, allowing Google to make more money. It's not an investment, it's chemotherapy for the internet, where the recording industry is a malignant tumor.

Re:Thats

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no reason to buy the libraries. Storage is so cheap they can do basically what amazon is trying which is basically what my.mp3.com lost on except for automated ripping of cds and one location for storage 11 years ago and just fight the court battle for less without the problems of limited funds for a startup and no understanding of the internet like 11 years ago.

Either amazon or google would actually have a chance at that fight, and it'd likely be the final major death-blow to the labels.

The other ideas of starting their own label/licensing isn't bad either, as they could just simply start giving real artists a way to market their projects with better terms for them. Youtube basically launched Cee-lo-green's last album and Ok-Go's 15 minutes of fame. So it is not outside the realm of possibility. If it caught on it could in the long term not matter what the back-catalogs of RIAA members were (outside of the super-groups anyways). Eventually if they keep going the way they are going they'll be auctioning those off after bankruptcy anyways. So why buy them now for a premium?

Re:Thats

[Anonymous Coward]

crazy talk!

Re:Thats

[crossmr]

Bands and fans expect to do things like go on tour, promote themselves, get interviews, and do other things like that. That's part of the business. That's how they get money. An internet site isn't going to replace that, ever. It might replace the traditional distribution model for music, and perhaps for helping to discover talent, but bands will still need to go out and tour, be on TV shows, be on radio shows, get interviews in magazines, etc. etc. etc.
It's unlikely that google currently has the skill-set to deal with that.

Re:Thats

[crossmr]

Yeah because no one has ever gamed an internet poll before. Good call.

Re:Thats

[dadioflex]

If by "representing" you mean "hyping" or "forcing down our throat" then I would have to agree with you. There was a time when musicians survived without the machinery of promotion behind them and achieved success through talent. There were more local stars and far fewer global ones. We're probably going to end up back at that situation and the "music industry" will be seen as an angry pimple on the timeline.

Re:Thats

[greg1104]

And members of the band are encouraged to spend 20% of their time on their solo albums.

Re:Thats

[St.Creed]

The shell will come with people that you then provide with a position inside your own company and bring their own way of doing things that we were just trying to get rid off. It's not good therapy to infect yourself with the disease you're trying to cure.

Re:Thats

[Anonymous Coward]

Then the music industry would sue Google for Anti-trust. With all the politicians that are in the RIAA's back pocket, it makes no difference if they actually violated anti-trust law or not.

Re:Thats

[AK Marc]

If anyone's the master of figuring out who's gaming page rank, it would be Google, and not some random prick called "crossmr."

Re:Thats

[crossmr]

and that becomes far more trouble than it's worth. 4chan and other sites love to screw around with that kind of stuff. There is a reason real statisticians put no stock in the kind of data resultant from this kind of scenario.

Re:Thats

[Anon8---)]

I agree with you. Music labels will try and hang on to the old as long as possible. Google just might be willing to finally take that major step into the digital world and do it's business there. The audience would be even bigger and given the right price and conditions even more would buy the music. The demand is there.

Re:Thats

[AK Marc]

And I think you are wrong.

Re:Thats

[crossmr]

You're free to think I'm wrong. I think you're a moron. It's fun how we can all sit around and think things right?

Re:Thats

[multipartmixed]

Hmm - you know, Jobs should buy Apple Records. That would be awesome.

Re:Thats

[drinkypoo]

The labels organize and foot the bill for all of that

Often, they do neither. The labels own the radio stations so they get their advertising for free, although they ALSO buy paid ad spots for concerts in case you don't listen to the talking heads. Everything else is usually done by the promotion company. The flyers they put up are generally illegal and are put up by a bunch of teenagers if they can get them, or the promoters themselves. The promoter often pays for the venue and recoups cost via ticket sales which are split with the artist and any agencies which claim a piece of them.

Re:Thats

[king neckbeard]

Obviously, they need to be careful and understand that the reason to buy them is to shut them up.

Re:Thats

[astrodoom]

The label companies have leverage on apple though, they pull out of iTunes and chaos ensues.

Re:Thats

[GuyRiley]

What does Google know about entertainment promoting? That's what production is now; it isn't just as easy as putting up a ton of music on YouTube, 90% of music promotion is telling people what to like, and Google has shown very little skill at consumer marketing or trendsetting; just because they know how to get millions of people to use free stuff doesn't mean they can figure out how to sell people coolness, hipness or identity. You suggested they market music, and "selling cool" is what marketing music is.

This sounds like a job for Apple!

Re:Thats

[postbigbang]

The labels cut their own throats to do so. They, too, need constant revenue to report to Wall Street and everyone else.

They're obliged to make the most money for their corporations, just like any other corporate stooges. They do boorish things because corporations are essentially sociopathic with few exceptions. They feel no pain, no love, only revenues, and preferably sustained revenues. Yet Real, Amazon, and other channels still sell their stuff, and they can't conglomerate or syndicate to sell their stuff because of the Sherman Antitrust Act, Taft-Hartley, and so on. What they can do, however, is continue to make money any old ugly way they want, so long as it's legal. Google, despite protestations to the contrary, will do this, too-- especially now that their stock has finally crashed a bit.

Re:Thats

[astrodoom]

I agree with you, I'm just saying if apple does something drastic, the labels may respond in like. Whereas google has no ties with them right now (at least that I'm aware of, maybe I'm wrong).

Re:Thats

[postbigbang]

Acquisition can be love and war, but in the end, it's for business expansion/continuation whatever the motive is for the press.

If Google buys them, it's bad news. Google sucks at acquisitions. Apple's a bit better, but also has more ecosystem development experience. Apple has fewer brains, but better market discipline. Apple has zen, but Google has testosterone and people that do mental bungie jumping--- and an eye for acquisitions. However: when investors look at ten year revenue streams, it's the ecosystem developmental experience that would drive Apple to success. Even Microsoft could do this, but they didn't invent it.

Re:Thats

[AK Marc]

I don't believe that you are sitting around thinking.

Re:Thats

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, are brilliant

Re:Thats

[Anonymous Coward]

"That's what production is now; it isn't just as easy as putting up a ton of music on YouTube"
Rebecca Black disagrees with you.

Re:Thats

[AmiMoJo]

Buy them, re-write all the licensing contracts to help both Google and the artists and spin the back off as independent companies with Google as a minority non-interfering shareholder.

Re:Thats

[Anonymous Coward]

Marketing entertainment? Google to date has one of the most popular entertainment platforms in the world. In case you haven't heard of it it is called Youtube. I will agree with you on most of your other points though. What Google is really after is unrestricted access to established content. It is this content which people (The masses at least) are looking for. Now I could see Google wanting to use their success and leverage new talent from their existing services. there have been quite a few recent artists which have scored recording deals for being found on Google's owned YouTube service. If Google will to employ a small group of people to look over posted content for vocal talent or something similar they could acquire some of their own artists quite quickly.

Honestly...

[ackthpt]

I don't know why Microsoft haven't a decade ago. Unless it would just be such an obvious target for Antitrust types...

Re:Honestly...

[pclminion]

You know, I wonder about this sometimes. Despite the epic saga which is Microsoft, Bill Gates actually seems like the kind of guy who wants to make the world a bit better (for instance, see Project Tuva). If I was a man with a hundred billion dollars, I'd have no qualms spending half of that to make several very real and important problems in the world simply "go away."

Political backpressure shouldn't be a problem no matter what you do, since with that much cash you could easily buy the government along with whatever else you want to buy.

Re:Honestly...

[king neckbeard]

One reason might be that while the movie and music industries insanity is a disadvantage for them, it's a disadvantage for everyone else as well, and essentially raises the barrier to entry for competition. They have to deal with the RIAA's garbage, but comparatively, they are harmed less than their competitors, and thus gain a competitive advantage.

Re:Honestly...

[ackthpt]

You know, I wonder about this sometimes. Despite the epic saga which is Microsoft, Bill Gates actually seems like the kind of guy who wants to make the world a bit better (for instance, see Project Tuva). If I was a man with a hundred billion dollars, I'd have no qualms spending half of that to make several very real and important problems in the world simply "go away."

Political backpressure shouldn't be a problem no matter what you do, since with that much cash you could easily buy the government along with whatever else you want to buy.

Do keep in mind that Bill developed a conscience after departing the helm of Microsoft. Doing good works after being a ruthless business man (to accumulate a vast fortune) is a time-honored tradition, usually something to do with trying to polish a turd .. I mean legacy.

Re:Honestly...

[Anonymous Coward]

When you have that much money and resources, you have to play your cards very carefully such that your enemies don't collude to set you up for a fall. Sure you could "buy the government" with your money but if the government is just as happy to sieze all of your wealth if your enemies find a reason to make it happen.

Re:Honestly...

[dave420]

Bill started the foundation in 1994, when he was solidly still at Microsoft in a very hands-on position, and stayed there for a rather long time.

Re:Honestly...

[hidden]

He seems to be somewhat dedicated to doing exactly that. Only his sights are set a little higher than the recording industry
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/

Re:Honestly...

[cavreader]

He was ruthless because he was competing with equally ruthless competition at the time. For profit companies usually do not go out of their way to placate their competitors. Unfortunately they were so successful in their business practices and motivations for success that they created a log jam in the flow of new technology from other players. However, a lot of the players at the time were more than willing to cash out when MS came calling and they should accept a little responsibility as well for MS dominance. But, ruthless or not he was one of the people who practically started a new industry (personal computing) while the established tech companies at the time like IBM were placing their bets on the mainframe market. Between him an equally ruthless Steve Jobs their contributions to the tech industry are worthy of at least a little recognition.

Re:Honestly...

[BDZ]

Or trying to pay off some huge karmic debt.

Re:Honestly...

[Jane Q. Public]

"Despite the epic saga which is Microsoft, Bill Gates actually seems like the kind of guy who wants to make the world a bit better (for instance, see Project Tuva)."

So what? Make a 100 billion, give away 20? While in the process being grossly dishonest and smoothing the way for other corporations to buy government?

Give me an f-in' break. The guy's only slightly less evil now that he's "reformed". Sure, the BAMGF has done a lot of good... but it might as well be stolen money they're doing it with. That doesn't get a standing ovation from this part of the audience, thanks very much.

Think of all the food those poorer countries could have bought, if they weren't buying Windows licenses for all the government computers. And before anybody chimes in: remember that Linux wasn't an option during most of Windows' heyday.

Re:Honestly...

[Jane Q. Public]

"He was ruthless because he was competing with equally ruthless competition at the time."

Hahahahahahahaha.

That's rich. No pun intended. What fantasy land are you living in?

Gates bought "QDOS" from Gary Kildall when he wasn't interested in selling it to IBM, and other than a few Apple computers, there was no serious competition in the home or corporate market, anywhere. It was a virtual monopoly from the word go.

I once worked for a company that originally wrote their software for WANG minicomputers. But the processors and other hardware of microcomputers were vastly different. Less capable at the time, but orders of magnitude cheaper. And the power (Moore's Law) caught up very quickly. The minis were for corporations with a big budget that had invested hugely in their current infrastructure, only. The microcomputer started competing for their space almost right away. And completely took it over.

Microsoft simply did not have competition. That's the truth. That may well be (in part) Gates' business savvy, but it was also partly luck and being in the right place at the right time. Kildall, in contrast, was out sport flying on a nice day when we was supposed to be meeting with IBM. So he was at the wrong place at the right time.

Other companies tried to enter the market and compete with the IBM PC -- and therefore Microsoft -- but the IBM was already everywhere and the barriers to entry were simply too high. Microsoft started out on -- or very near -- the top and stayed there. Nobody was close to knocking them off their pedestal, for decades.

Re:Honestly...

[Jane Q. Public]

For the love of... "redundant"?

You know what? I have a suggestion. Slashdot really should create a "disagree" mod... and include the modder's username whenever they use it.

Re:Honestly...

[ackthpt]

Bill started the foundation in 1994, when he was solidly still at Microsoft in a very hands-on position, and stayed there for a rather long time.

Giving it out with an eyedropper at the time. When he left as CEO he gave more of it away. Could be he had more time to see where to put it. He certainly took it out of the mouths of a lot of companies and employees by bundling their software's functionality into Windows and giving it away free.

Re:Honestly...

[walshy007]

Most of his donations are self serving, Free medical drugs for african countries? only if you abide by our IP laws so that in future you cannot make your own drugs for cheap that can help the sick by yourselves.

Look at the finer details of what billionaires give to, while it looks good on paper there are usually catches that better off their own business interests.

Re:Honestly...

[protektor]

Bill Gates did something related when he founded Corbis, the stock photo and film company. He bought the historic Bettmann Archive as the seed and began to purchase more images for the archive. I have no idea what the rates they charge are, but it would be nice to see them open up more of that archive for public use. They already add a million or so images a year to the archive, so it wouldn't exactly kill the company to do that with some of the really old German stuff from the Bettmann Archive. They are slowly digitizing the entire collection, which I guess is a good thing in case something happens to the originals.

It isn't exactly a gift to the public, but the images are being saved and converted to digital format. I would be far more impressed if Bill Gates had the company slowly give out a certain amount of images to the public every year. That would truly be giving back to the public, especially in the form of preserved history.

Re:Honestly...

[gilesjuk]

His wife has a lot to do with it. I don't think he was doing much until his wife took charge of the charity.

They've done damage as well as good things:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundation#Criticism

Re:Honestly...

[protektor]

Bill Gates was absolutely not in the right place at the right time, like it was just chance. Bill Gates got a meeting with IBM because his parents were on a non-profit board with some of the heads of IBM. They made the comment that they were doing some new personal computer stuff to compete with Apple and the Gates' told them that they should talk with their son who was doing computer stuff. Thus, it was his family connections that got him the meeting with IBM. When he took the meeting with IBM and they told him they wanted a DOS for their new PC, he completely bluffed his way through the meeting. He told them he had something he could convert for them. Balmer and Allen freaked out about the IBM deadline and wanted to know how in the world they would meet it when Bill lied about having a DOS and there was clearly no time to develop one. Bill Gates figured he could buy DOS from Tim Paterson, who wrote a 16bit version of CP/M because Digital was taking too long. Gate's bought the DOS for supposedly $10,000 and supposedly closed the contract on the DOS purchase very shortly after the meeting. Some say he closed the deal that week or something similar. He then polished it up and sold it to IBM for far more than that. He even got IBM to agree to allowing Microsoft to sell versions of the DOS for non-IBM systems rather than outright purchase which was very strange at the time for IBM. Most suspect it wasn't Gate's shrew negotiating skills but rather his parents relationship with some of the IBM executives. This also combined with the hubris of IBM to think that no one would be able to compete with them so what did it matter if the DOS was on other systems, since people would want IBM computers. The concept of a clone computer wasn't even a thought to most people at the time.

To a certain degree IBM ended up really screwing themselves in their desire to get in to the PC market fast. They made the mistake of using all off the shelf parts in standard configuration formats. So PC clones had a huge jump start in that they could also buy the same exact stuff IBM was buying and make clones. The only problem was the BIOS for the machine. That was eventually solved as well by Columbia Data Products doing a clean room development of a clone BIOS. Because these were clones of IBM's Microsoft was in the clear to sell MS-DOS to all these clone makers and thus history was made.

This was all pretty common knowledge for people who were around in the computer industry in the early days. Yes there are more details, but those are the basics.

Re:Honestly...

[MrL0G1C]

Bill Gates Foundation, giving with one hand, taking with the other whilst being a very convenient tax-free way to hold large amounts of money and influence world politics.

From Wikipedia

Investments

The foundation invests the assets that it has not yet distributed, with the exclusive goal of maximizing the return on investment. As a result, its investments include companies that have been criticized for worsening poverty in the same developing countries where the Foundation is attempting to relieve poverty.[54] These include companies that pollute heavily and pharmaceutical companies that do not sell into the developing world.[55] In response to press criticism, the foundation announced in 2007 a review of its investments to assess social responsibility.[56] It subsequently cancelled the review and stood by its policy of investing for maximum return, while using voting rights to influence company practices.[57]

Re:Honestly...

[cavreader]

As I stated very clearly there was no personal computing industry to be on top of when MS started. MS staked their claim to the personal computing platform when that platform barely existed. They did get lucky with the timing and they also benefitted when the existing tech companies like IBM and Wang were targeting the mini and mainframe markets. IBM in particular dropped the ball when it came to the PC platform and a few years later paid the price with huge layoffs and the total company re-orientation to remain relevent. I worked extensively on the AS400 and RISC platforms during this time period and didn't attempt any PC development until Windows 3.11 was released and even then I was not impressed with Windows platform but the Windows market was expanding and for an application developer offered the best opportunities for earning a good living. MS concentrated on software,mainly OS and eventually applications for commodity hardware where Apple concentrated on software (OS and Applications) for non-commodity hardware. MS early competitors were the newer software companies not hardware companies. Remember applications like WordPerfect,Lotus123, DBase,or even the Borland development products? They were the application market leaders MS was competing with. How about Netscape? They were the market leader and MS had to play catchup. This is were the ruthlessness came into play. MS was able to tweek their OS offerings to gain the upper hand in the application market. MS never started out as the leader in the application market. They used the OS control advantage and out right purchase those companies that were competing with them in that space. With the advent of new OS's MS has lost one of their biggest advantages but their market penetration and install base is still able to let them remain a viable company.

Oblig Discworld Logic

[Quiet_Desperation]

It's a million to one shot, therefore inevitable.

Re:Oblig Discworld Logic

[93 Escort Wagon]

It's a million to one shot, therefore inevitable.

I knew it! Insane theories: one, regular theories: a billion.

Re:Oblig Discworld Logic

[artor3]

Only if it's exactly a million to one. Quick, somebody get Larry Page to make the announcement while standing on one foot and wearing a fuzzy hat!

Re:Oblig Discworld Logic

[Anonymous Coward]

No they only hit one time out of ten

Great idea...

[nebaz]

You think there are rumblings about monopolistic practices now, imagine if the owned the whole music industry. Plus why would you want to buy the music industry? That would be like buying cattle with mad-cow disease.

Re:Great idea...

[gman003]

How about if several companies split it? Google's not the only one who would like to remove the RIAA. Amazon could buy some, and Apple might like having its own artists for iTunes. Microsoft. Netflix. All the companies that make MP3 players. All of them (and the consumer) would benefit from control of music being transferred from the current owners to themselves.

Re:Great idea...

[praxis]

Are independent artists not considered part of their industry?

Re:Great idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, you could purchase them and change them to make money.. However it is more likely they would implode. Also just think of all those lobbyists and middle men that would loose their jobs ;)

Re:Great idea...

[Samantha Wright]

Not if you have vertical integration so tight that you shut out the concept of independent artists.

Of course, no one's talking about that—but just sayin'.

Re:Great idea...

[WrongSizeGlass]

Are independent artists not considered part of their industry?

Yes they are ... just like Win Phone 7 is considered part of the smartphone landscape ;-)

Re:Great idea...

[Lehk228]

independent artists are generally not part of the problem

Re:Great idea...

[mrxak]

Except then instead of iTunes having music from all the labels, they'd only be able to sell the music from just their own label. Better to win market dominance in selling all the music vs. the other stores, and use that pressure to make higher profits for yourself.

Re:Great idea...

[KublaiKhan]

Perhaps the idea can be refined.

If Google were to partner with Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon and buy up the whole shebang, it could be reformatted into something more useful for everyone--say, some kind of not-for-profit venture (and hence not interested in competition, meaning that the smaller labels wouldn't be squashed) that focused on distributing music to people and money to the artists, and promoting the work of various artists of merit.

You know, like how the RIAA was originally supposed to be.

Providing standard, known licensing terms to everybody as part of the setup, so everyone could compete on the same ground, would probably do more to help the music industry than anything else.

The reason I suggest a 'partnership' of this sort is to prevent any monopolistic tendencies--regardless of the intent to not be evil, owning the vast majority of the music industry does more or less amount to a monopoly, and the SEC won't like that.

Re:Great idea...

[Bacon Bits]

You think there are rumblings about monopolistic practices now, imagine if the owned the whole music industry.

Yes, because the RIAA totally isn't a cartel already.

The most readily available way for Google to get what they want would be to buy enough Congressmen to bust up Copyright.

Re:Great idea...

[Xeno man]

Your still thinking the old way. With digital distribution you can easily have cross label agreements. Say apple owned a 1/3 and Google owned 1/3. Google can agree to allow Apple to sell any albums Google owns digitally any way they see fit in exchange for the reverse. Similar agreements can be made with the final third even if it was broken up by a dozen different companies. Basically it would be the same agreement that ISP's have with each other that allows data to use the others network in exchange for the reverse.

Re:Great idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

...why would you want to buy the music industry? That would be like buying cattle with mad-cow disease.

Because it would be cheaper than the cost of lawsuits in terms of time and cash?

Re:Great idea...

[maugle]

Don't buy all of them. Just buy one major music label... and turn it into a nonprofit organization, The effect on the rest of the labels would be devastating!

Re:Great idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, its NOT like buying cattle who have mad-cow disease. Its like buying a cattle ranch with holes in the fence managed by an idiot who shoots any cows that try to leave and then lets the carcass rot and attract wolves. Meanwhile you've got BLM land just past that fence that you could let your cows graze on for free...

Re:Great idea...

[aztracker1]

Agreed, really wouldn't want to further a Hulu, vs ABC.com, vs CBS, etc with each only selling a given subset of products... I really wouldn't mind paying even $50 a month if I could just watch whatever I want, whenever I want... another $50 to do it without commercials... Right now with the satellite/cable bundling it's that much or more, without the on demand for everything...

Re:Great idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

That would kick arse :) I'd even get a low paying job there just to be a part of making it happen :)

What I want to start is a non-profit BANK!

Re:Great idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, I just thought "why wouldn't Google just buy Lady Gaga and Ice-T, and then I read that comment about "cattle with mad-cow disease".

How true.

Re:Great idea...

[Inzite]

What I want to start is a non-profit BANK!

Then start one.

Re:Great idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

The industry is already controlled this way. The 4 majors try to control distribution by dictating the way media is made available. If mp3 player manufactures owned the industry they wouldn't want another competing format and/or device available for consumers either. And think about this, the 4 majors are Sony, Universal, Warner, and EMI. When you account for all the other media and manufacturing divisions run by these companies its pretty obvious that they bully anybody without a strong enough market position in the music industry. Unfortunately this is their response to saving a sinking ship. Digital distribution has made it possible for artists and composers to distribute for themselves, cutting out a middle man whose "fair" share has been too large for too long.

Re:Great idea...

[artor3]

What I want to start is a non-profit BANK!

So you want to start a credit union. Incidentally, it can never be said enough: do your business with credit unions, not banks.

Re:Great idea...

[spasm]

They don't have to buy the 'industry', just the back catalogs owned by the industry. Buy 51% of shares in [label]. Have [label] agree to a contract with google offering cheap/free licensing for the existing back catalog (plus maybe right of first refusal to license anything the label acquires IP rights on for the next x years). Sell x% of stock so google isn't majority shareholder anymore and won'r run afoul of anti-monopoly laws when they buy 51% of shares in [next label]. Rinse, repeat.

Re:Great idea...

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Problem: Google wouldn't do that. I figure that a company doing anything not for profit is supposed to generate goodwill, and by now, Google has reached about the most goodwill it's going to get. Most people see them as a decent company, and those who don't, well, they're probably not going to be pursuaded otherwise.

Re:Great idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

I dislike this idea. Google obviously can't buy all the labels themselves because of antitrust, but if the ownership of content division is entirely between content distributors, don't expect to be able to listen to music from one company on another company's platform. I don't want an iPhone AND a Nexus S just so I can listen to Paul McCartney and Paul Simon.

Re:Great idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't buy all of them. Just buy one major music label... and turn it into a nonprofit organization, The effect on the rest of the labels would be devastating!

Here's a thought: imagine that your parents' life savings are bound up in Google stock. Then imagine how much of their savings would go up in smoke if they pulled some kind of stunt like that.

That's why corporations behave in a far more moral manner when they follow their fiduciary duty rather than some kind of conveniently flexible notion of social justice.

Re:Great idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is slightly off-topic, but since you had mentioned non-profit organizations... For a while now I have been pondering the implications of a large scale non-profit ISP to provide actual competition to the cable and DSL duopolies which are prevalent throughout most of the US. Fees from customers would actually go towards significantly improving the infrastructure (as opposed to the telecoms noted for the $200 billion broadband scandal, who oversell existing capacity and then impose data caps when faced with increased traffic). The ISP would focus on providing connectivity without being a content provider so there would be no conflicts-of-interest like what is currently seen in the cable industry -- where data caps are imposed (purportedly due to network capacity constraints), yet at the same exempting their own offerings.

There are probably a lot of other factors which I have not considered, but in all likelihood a non-profit organization such as this would never come to pass because any efforts would be vehemently opposed tooth and nail by the entrenched telecoms -- just like their shenanigans with actively deciding not to provide services and then filing lawsuits against municipal broadband efforts. They would also probably lobby heavily to deny right-of-way access in order to block any real competition from emerging and then also refuse peering. I am disgusted by the sheer magnitude of corruption and malfeasance which has been displayed by these corporations.

Re:Great idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like Linux utterly devastated Windows....

Re:Great idea...

[l0b0]

Whoah, that's a great idea! Let's see... Profit is divided among the musicians on perhaps a monthly basis calculated from sales metrics. Prices and salaries would be decided by a board of directors or some such, containing plenty of active musicians (anyone who's on tour could partake via webcam) on a round-robin basis to make sure both the high and low earners get a say. Some sort of bonus scheme would probably be in order for the employees to encourage both the finding of new music and the proliferation and freeing of old music.

The organization would have to plan for rapid growth, with the administration overhead that would generate. For example, round-robin meeting participation would be laughable if the members would have to wait years between attending. Maybe a sort of member voting system would be in order on top of the board, a bit like the Swiss political system.

Re:Great idea...

[protektor]

I would love to see copyright lengths/terms reduced to their original Constitutional length. It would vastly expand the public domain and the level of culture in this country and other countries would rise significantly. Instead corporations have used copyright laws and lengths to hold society culture hostage and refuse to honor their end of the bargin provided by copyright's limited protection. Copyright was suppose to give very short exclusive rights to content creators to encourage them to create content to expand the public domain.

In the US the public domain is basically dying on the vine due to corporate abuse of copyright and patent laws. I suspect if something doesn't change soon that in 10-20 the US will have no meaningful public domain to speak of. This will effect science, culture, business, the economy...basically everything and retard the growth of the country significantly. This is probably one of the biggest hidden landmines this country faces in the future. A country with no culture will not survive, since there is nothing to bind them together.

Re:Great idea...

[Antity-H]

People themselves should be able to do it, have enough person pledge $xx to a fundation, buy the label with the proceeds and make it a nonprofit ...? why wait for google or another company to do it for us ?

Re:Great idea...

[protektor]

Nice idea and it might possibly work. There is only one problem with the idea. The movie and music studios already do this. They sell records and produce movies and then turn around and tell the artists that the movies didn't make any profit so there is nothing to split with them. If you want this to actually work you would need to set up some very strict by-laws and have multiple accounting firms audit the books yearly so as to help prevent that kind of criminal behavior. I don't imagine you could guarantee to get rid of it all, but you could certainly make it much harder to do. Also putting a sunshine clause in the non-profit would be a huge help as well. As the saying goes, sunshine is a great disinfectant for unethical/criminal behavior.

Re:Great idea...

[protektor]

Your best bet for this is to develop and sell a super cheap spread spectrum high bandwidth wireless technology that is a meshed network with a percentage of the bandwidth reserved for backbone/back-haul data. Then everyone could link to their neighbors and it would bounce all around populated areas with no central network company to be charging everyone. It would also make the network next to impossible to take down completely. The only issue would be those in remote areas but I am sure some kind of repeater system could be developed to connect remote areas for less than what it currently costs. You would end up with high latency, which makes it not as useful for gaming and VOIP, but almost everything else would be fine. This would also be the perfect place to force the transition to IPv6 so every device would have it's own IP.

Re:Great idea...

[Issarlk]

Unless fixing the problem earns them even more income in another of their activities (hint: youtube and their cloud music thing). Also nonprofit doesn't mean it would lose money.

Re:Great idea...

[Patch86]

What I want to start is a non-profit BANK!

Building Societies
Credit Unions
Co-operative Banks

Already exists. Feel free to use them- supporting the non-bank method of banking is good for the soul.

Re:Great idea...

[bill_mcgonigle]

So you want to start a credit union. Incidentally, it can never be said enough: do your business with credit unions, not banks.

I hear this a lot, but I don't get why. Could you explain?

I have a choice here of four local banks and three local credit unions. The local banks have better loan and deposit rates, better customer service, and give back more to the community. The credit unions have the seeming advantage that their BoD are elected by the membership, but don't seem to offer any real benefits to the members.

There are also three large multinational banks in the area, but those aren't even in my realm of consideration.

Re:Great idea...

[praxis]

No; in fact they're part of the solution. That was my point: the industry is not all cancerous.

I love the idea

[mysidia]

But for some reason, I think the regulators would never approve of Google buying ALL the major record labels.

The problem is they are concerned about creations of monopolies or use of acquisitions for anticompetitive practices.

Re:I love the idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Disagree. The major labels don't have a monopoly anymore, several independent labels have sold a respectable number of records in recent years.

Re:I love the idea

[Psychotria]

Well, Google could buy one or two, Amazon another one to two, and so on (I don't know how many "and so on"s are necessary because I don't know how many record labels there are... is there a label per vinyl copy, or...?)

Re:I love the idea

[xMrFishx]

How about going 50-50 with Amazon? Just buy the lot together, and then fire all the idiots at the top.

Re:I love the idea

[Anonymous Coward]

It's particularly amusing that the US government, which itself *creates* a monopoly in music, doesn't want anyone to have a monopoly on the monopoly. Hey! Those bastards are monopolizing the monopoly! Get 'em!

Re:I love the idea

[zelbinion]

Well, probably that would run afoul of anti-trust as well. However...

If Google did a hostile take over of, say, two of the major labels, and then immediately offered favorable licensing terms to apple, amazon, and microsoft; then apple, amazon, and microsoft might get a clue as to what google was doing, and each of them might buy up a few labels themselves, and reciprocate the licensing deals with google. End result: everyone except the RIAA and the top music execs win, and no anti-trust. As long as there is no collusion or under the table agreement between any of the parties, it could work... I think it would just take someone to set the example of the new business model.

Re:I love the idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Bingo!

Re:I love the idea

[RoFLKOPTr]

End result: everyone except the RIAA and the top music execs win

You seem to be missing the biggest flaw in the entire plan: A corporation cannot simply "buy" another corporation without said corporation "approving" such a transaction, and it's the RIAA and top music execs that would have the biggest hand in the "buyee" side of the acquisition process. I don't think they would accept a transaction in which they do not "win".

PS why did I use so many "quotation marks"?

Re:I love the idea

[Anonymous Coward]

the US government, which itself *creates* a monopoly in music

No it doesn't. The barrier to entry is lower than it has ever been, just look at how many indie labels have popped up over the last 20 years or so.

Re:I love the idea

[Anonymous Coward]

what do you think "hostile" in the "hostile takeover" means?

Re:I love the idea

[geekoid]

hmmm... Well I guess if you could get a large number of people all to get a share under a commona agreement, and then get them to chip in, eventually the group could buy it and run it according to the agreement.

Re:I love the idea

[Hadlock]

"hostile takeover"

is also in "quotation marks"?

Re:I love the idea

[Hadlock]

did you miss the part where microsoft did hostile takeovers of Yahoo, and more recently, Nokia? this is not a new concept, particularly not to microsoft.

Re:I love the idea

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be missing the biggest flaw in the entire plan: A corporation cannot simply "buy" another corporation without said corporation "approving" such a transaction

"Sure."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeover#Hostile_takeovers

Re:I love the idea

[John Hasler]

I suggest that you read up on the concept of a "hostile takeover". You might also want to educate yourself as to what the RIAA actually is.

Re:I love the idea

[Anonymous Coward]

He's talking about the government's habit of granting copyright monopolies at the drop of a hat. Some people are prone to taking the existence of copyright monopoly as axiomatic, but, well, it's just a law, like the right to own slaves or beat your wife. It's quite reasonable to consider abolishing copyrights, or at least some aspects of the law (such as the restriction on redistribution, which could be removed completely, while still requiring attribution (i.e. a right to be recognised as the real author, against plagiarism/fraud))

http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm

Re:I love the idea

[king neckbeard]

Copyright is a legal monopoly, and the barrier to entry was lowered by technological advances, not by government interference.

Re:I love the idea

[geminidomino]

Hey! Those bastards are monopolizing the monopoly! Get 'em!

There's got to be a "yo dawg" in there somewhere...

This is actually...

[Cjstone]

A very, very bad idea. Google has enough power over content as it is. I'd hate to see them gain even more. Google already controls the most popular search engine and the most popular video hosting site (at least in the US. I'm not sure about the rest of the world.) Imagine if you could only find, say, music videos as youtube "rentals," or had to use a Google TV box for streaming internet radio. Sure, a lot of those technologies are open right now, and Google's motto is "do no evil," but do you really believe that Google wouldn't be able to lock their content down in an instant if their shareholders demanded it?

Re:This is actually...

[englishknnigits]

I sort of agree but at the same time, could they actually make it any worse? It would be hard to imagine a more poorly run, idiotic industry than the music industry.

Re:This is actually...

[geekoid]

Yes, becasue they would be sued for violating their missions statement.

That actual mission statement, not the do no evil.

Re:This is actually...

[RoFLKOPTr]

A very, very bad idea. Google has enough power over content as it is. I'd hate to see them gain even more. Google already controls the most popular search engine and the most popular video hosting site (at least in the US. I'm not sure about the rest of the world.) Imagine if you could only find, say, music videos as youtube "rentals," or had to use a Google TV box for streaming internet radio. Sure, a lot of those technologies are open right now, and Google's motto is "do no evil," but do you really believe that Google wouldn't be able to lock their content down in an instant if their shareholders demanded it?

I agree with the basic premise of what you're trying to say: Monopolies are generally bad. But I do not agree with all you're saying.

Shareholders cannot simply demand things. Google's duty to its shareholders is to make money, plain and simple. Shareholders have absolutely no reason to demand anything specific of Google if Google is making money, and they would have no ground to stand on making such demands. Google's system is obviously working. They are making money by the metric fucktonne. Why would they drastically alter the way they do business by performing a complete 180-degree turn in their policies and the ideas they've so strongly based themselves upon?

Again, monopolies are generally bad, but Google doesn't have to buy all the major labels. All they need is one. If they buy ONE of the "big four" and start offering sane licensing agreements that the world has been searching for (for both the content distributors AND the content producers), and start allowing their music to embrace this new possibility of distribution called the "Internet" (it's this fancy thing that's been around for a couple decades that none of the record labels like to acknowledge the existence of) other labels will simply have to follow suit or they will very quickly become irrelevant.

Re:This is actually...

[proverbialcow]

Shareholders cannot simply demand things.

They can, and they do it all the time. Some people make entire careers of it. Like William Ackman, who successfully pestered the Target board into selling off Target National Bank, and unsuccessfully, to spin off the real estate holdings of Target into a holding company that would collect rent on existing stores. Why? Because he felt that there was too much risk in consumer receivables, and that the balance sheet undervalued the land holdings, respectively.

Google's duty to its shareholders is to make money, plain and simple. Shareholders have absolutely no reason to demand anything specific of Google if Google is making money, and they would have no ground to stand on making such demands.

Google's duty to its shareholders is to maximize shareholder value, not just make money, and they have a legitimate case to make that the risk of perpetual lawsuits from the music industry is greater than the opportunity cost of gobbling up all the players. As an inequality:

Profits from owning record industry - Purchase Price of music industry > Profits from investing elsewhere - Cost of perpetual litigation from music industry

The accuracy of that inequality may be difficult to prove or disprove, but that's why Google has a board of directors - to make that assessment. And that's why there are activist shareholders, to reality-check the board.

Google's system is obviously working. They are making money by the metric fucktonne. Why would they drastically alter the way they do business by performing a complete 180-degree turn in their policies and the ideas they've so strongly based themselves upon?

If they did, it would be because they think there's more benefit to it than benefit to not doing it, and it's at least worthy of discussion.

Re:This is actually...

[proverbialcow]

Again, monopolies are generally bad, but Google doesn't have to buy all the major labels. All they need is one. If they buy ONE of the "big four" and start offering sane licensing agreements that the world has been searching for (for both the content distributors AND the content producers), and start allowing their music to embrace this new possibility of distribution called the "Internet" (it's this fancy thing that's been around for a couple decades that none of the record labels like to acknowledge the existence of) other labels will simply have to follow suit or they will very quickly become irrelevant.

This is even a better case to make to the board than the one I quoted above - fight the music labels on their own turf by upping the stake of the people on whose backs the music industry profits. Surely the reward-to-risk ratio on this has got to be huge.

Sorry, I didn't mean to discount this.

Re:This is actually...

[RoFLKOPTr]

I don't think you noticed what I was specifically talking about. Particularly the GP saying "but do you really believe that Google wouldn't be able to lock their content down in an instant if their shareholders demanded it?" That's what I was referring to when I stated that shareholders cannot simply demand things. That would be a foolish thing to demand because it completely reverses Google's very-well-proven methods of making a lot of money.

You're absolutely right, though, when we shift from my context to the context of OP.

Re:This is actually...

[proverbialcow]

My bad.

Re:This is actually...

[protektor]

There is also the mandate to insure the company's survival which may not always translate into making profit. Sometimes a company has to spend money just to stay at their current level of profit or spend money so they don't loose even more profit. An example of doing something for absolutely no profit or return is corporations giving to charity. It adds basically nothing to the bottom line but generally gives people a feel good image of the company, which may or may not long term translate into profits. All it might do is simply make people not hate the company. There are also times when companies spend money not to make money but to prevent losses. Supporting lobbing groups is an example of this. It doesn't make them money, but may help them from loosing money in the future. Companies have to plan for the future. The question is how that is done, and at what ratio of spending expense. These are things shareholders might end up fighting over.

Re:This is actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. The duty of a publicly traded company to its shareholders is a consequence of its share offering, not some hypothetical law that mandates a pure profit orientation. And Google is famous for its non-conventional offering. For starters, they cut out the middle tier of bankers in their IPO, and more importantly, they famously put "Do No Evil" in their share offering.

As a result, Google's shareholders can actually demand that the board refrains from morally dubious practices. And Google's board can use this as a defense in lawsuits against shareholders that demand a more profitable course. It's part of the deal when you buy Google shares.

Music, Movie.

[unity100]

They should just buy those industries, and get the world rid of a plague. These industries' interest pushing is preventing all kinds of technological innovations and breakthroughs. A LOT of them affect major internet companies like google.

Re:Music, Movie.

[F.Ultra]

Yeah, but why buy them and reward the bastards with more money? Google et al could easily start their own label and try to attract talent.

Re:Music, Movie.

[unity100]

you need to take existing talent off of them. and setting up a new label and doing that will take longer.

Re:Music, Movie.

[Anonymous Coward]

But then what other useful idiots could wannabe-fascist governments find as excuses for invasive internet censorship and filtering? Oh right, the movie industry, child porn, terrorism...

Re:Music, Movie.

[Anonymous Coward]

So what your saying is you want to pay criminals to take guns out of their hands so they can buy BIGGER military grade guns from terrorists?

Re:Music, Movie.

[F.Ultra]

of course, but it might be worth it. Paying those bastards in the MAFFIA should be the very last resort.

Corporate death penalty

[MikeRT]

Microsoft, Google and Apple should buy them all, share the IP rights and then liquidate the corporations. Can you imagine the "W.... T.... F....." reaction in this country if the tech industry finally said "ENOUGH OF THIS SHIT!!!" and brought to bear its ~$1T in net worth to bear on this $50B pest?

Re:Corporate death penalty

[mbkennel]

And all the artists under contract sue Google.

Re:Corporate death penalty

[Anonymous Coward]

$50 billion? Is that all? That's only $166.67/person in the US if you assume US pop.==300 million.

Googe et. al. could slip this into the next budget and have their minions threaten to freeze the debt ceiling and crash the world econ... oh, forgot. Not to be doing evil. Ummm... well, surely they can think of something. Spending your own money is for amateurs. Find a way to get the taxpayers to do it. I wouldn't mind paying $200 to not have to worry about those slimeballs for the rest of my life.

Re:Corporate death penalty

[geek]

What makes you think Microsoft, Google and Apple would behave any better?

Re:Corporate death penalty

[pclminion]

What's the sum value of those contracts? Pay them off.

Re:Corporate death penalty

[SomePgmr]

Right now I'm picturing the totally meltdown on slashdot. Not just because we'd all be overjoyed to see the music industry annihilated and rebuilt, but because we'd actually have (at least in part) Microsoft and Apple to thank for it.

Oh it's fun to dream silly dreams.

Re:Corporate death penalty

[king neckbeard]

The lion's share of artists never see any money from their records past the initial advance, so they wouldn't really see any harm.

Re:Corporate death penalty

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd hope there would be at least a mild amount of technical competence with MSFT, GOOGLE and Apple...

Re:Corporate death penalty

[Ruke]

They already own large corporations that successfully sell copyrighted intellectual property, and manage to have a business model which doesn't revolve around suing their own customers.

Re:Corporate death penalty

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever heard of the BSA?

Re:Corporate death penalty

[geekoid]

That depends on the contract now, doesn't it? And if it's like many contracts they won't really have any recourse.

However, I don't think it would be reasonable to liquidate recent artist. Maybe just everything over 14 years.

Re:Corporate death penalty

[globaljustin]

You missed OP's point...Google doesn't know the first thing about running a record label...neither do the guys in charge now...that's the problem

Sure Google engineers, if you put them in a room, could probably brainstorm a better model for paying artist $$$ in exchange for production and distribution costs, but that's not what this is about is it?

Article said "buy" the big record labels. No one in their right mind would ever buy those companies at their current valuation. Besides the intellectual property and some supply chain infrastructure the major record labels are worthless right now because their business model has been blown out.

From TFA: "— all of them. It could afford them — people tend to forget that the music industry is actually relatively small in economic terms, but wields a disproportionate influence with policy makers. Buying them would solve that problem too"

I almost laughed when i read the last line

Re:Corporate death penalty

[Anonymous Coward]

One could make the reasonably supportable argument that the people sued by the BSA are not customers.

Re:Corporate death penalty

[Anonymous Coward]

RIAA royalties back to artist: ~0%
Apple subscription revenue returned to magazines for iPad: 60%
Google, not sure, but imagine music being done similar to AdSense... they pay Pandora and the like to stream it like it's an ad, rack up sales of the mp3's, split profits with artist.
Microsoft: don't care, we're too busy with Windows Phone 7, Windows 8, Zune 2, and other shit noone will buy anyway... why get into something people would buy?

Hmmm....

Re:Corporate death penalty

[iluvcapra]

The notional value would probably be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, at least. You can be certain the contracts will be valued at their strict letter-of-the-law value, and not the customary we-lost-the-radio-logsheets-in-the-mail-and-you-owe-us-surprise-touring-expenses value.

And maybe you won't be able to buy them -- you're not just taking away their money, you're taking away the prospect that them or anyone who does what they do will be able to make that sort of money again. That's a pretty awful precedent for even a craven hack to countenance.

Re:Corporate death penalty

[Solandri]

It's not even $50 billion. Peak sales were in 2000 at $37 billion. Dollar sales have been down since then, but units shipped have been consistently up - precisely the pattern you would expect to see in an industry which is experiencing a revolutionary reduction in cost to ship its product, while demand remains relatively fixed (you can only listen to so many hours of music a day).

The RIAA (and to a lesser extent the MPAA) is literally the tail wagging the dog. Sony (a tech company which bought a music label) has already paid dearly for the mistake of picking DRMed music over a desirable MP3 player.

Re:Corporate death penalty

[Anonymous Coward]

Most artists, being in a adhesion contract they truly and deeply hate, but canâ(TM)t get out of, would laugh and cheer from happiness over this!
I know at least a dozen famous artists, who would personally send Google flowers to thank them... and then go on and release some really unusual, creative and great songs. (And I highly doubt those would be the only ones.)

Remember: The media reproduction industry isnâ(TM)t also called the artist extortion industry for nothing.

Re:Corporate death penalty

[Solandri]

The RIAA studios are corrupt organizations which have completely gamed the current royalty system to work for them and against the artists. Most of the artists only see a few % royalties from CD / MP3 sales once you factor in paying for production costs out of their share. So even if you were to cut the cost of music to, say, 1/4 what it is now, there would still be plenty of overhead to raise artist royalty shares.

Re:Corporate death penalty

[LordLimecat]

What makes anyone think Microsoft, Google, and Apple have anywhere near $1T combined?

Google has ~$60b
Microsoft has ~$90b
Apple has ~$75b

Re:Corporate death penalty

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the right idea, but they'd never swing the deal. The interests are just too disimilar. Apple is content play ball with the industry because it has a customer base that is willing to pay for iTunes content. Google wants to stream everything free of charge so it can drive more advertising. And MS still wants to use easy music access to keep people inside Windows for a little longer. How could you possibly structure an equitable arrangement?

Re:Corporate death penalty

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think Microsoft, Google and Apple would behave any better?

Naiveness.

Re:Corporate death penalty

[Anonymous Coward]

The founders uses far less crack and hookers.

Re:Corporate death penalty

[drinkypoo]

One could make the reasonably supportable argument that the people sued by the BSA are not customers.

Usually people sued by the BSA have some licenses but not "enough". And the goal is to turn them into better customers.

Re:Corporate death penalty

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't be worse...

Re:Corporate death penalty

[Graff]

Apple subscription revenue returned to magazines for iPad: 60%

That's actually 30% taken, or 70% returned. Not a bad deal at all when you consider that if you sell a magazine through a brick-and-morter store you'd see less than 50% returned and you still have to handle all the costs of printing, shipping, returned unsold stock, etc.

Re:Corporate death penalty

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, so this has got me thinking--how do you actually place a monetary value on music? Say the sum total worth of the music industry is worth about $50b, but is that just the amount on paper (recording contracts between the bands and labels, endorsements, ticket sales, etc.), or is that a reasonable valuation of what the consumer pool is actually willing to pay? My guess is that the true value of the entire music industry might be quite a bit less. I can go YouTube or Internet radio and listen to any part of the entire corpus of recorded music from all over the world without having to purchase the actual music; for most people, this represents a very small portion of the total price paid for Internet access. What is this? .000001% of $19.99 per year?

And even after all this, you still have the problem of separating art like Bach, Handel, Dvorak, and so on from pointless crap like the Beatles, Nirvana, and U2. How do you place a monetary value on art vs. crap? Longetivity? Good recordings? There have been numerous excellent recordings of Bach that will last through the ages, but every single recording of the Beatles is idiotic garbage. What is the monetary value of idiotic garbage?

As long as they remember that...

[Anonymous Coward]

...with great power comes great responsibility.

We can only hope such a takeover...

[cplusplus]

...would be hostile.

Re:We can only hope such a takeover...

[Haedrian]

With extreme prejudice.

Re:We can only hope such a takeover...

[mooingyak]

And a pitchfork. Because that is necessary for awesome to be achieved.

Re:We can only hope such a takeover...

[geekoid]

I'll bring my pitchfork gun.

The real value

[Anonymous Coward]

"wields a disproportionate influence with policy makers"

That alone may be a good enough reason for google to buy them.

If Google bought music labels

[ugen]

If Google bought music labels - then there is little doubt that Amazon music service, iTunes and other direct Google competitors services would be out of licenses and out of business shortly. Isn't that obvious? What interest would Google have to provide these competing services with creative work licenses? None whatsoever.

Re:If Google bought music labels

[Microlith]

And why would Google take actions that would be seen as blatantly anti-competitive? Even Microsoft was more subtle than that.

Re:If Google bought music labels

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

If Google bought music labels - then there is little doubt that Amazon music service, iTunes and other direct Google competitors services would be out of licenses and out of business shortly. Isn't that obvious? What interest would Google have to provide these competing services with creative work licenses? None whatsoever.

Google sells eyeballs to advertisers. If Google were to make all major label music free as in beer, then itunes et al would no longer be competitive but not because of monopolistic advantage by Google but for the same reason no one makes money selling air.

No one seriously complains that WebM being free hurts the market for 4C's h264 patent portfolio. Or that WebP hurts the JPEG patent holders.

Re:If Google bought music labels

[Ruke]

The only possible way that such an acquisition could go through is if Google agreed to license its content out at fair market value to its competitors. Remember, monopolies aren't illegal; antitrusts are.

Re:If Google bought music labels

[ugen]

why wouldn't it? :) It would be a monopoly and it would most certainly exercise monopoly power. it does so now where able - I don't see why that would change.

I know /. is for geeks, and you hold a skewed view of what motivates business. But google is not lead by geeks (any claims to the contrary notwithstanding). They are a business and the only thing that motivates them is making the most money. That's how you make the most money ;)

Re:If Google bought music labels

[RoFLKOPTr]

No one seriously complains that WebM being free hurts the market for 4C's h264 patent portfolio. Or that WebP hurts the JPEG patent holders.

That might be because I've never heard of those.

Re:If Google bought music labels

[Anonymous Coward]

Not getting anti-trusted out of existence, for one.

Re:If Google bought music labels

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as they wouldn't use their (then) monopoly in the music business to boost their profits in the ad business ;-)

Re:If Google bought music labels

[protektor]

That is incorrect. There is a limit to how aggressive the public will allow a company to get in order to get more profits. Any company who steps over that line does so at their own risk and the risk of crashing and burning hard or at a bare minimum taking a serious hit. Just look at a few of the large national boycotts of the past to see how the public can be eventually pissed off enough to react.

Re:If Google bought music labels

[N1AK]

Your ignorance is your own problem. Both WebM or WebP will be known to most /. as they're technologically noteworthy and have featured in stories regularly.

Re:If Google bought music labels

[vague disclaimer]

Google sells eyeballs to advertisers.

What about those of us who don't want our eyeballs sold?

Re:If Google bought music labels

[Anonymous Coward]

Google sells eyeballs to advertisers. If Google were to make all major label music free as in beer, then itunes et al would no longer be competitive but not because of monopolistic advantage by Google but for the same reason no one makes money selling air.

Yet copyright law still exists?

Re:If Google bought music labels

[Anonymous Coward]

What interest would Google have to provide these competing services with creative work licenses?

Money and no work involved.

Re:If Google bought music labels

[drinkypoo]

What interest would Google have to provide these competing services with creative work licenses? None whatsoever.

If they get paid no matter where you go, and they get to display ads next to the search results no matter where you end up buying music, then they win.

Re:If Google bought music labels

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea more like google would require their ads to be somewhere in with the music player or distribution program... which I'm perfectly fine with to get RIAA gone

Re:If Google bought music labels

[RoFLKOPTr]

Your ignorance is your own problem.

That wasn't the point of my comment. My point is that most of the world has never heard of WebM and WebP, and most of the world is what matters, not Slashdot users. Go ask somebody on the street "What's a JPEG" and they will probably say a picture on your computer. Go ask somebody "What's WebP?" and they will probably say "what the fuck are you talking about?" GP's WebM/h264/WebP/JPEG analogy is irrelevant in this situation. That's all.

Re:If Google bought music labels

[Anonymous Coward]

bad analogy. You're comparing music content with video standards. Your analogy would be better if you, for instance, showed how youtube doesn't affect mega blockbuster movies, because then at least you would be comparing content.

Re:If Google bought music labels

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

What's h264? What's TrueHD?
Your anti-analogy analogy is about missing the forest for the trees.

Re:If Google bought music labels

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

bad analogy. You're comparing music content with video standards.

I'm comparing IP to IP. Making the comparison more narrow doesn't make it any more enlightening.

Re:If Google bought music labels

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of people complained that IE being free hurts the market for Netscape, Opera, etc.

Obviously, the precise context is important. And to judge such a deal, Google would have to meet both the US and EU requirements, and possibly others (Japan is isolated enough in this respect; BRIC ignores copyright in practice). The hardest standard to meet would be the European. Using one income stream (ads) to subsidize another (music) is without a doubt illegal. EU vs Microsoft made that crystal clear.

Of course, there's plenty of margin to go around, and Google wouldn't be forced to make huge profits. They could easily slash the margins by 90% and still stay out of trouble. Being efficient isn't anticompetitive.

Android kills iOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what happens to Apple if Google controls the music industry? If iTunes songs cost more than their usual 99c (US) will people still buy them? What Would Apple Do if all those gangster rappers are holding Android phones in their music videos because Google pays for their bling?

I wonder if Apple might try to buy the music industry first, they (in my opinion) have enough money and a much larger vested interest. If no one can afford the other to have it the real question becomes: Who will make the first move?

Re:Android kills iOS?

[Lehk228]

google would do no such thing, even if the DOJ would tolerate such an action, cutting off sales of a profitable acquisition though a major platform is the kind of thing apple would do, not google.

Another way to kill it

[Anonymous Coward]

Host a completely free website for artists. They can post new songs that the artists own the copyright, sell them on the site, 100% revenue go back to the artists. Google will eat the transaction charge. Google will also invite top the chart (google's chart) artist to preform at Googles' campus, sponsor them to play at colleges.

Re:Another way to kill it

[Nerdfest]

Jamendo and others already do this. You can donate to the artists, or buy commercial licences. There's a lot of good music there, more than I really even have time to listen too. Every once in a while you run into something better than 'good' as well.

Re:Another way to kill it

[Mashiki]

Never heard of it. And I'm fairly good on the up n' up. But you can bet your ass that if google did what the AC suggested they'd bury the music industry without even trying.

Re:Another way to kill it

[iluvcapra]

Host a completely free website for artists. They can post new songs that the artists own the copyright, sell them on the site, 100% revenue go back to the artists.

Behold, it will be called MYSPACE 2.0!

If Google doesn't offer some sort of marketing enhancement they aren't really bringing much to the table that people can't also get at BandCamp, Cdbaby etc.

Re:Another way to kill it

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, but google backing it just might give it a little bit more advertisement. for example i never heard of jamendo, while if it would be "google jamendo" chance would be big id have heard of it somewhere.

Re:Another way to kill it

[perryizgr8]

jamendo!=google

Re:Another way to kill it

[perryizgr8]

i'd think being google would itself be a huge marketing enhancement.

Re:Another way to kill it

[Kopiok]

Never underestimate a powerful brand like Google attached to music and a unified shopping system. Many people don't know what Jamendo is (Hell, I don't), and being able to use one system for all music buying allows consumers to stop worrying about finding new sites and signing up for all kinds of pay-for services, which they might be inclined against. There's a huge demand for DRM free music in the consumer, rather than pirate space. The success of the Amazon MP3 store, eMusic, iTunes DRM Free, and Zune Pass w/ 10 MP3/mo +Subscription are evidence of this. The music labels are simply asking for a much higher price than many are willing to pay, whether the music is better or not.

Re:Another way to kill it

[Anonymous Coward]

Why only colleges? Is music only for students in your world?

Monopoly much?

[curtix7]

Isn't there some kind of law about not owning an entire industry?

Re:Monopoly much?

[Ruke]

Nope, monopolies are perfectly legal. It's the "Sherman Antitrust Act", and it prohibits anti-competitive practices. Monopolies are fine, so long as they don't act in a way to prevent competition from forming. This usually is handled by requiring monopolies to license their services at fair market rates to their competitors.

I'm not sold on that idea

[damn_registrars]

Part of the music industry (OK, a rather small part now) is about producing a physical product - actual albums. Google really doesn't have experience in that; the most significant physical product they ever made was a phone and it was a bomb. If they took the music industry and then abandoned the practice of making albums in favor of making all new music download-only, they would only further disenfranchise certain types of listeners.

And few companies are worse at recognizing the significance in customer differences than google...

Re:I'm not sold on that idea

[the eric conspiracy]

Google just has to set up a consortium to produce albums. Five bucks a year to join. Anyone a member can produce all the physical product they want based on any music they want, and sell it through a Google Album Store.

Re:I'm not sold on that idea

[theY4Kman]

How can you fuck up producing CDs? At their current state, the product is well-established, and no design work needs to be done by Google. Plus, if they took the music industry, they'd take the contracts with the factories that produce the CDs already.

They can only go up. Any new features they add to CDs will be welcomed.

Re:I'm not sold on that idea

[drinkypoo]

Producing physical albums is a wholly known technology, you can farm it out to any number of different production houses. Selling physical albums is a whole other thing, and it's what big music is actually good at.

New company motto.

[martinux]

Hear no evil?

Wouldn't it be more effective to buy the US Gov?

[Rivalz]

I think that the music industry is already grossly overvalued and would not be a wise investment.
The US Government on the other hand that would be a valuable investment if they could just find a way to buy them off in bulk.
Lets do the math.
1 Prez, 1 VP, Chief of Staff, Secretary of state ect, Cabinet lets round that to 65 for ease
100 Senators
435 House of Rep
As of January 2009, a total of 3,200 Fed Judges
So we have about 4,000 monkeys to buy. Per year
Average salary is probably around 180k. So we will offer them 10x the amount per year or 1.8 Million per worker.
For only 7.2 Billion per year I think I could effectively own the entire federal government.
I think google can swing that.

why?

[Lord Bitman]

Why should google buy an irrelevant industry with a bunch of imaginary property and pretend rights?

Re:why?

[Ruke]

To make them go away. Google is incredibly frustrated with the terms that the big labels are insisting on if google wants to do cloud distribution of music, and the labels have the power to set whatever arcane rules they feel like. If google bought that power out from underneath them, they would instantly get what they want, and be in a position to market those same rights to their competitors for a fair market value.

Re:why?

[Lehk228]

because google makes money attracting eyes and ears with content, buying up what is effectively a content factory would be very useful

Re:why?

[king neckbeard]

Because that industry is getting in the way of Google making more money. If buying the record labels costs Google $50B and the result of their absence nets Google an additional $100B, then they are making a profit.

Re:why?

[geekoid]

Because the right are not pretend, know matter how much you like to pretend they are.

If they think they will spend more money dealing with crap lawsuits, then it's a simple business decision.

Re:why?

[Ginger Unicorn]

So that it can finally disappear in a puff of fucking logic.

It will never happen

[ClickOnThis]

Major acquisitions like that would be subject to a regulatory review, and would never survive it. The threat of buying up an entire industry is exactly why anti-trust laws were created.

I would shed no tear for record labels if they disappeared, but it won't happen by one company buying them all up.

Re:It will never happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Then buy all the talent. If you outbid the labels for the artists then they have no copyrights to leverage. It would be easy to do by just offering higher royalty percentages than the .1% they currently receive. The up front cost would be non-existent if they offered 10% and cut the price of media to $.20/song. It would essentially double their pay, and the DoJ will have no sympathy for the douchebags tying up the legal system and responsible for payolla.

Re:It will never happen

[hawguy]

Then buy all the talent. If you outbid the labels for the artists then they have no copyrights to leverage.

The problem is that you could only buy artists that are out of contract and looking for a new contract - the real value (at least to me) is in the back catalog of older, but *good* artists. Most new artists today suck. (again, this is my opinion... many people seem to love Rebecca Black ).

So it would take years for any "good" music to come out this.

Wrong way of looking at it

[doctor_no]

First, its called a monopoly. And already government scrutiny is strict when large record labels merge, much less when a company like a Google goes out to buy them.

Second, labels are ultimately as good as their artists. Even if hypothetically Google were able to overcome the international regulatory scrutiny to create a music monopoly, it doesn't guarantee that future artists will necessarily sign with the Google label. The reality of course is that in a competitive market new labels will arise, which the next great artist could sign with if the terms are better, the real question becomes how will Google's monetary compensation compare with artist's realistic expectations.

What the music industry needs isn't a corporate behemoth to rule music and parasitically take a cut between the artist and the consumer, it needs a better business model, a more efficient way to commoditize digital media that gives creators fair compensation for their work relative to the realties of the ubiquity of piracy.

But who will monopolize the monopolizers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I don't really think a music monoculture is what I want.

Buy and Fire

[Anonymous Coward]

If Google wanted to buy out the record labels just to fire all of their top executives and lawyers, I would DONATE MONEY.

Re:Wouldn't it be more effective to buy the US Gov

[brainboyz]

If someone weren't already doing just that, I would be scared of that happening.

I for one welcome...

[iluvcapra]

Why is the solution to every problem of the Information Age a benevolent Google dictatorship?

Re:I for one welcome...

[nsteinme]

mod parent up!!

Re:I for one welcome...

[suomynonAyletamitlU]

Because we all want to see change, it takes a giant-ass lever to move the world, and Google's reasonably close to trustworthy.

Re:I for one welcome...

[Ruke]

Because a democracy means that Anonymous gets most of the votes.

Google tends to treat its customers fairly well. They deliver high-quality products. They've earned a fair bit of trust, especially compared with Microsoft and Yahoo.

Re:I for one welcome...

[chargersfan420]

Because they do no evil...?

(for select definitions of evil, of course)

Re:I for one welcome...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather have a giant ass-lever.

Re:I for one welcome...

[iluvcapra]

Google's reasonably close to trustworthy

"Citation needed"

Re:I for one welcome...

[ddrueding80]

Because the laws are horribly ineffective and no one else is both powerful and benevolent?

Re:I for one welcome...

[iluvcapra]

Google tends to treat its customers fairly well.

Yes, they treat advertisers quite well. They treat cellular providers quite well, too; maybe you have to jailbreak Android phones, and maybe they use OHA membership as a kudgel to restrict competition in the handset market, but that's what the customers, the Samsungs, HTCs, and Verizons, want. Protip: Google's free services don't have customers, they have users; it's a critical distinction. Search Google's help documetns and you will never find a Gmail account holder referred to as a "customer."

They aggregate all of your personal information, and think personal privacy is quaint and that people should change their name if they want to prevent people from tracking them on the Internet.

But none of this matters, after all: Gmail loads fast! And my Droid syncs my contacts!

They've earned a fair bit of trust, especially compared with Microsoft and Yahoo.

Power corrupts... I've forgotten what absolute power does.

Re:I for one welcome...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is the solution to every problem of the Information Age a benevolent Google dictatorship?

Because we can't live with the malignant dictatorships that control things now?

Busting them all up would be preferable, but nobody has both the will and the spine to do that.

Re:I for one welcome...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Google dictatorship theories are the breaths of fresh air compared to the many Apple based theories.

Re:I for one welcome...

[king neckbeard]

Perhaps because, generally speaking, they are significantly less idiotic about things than their competitors.

Re:I for one welcome...

[frank_adrian314159]

Because, contrary to a lot of people's ideology, competition isn't always an efficient way to fix problems. And as long as the dictator remains benevolent, he can allocate resources in a way that makes sure the problem stays solved.

Re:I for one welcome...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it is. I think the article is more of a "wake up" call.

The tech giants and policy makers are being led around by a bunch of coke-sniffing loud mouths who have a high profile. In the grand-scheme of things - it's the tail wagging the dog.

Policy makers need to remember this: the music/movie industry generates lots of headlines and starlets... but in reality... it offers little of worth to the future of humanity. Stop writing laws that hamper technology and innovators... just to placate worthless blowhards.

Re:I for one welcome...

[jth4242]

Once the Catholic Church had such a lever, and they were also riding the moral high-ground.

Of course, Google isn't anywhere near that, but I still think the reason why Google is liked is "do no evil" and why Microsoft is hated is "FOSS is unamerican and a cancer". In other words, people trust those who talk nicely.

That's why politicians do exactly that.

I trust those who talk plainly. I'm a big boy, I know that no one's "the good guy" - whatever that ought to mean in the first place.

Re:I for one welcome...

[iluvcapra]

And as long as the dictator remains benevolent, he can allocate resources in a way that makes sure the problem stays solved.

I'm for planning for things like health care provision and military expenditure, bridge building, public goods, all that stuff. But this is about deciding how musicians get paid -- that's what record labels do, they're negotiating for on behalf of the rights holders and royalty beneficiaries.

Do we really want to pay artists through a command economy? Are music consumers really so stupid they need to be "protected" from paying high prices for a CD by a paternalistic super-distributor? I mean, if Google owned "all" of the record labels this would be the result, and if you didn't agree to Google's rates your music would not be sold.

This is just a bad solution to a bad problem, and would make Google the biggest benefactor and advocate of copyright extension. Copyright extension is the problem, solve that.

Re:I for one welcome...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can have my ass-Lever 2000, the bar of soap I use for my butt-crack, but I'm afraid it's not really giant.

Re:I for one welcome...

[suomynonAyletamitlU]

Google's reasonably close to trustworthy

"Citation needed"

Citations are required when you're posting something as fact without a verifiable source. Considering my phrasing explicitly included weasel words, it should be clear it wasn't being posted as an encyclopedic fact. If anything, it would go against guidelines relating to hearsay and amateur research, but I don't know enough WP policy--or care--to have a handy one-line quip.

What's more, it's an opinion, and whether or not it's your opinion, it's one lots of people share. Considering the GGP is asking "Why are there so many X?" The reply, "Some of us have the opinion Y, which might explain it" is perfectly valid.

Re:I for one welcome...

[Anonymous Coward]

Possibly because Guido van Rossum is there now?

Re:I for one welcome...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because of all the available Information Age dictators, Google is the least evil.

Re:I for one welcome...

[Yvanhoe]

Google it.

Re:I for one welcome...

[10101001 10101001]

Why is the solution to every problem of the Information Age a benevolent Google dictatorship?

Because so many problems of the Information Age seem to be the product of an anti-Google dictatorship (ie, a monopoly or cartel or whatever withholding information either entirely or requiring fees and going about with the threat or act of lawsuits to enforce such fees being paid).

Re:I for one welcome...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell yeah!

Re:I for one welcome...

[ALeader71]

Why is the solution to every problem of the Information Age a benevolent Google dictatorship?

Because in the 30s, the universal solution was a benevolent Federal dictatorship. The corporations evolved and took control of this dictatorship. Now these new college created corporations came online and are changing things again. The question is, will the old corporations evolve again to take control of the new dictatorship?

Re:I for one welcome...

[Anonymous Coward]

it's not, except to idiots and Google fanboys

the Venn diagram for which shows significant overlap

Re:I for one welcome...

[t4inted]

Power corrupts... I've forgotten what absolute power does.

It corrupts memory, apparently.

Android kills iOS?

[cacoyi]

So what happens to Apple if Google controls the music industry? If iTunes songs cost more than their usual 99c (US) will people still buy them? What Would Apple Do if all those gangster rappers are holding Android phones in their music videos because Google pays for their bling? I wonder if Apple might try to buy the music industry first, they (in my opinion) have enough money and a much larger vested interest. If no one can afford the other to have it the real question becomes: Who will make the first move?

Re:so tight

[TaoPhoenix]

I'll reply to you.

If they just bought the lead labels but promised not to sue, let the indies do as they may, I'd like to see that matchup!

I think Apple would have something to say about it

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Apple would have something to say about it. They have a lot more cash and music is already far more integral to their ecosystem.

This has happened before.

[bored]

Think Sony, made nice hardware for a fair price. Then they started buying "content providers". Turns out the content providers took over and Sony has been going downhill for two decades now.

Google or Amazon buying record labels would ruin Google/Amazon

Re:This has happened before.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point I hadn't considered. Sony's content provider divisions have done some very naughty things that the old Sony would never have done. As a result, many of us are consciously avoiding Sony products, including hardware. I'd hate for more tech companies to go the same route.

Re:This has happened before.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't see google being as stupid as Sony was, and letting content producers take control.

Re:This has happened before.

[sl3xd]

Sony making nice hardware for a fair price?

I'm sorry, but I've never known Sony for either nice hardware, nor fair prices... and that goes back farther than 20 years...

Sony's been about paying a premium for vendor-lockin on substandard hardware at least as long as I can remember (and I remember when the walkman was new...)

Re:This has happened before.

[Anonymous Coward]

The content providers did not take over. Sony Music, Sony Pictures and Sony everything else are very separate - they might as well be different companies. The electronics arm has to negotiate with the music arm for deals just like anyone else. But in no way to the media arms control the other divisions.

Re:This has happened before.

[drinkypoo]

Sony has always made their share of crap but they made predominantly quality hardware (as in, worth what you paid) into the early 80s. I still have some of it. They were still making decent though overpriced receivers in the 90s, I have one of those too. I got it from costco with a full set of cute little speakers which I also still have, even a powered sub about the size of a typical tower PC which is amazingly better than I imagined. I think I paid $500 about 20 years ago, which at the time was highly competitive for a complete 5.1 system with both coax and optical inputs. I have abused it and carted it around through more than a half-dozen moves and it's still here.

The lock-in issue is real, beginning with Betamax, then a lull until memory stick. I propose we refer to Sony's impending failure due to overuse of DRM as "Magicgate"

CIAA

[thestudio_bob]

I don't know why Google, Apple and MicroSoft don't create a consortium to do this, something akin to the RIAA. Maybe like the CIA-A. (Content Industry Association of America). That would alleviate any "monopoly" concerns.

Re:CIAA

[Lehk228]

so to avoid monopoly concerns they should form a trust.

BRILLIANT

Not just Google

[steveha]

Before you post a comment about how the antitrust authorities would never permit Google to buy all the music industry, read TFA or at least this extract:

Of course, the anti-trust authorities around the world would definitely have something to say about this, so it might be necessary to tweak the idea a little.

How about if a consortium of leading Internet companies - Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Baidu, Amazon etc. - jointly bought the entire music industry, and promised to license its content to anyone on a non-discriminatory basis?

steveha

contracts

[Anonymous Coward]

this is something I've noticed when tech companies interact with the arts in general, not just music, they don't get why objects (artists) get different contracts, different rates, different conditions per object (artist). To them, it makes things messy, and doesn't compute with their nicely ordered databases. They would, honestly prefer it if everyone got the same contract, and the same terms, and the same rates etc. This multitude of bespoke contracts, throughout the ages, makes deals damned tricky to do. And slow, and each one has to be negotiated with: tech company of the month with hot idea of the moment, and all those artists, and their managers, etc.

This isn't some mea culpa for the music biz, I did my time there and it wasn't pretty, but it's how it is for a number of reasons: greed of execs is one, vanity of artists, artifice of managers is a significant another. My experience with another tech company in music is that they have little patience for the A side of A&R, they just want the platitudes and the sales, no people management duties please.

However, you're dealing with people a lot of the time, and I honestly don't think these tech companies want to admit that. They just want entries in a db, and to move on to the next problem that will help them sell their hardware||software.

It wouldn't work

[atari2600a]

It would get caught up in antitrust suits faster that you can say 'It'll be caught up in antitrust suits', & I'm pretty sure someone would shot in the whole mess too. Don't worry, it's not like they where sticking around anyways; it won't be long now! 3

A Better Idea...

[Frosty Piss]

You think there are rumblings about monopolistic practices now, imagine if the owned the whole music industry.

Yes, but they could certainly buy significant interests in publicly traded music companies... They need not buy the whole thing to influence corporate policy.

It makes sense

[roc97007]

This actually makes a lot of sense. Consider.

Either Google music service can make money (ad supported or whatever) or not. Either they're making a profit on the backs of the music industry, stealing the very food from Howard Stringer's grandchildren, or they're not. If not, Google should be able to own the entire industry and make money from it.

Alternately, they could buy the music industry, dissolve the companies, and put the entire catalog on their servers. New content would then come from much smaller, independent producers.

Free the Bands from the RIAA

[BuckaBooBob]

Why not just approach all bands popular that have due contracts and sign them and start their own less restrictive label and bring change to the industry...

This will cause the Music Industry to Panic and make bands sign very long term contracts with very restrictive conditions which will make bands turn away from any label associated with the RIAA..

Once Google has success things will begin to change... and its highly likely Googles success will also been seen by artists unlike what goes on with the RIAA labels where artists see is the short end of the stick of success..

(Is that coffee I smell... I must be dreaming)

Re:Free the Bands from the RIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

(Is that coffee I smell... I must be dreaming)

Burnt toast . . . you are having a stroke.

Re:Free the Bands from the RIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

Buying is better, because then you own all the rights to previous songs. If they just get artists as their contracts expires they own none of the previous art.

With all of its power

[future assassin]

Google should go scouting for GOOD music on their own. Plenty of music available for free like on http://www.ektoplazm.com/ I'm sure those artists would be more then happy to be offered distribution by Google and getting paid properly by the G-Lable

Re:With all of its power

[king neckbeard]

The concern for google is getting the major labels to quit ruining things.

That is what the labels are dreaming for.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The record labels are stuck with a business model that is fast losing ground and along with that their market valuation is plunging. In a decade, forget Google, you or I can buy it with the nickels and dimes we find in sofa cushions. Already serious people have dumped the stock, and it is owned by the lawyer groups and the music equivalents of patent trolls. They are already dreaming, they would be able to sue Google and force it buy it from them.

Re:That is what the labels are dreaming for.

[Miaomiao]

New music isn't the problem, it's that they're sitting on, basically, all music from the past century. Recording (compared to say, literature) is a new industry, and we don't have that much public domain to draw on.

We have roughly 75 years of public domain (mid 1850~1925 roughly) for recorded music. Before that everything is based more around performance art, as in you make your own, instead of you going out, and listening to a specific person perform, mainly the original artist. As a result, the RIAA sits on about half of the medium. This will become less significant over time of course, but we still have a long way before their chunk isn't "significant". Assuming they keep extending copyright, which has now been set solidly at "whenever steamboat willy came out".

Writing, by contrast, has thousands of years of public domain. And while we have some written music, even that doesn't go back as far, since we only have roughly 400 years worth of music. Offering little variety in comparison to ancient history and myth. Even considering it that way, the recording industry has a strangle hold on a quarter of the music we have in human collective memory, as far as spans of time.

They should buy the patent trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy up the MPEG LA and Thompson and make all their patents royaty free forever. Then buy flash from adobe and make it open source. That way more innovation can flourish and real talent will have easier barriers to entry.

Better Yet -

[ChronoFish]

Buy each in series....

For each label do the following:

Buy label, replace management, place Google employee's on the board of directors, spin off label.

Google doesn't have to own them all simultaneously. They just need to get rid of the industry management and replace them with people who are friendly to the customers and search engines of the world. Google could hold a major stake in each company - but keep the % low enough not to warrant a fed investigation.

-CF

EMI is for sale.

[Animats]

EMI is for sale, as of three days ago. They're owned by Citicorp, the bank. A venture capital firm defaulted on their debt, and Citicorp ended up with EMI. Citicorp wants to unload that unwanted asset for cash.

There was talk of Warner buying EMI, but Warner has financing problems of their own. Either Google or Apple could easily pick up EMI right now.

Re:EMI is for sale.

[jumpingfred]

Warner is also now for sale. The asking price for EMI is 2 billion and Warner 3 billion.

Re:EMI is for sale.

[hedronist]

Either Google or Apple could easily pick up EMI right now.

Are you saying that they could pick up their songs ... for a song?

Re:EMI is for sale.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think Apple can actually buy into the music industry like that. It would be another violation of the trademark agreement they have with Apple Corps if I'm informed correctly. And unlike iTunes I don't think Apple Corps will take it on well when Apple actually becomes a label or at least a label owner.

Re:EMI is for sale.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is pocket change for Google or Apple.

Re:EMI is for sale.

[tyrione]

Warner is also now for sale. The asking price for EMI is 2 billion and Warner 3 billion.

Like hell the price is 2 and 3 billion. The price will include the massive Debt of each entity.

Citigroup won control of EMI in February after Hands' venture capital firm Terra Firma could no longer support its debt. The US bank, which never intended to be a long-term owner of EMI, immediately wrote off £2.2bn from the 114-year-old company's borrowings

Writing off 2.2 Billion pounds is not selling unit for 2.2 billion pounds.

http://www.emimusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/MCL_AR_09101.pdf

EMI still faces considerable financial challenges. The Group has £3,038 million of debt outstanding that falls due for repayment between 2014 and 2017.

By the way, Google has a Total debts to assets ratio of 6:1. Citi Group's ratio is: 32.46 : 1. I can see why Citi wants to get rid of it. It needs to lower that in a hurry.

Either way you slice it, the price will be much higher than Google wants to chew off, for just a slice of the Music Industry. In fact, they don't want to own any of it. They want the sole right to distribute it with their Ad Model. That's it.

Re:EMI is for sale.

[Anonymous Coward]

Warner is also now for sale. The asking price for EMI is 2 billion and Warner 3 billion.

Hey! Go visit http://HelpMeBuyTheBigLabels.fake and click on the PayPal Donate button! I will release EVERYTHING under the Creative Commons license!

Do you think the government would intervene?

Re:EMI is for sale.

[martin-boundary]

Excellent! If we wait a couple of years more, that price will drop nicely!

Re:EMI is for sale.

[jez9999]

Warner is also now for sale. The asking price for EMI is 2 billion and Warner 3 billion.

See?? If only it weren't for all that piracy, these poor people would still be in thriving business.

Re:Wouldn't it be more effective to buy the US Gov

[ackthpt]

I think that the music industry is already grossly overvalued and would not be a wise investment.
The US Government on the other hand that would be a valuable investment if they could just find a way to buy them off in bulk.
Lets do the math.
1 Prez, 1 VP, Chief of Staff, Secretary of state ect, Cabinet lets round that to 65 for ease
100 Senators
435 House of Rep
As of January 2009, a total of 3,200 Fed Judges
So we have about 4,000 monkeys to buy. Per year
Average salary is probably around 180k. So we will offer them 10x the amount per year or 1.8 Million per worker.
For only 7.2 Billion per year I think I could effectively own the entire federal government.
I think google can swing that.

I think the Oil Industry has already done it. Now that GWB is out, does anyone see taxing Big Oil for Windfall Profits?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Re:What's in it for them?

[TaoPhoenix]

Nah,

Google is all about content for ads. The labels are all stuck in last century and DRM. Let Google buy them all and share tunes for ads!!

Re:Wouldn't it be more effective to buy the US Gov

[SixAndFiftyThree]

And what does the gov't produce that a teenager would want to listen to?

Warner

[way2trivial]

As a publicly traded company,
at 7.50 a share, it can be had for just a bit more than 1.1 billion dollars... and there is no need for them to 'approve' it

Re:Warner

[iluvcapra]

Uh, people own those shares, it isn't like they just hand them over to whoever offers money that moment. Any attempt to purchase would drive up the price of the shares; if holding your shares in the face of the proxy fight would eventually mean you'd be converted to a Google shareholder, the price could be driven up significantly.

Re:Warner

[mysidia]

at 7.50 a share, it can be had for just a bit more than 1.1 billion dollars... and there is no need for them to 'approve' it

Time warner has a market cap of 39 billion dollars. For Google to buy them outright, they would have to offer a premium of 5 - 6x that.

If Google tried to make a run on their stock, by buying from the billion+ outstanding shares, they'd drive the price up, and they need at least 51% of the voting shares in existence to execute a hostile takeover.

Re:Warner

[protektor]

Actually that is incorrect. Ideally you would prefer to have 51%, but in reality you rarely need to actually own 51% of the stock to do a "hostile takeover". Remember that larger companies have large blocks of stocks controlled by investment groups. So if you get a number of them on your side the amount needed begins to go way down. Most companies do not actually answer to mom and pop who have the stock in their retirement funds. The companies answer to those huge investment groups who manage all those funds.

I have read about hostile takeovers that have been done with as little as 10% but it seems that 15-25% is more common unless your going to slice up the company and sell it off piecemeal. How much you need depends on exactly what you intend to force the company to do. Although it seems these days more and more companies are putting a "poison pill" article in the corporation to help stop most of these types of things.

Re:Warner

[mysidia]

Although it seems these days more and more companies are putting a "poison pill" article in the corporation to help stop most of these types of things.

So covertly acquire a controlling interest through subsidiaries and replace the board with a board whose first order of business will be to take some votes and cancel all that poison pill business.

How about...

[C10H14N2]

You just stop consuming their products by any means. It really is not that hard.

why reward their ass-hat behavior?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Google acquires them, you can bet the douche bag executives will make out like bandits. Why reward their ass-hat behavior by buying them, and allowing them to live so they can move into other industries?

Instead, Google should channel (portion of) that money to hiring contract killers and just bump off those ass-hats, their lawyers, and their congress-critters. That way, Google would have done the world a great service by ridding it of a bunch of ass-hat sociopaths, and the incident would serves as a warning to all the future would-be ass-hat sociopaths.

Of course, THIS IS STRICTLY HYPOTHETICAL, so don't try this at home kids...

"..should just buy the major record labels" NO

[mrflash818]

Google should create _an_alternative_ for bands to sign-up to, so they _do_not_have_to_ go through record labels at all.

My thought: youtube-ish or iTunes-ish where the consumer purchases and downloads songs, per song, and the band/artist gets the payments directly from google.

Audited by a neutral 3rd party too.

That would satisfy my opinion of "doing no evil" ;D

Re:"..should just buy the major record labels" NO

[anon mouse-cow-aard]

what's the big deal, the artists just set up a .com site with a shopping cart, and use the current youtube. http://www.youtube.com/user/PomplamooseMusic It's not that big a deal.

Crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

GOOD IDEA.
Buy the bloody suckers. They're no good for anyone. Corrupt non-evolved entities that live off others' work.

Something I always wondered

[rabtech]

I always wondered why companies like Microsoft and Intel gave a crap about DRM or what the movie studios/music industry wanted. They are much bigger and have a lot more cash on hand.

It is obvious why Sony cripples all their products - because they are also a studio. But if you adopt a different model - one of selling online services or hardware, the content just becomes a value-add. Then you can enable whatever you want and tell the other studios to get on board or go to hell. On-demand, DVD, etc just needs to cover your costs.

Re:Wouldn't it be more effective to buy the US Gov

[Anonymous Coward]

"Kinky sex makes the world go 'round" by the Dead Kennedys, on the album "Give me Convenience or Give me Death".
Made me cry when I heard it.
Pay close attention to the lyrics -- this song is from 1987!!!. Think about it..

No need to buy, they can create whatever they want

[UBfusion]

Google doesn't really have to buy any major music label. They could just buy a small music label like Arc that produced a viral video (Roberta Black's 'Friday'). This could serve as a jumpstart move signaling that Google is now into music production, and everybody can become a Madonna or a Springsteen. Then using their powers they could easily make the label grow and become as big as e.g. Sony BMG within less than 5 years.

This scenario is realistic because Google can not just control, but also define the whole hits/toplist/ system. Additional advantages would be:
- no need to produce TV shows to reveal America's next "talent", they have their own infinite TV
- no need for music recording studios, they could just accept multitrack master audio material and video and just polish it a bit.
- no messing with cd production factories, it all would be a vertical digital business
- no publicity costs: no launch parties, no paying/bribing music magazines and radio/TV stations, no need to find web advertisers etc.
- no damages when the artists' cycle is over: nothing would have been lost, it was all zeroes and ones in the first place.

The weak link to this business model is piracy: Ironically, Google results would lead first to pirated copies rather than to their own original content for purchase. Unless of course they decide to tweak their own search algorithms to avoid this (which reminds me that the fact they are reluctant to do so is already an indirect attack to the music industry: they both deny to defend them and get their advertisement money!).

The sad thing is that such a Google move would signal the total decline of quality in music - in the best case it would be only as good as the quality of their search results.

Sony too

[__aazsst3756]

While their at it... buy Sony, break it up, and sell of the pieces!!! (Note - stated in jest, did not actually check market caps, cash etc. to see if even possible).

Apple would be a perfect fit for EMI

[tepples]

Either Google or Apple could easily pick up EMI right now.

Apple would be a perfect fit. EMI's subsidiary Capitol distributes the Beatles' label Apple Records.

Worry about the movie and book industries instead

[200_success]

The music industry has already lost. They lost it in 1979 when the compact disc was released. At the time, there were no PCs, 650 MB was a huge amount of data that couldn't be stored cheaply by other means, producing a CD required a factory, and strong encryption was hardly possible to implement in a consumer-grade CD player. As soon as the CD-R was invented, it was possible for average users to make cheap lossless copies. When the Internet became popular, all modern music was already digitized; sharing it was just a trivial matter of compression and hosting. You might argue that the current legal framework lets the music industry inflate their prices, but really, it's hard to beat the convenience of being able to download almost any commercially available piece of music imaginable, DRM-free, for around $1 per track. The music industry was the first to be digitized on a large scale, even before the movie and book industries, and are in a relatively weak position as a result.

The movie / TV industry was lucky to have the DVD come out after all those technological innovations, and learned from the music industry's misfortune. Today, the video market is so consumer-unfriendly that one could reasonably argue that piracy gives you a better product with fewer hassles. (If you pirate music, though, you're just a cheapskate.) For example, just try to purchase a movie without DRM, region coding, or unskippable segments. Try to purchase computer or video equipment without Macrovision, region coding, or HDCP. We don't even have a mainstream patent-free video codec. It's all those technological encumbrances that make the movie industry an even greater threat to the future of computing and media consumption than the audio industry ever was.

Surprisingly, the e-book industry is even more technologically backward than the movie industry. In addition to DRM, it also suffers from marketplace fragmentation. The display technology is new, and the handful of hardware manufacturers are as eager to control the distribution mechanism as the content publishers. The stakes are higher, too. If the music and movie industries manage to strangle themselves, we mainly lose a corpus of entertainment. If books are replaced by specialized gadgets with uncopyable, unlendable, unprintable, and remotely erasable e-books, that would be a serious step backwards for humanity.

Re:Wouldn't it be more effective to buy the US Gov

[the eric conspiracy]

I doubt if it would work. It's pretty obvious that the Banking Industry bought up all the governments around the time of the Norman Conquest or so. Since the banks control all the money, you aren't going to be able to buy anything they don't want you to.

I can't wait for ads between every track

[HockeyPuck]

the lyrics are scraped and you get "targeted ads"

It would be like broadcast TV during primetime... every 5minutes you'd get 3minutes of ads...

Like broadcast TV/radio, the programming is free but it's ad supported... unless you pay google for one of their premium channels which only has ads after the 2hr programming block.

Fuck off google...

CC-BY-SA

[kale77in]

No, Google or Apple or anyone should buy the music industry and release it's property under a Creative Commons license whenever any work attains the age of say 14 years. Anyone can start new record labels, but they'd have to create something of value to compete rather than simply lobbying for more money from the work of their predecessors. In this scenario the acting company isn't anticompetitive, because they weren't competing with anyone. The advantage they gain, apart from enough karma to cover doing at least a bit of other evil, and shutting down a source of sheer harassment, is being in the best position to provide the best access to that resource.

New acts? Solves itself: Self promotion.

[reiisi]

Google sites is half-way there.

Let the new acts promote themselves on Google's infrastructure.

Re:New acts? Solves itself: Self promotion.

[iluvcapra]

"Thank you, you've been incredible tonight! Check out our band's site! The address is double-u double-u double-u dot myspace dot com slash ..."

Re:New acts? Solves itself: Self promotion.

[TubeSteak]

"Thank you, you've been incredible tonight! Check out our band's site! The address is double-u double-u double-u dot myspace dot com slash ..."

"Thank you, you've been incredible tonight! Check out our band's site! Google Keyword: Hangover Punch
Everything old is new again

Re:New acts? Solves itself: Self promotion.

[Anonymous Coward]

You got a point. How many of us Chrome users actually type in a URL anymore?

It could afford them?

[tyrione]

What planet are you on? No way in hell could they afford SONY let alone Time Warner or EMI, not to mention the entire industry.

Re:It could afford them?

[Daetrin]

Google's _profit_ in 2010 was over $8 billion. The Warner Music Group was sold for $2.6 billion in 2004. EMI is currently up for sale and is also valued at about $3 billion. (Apparently WMG hasn't gone up in value much since 2004, what a shocker.) So in theory, assuming WMG could be convinced to sell, Google could pick them both up with just the profits from a single year. Buying the entire industry would probably take up a couple years worth of profits, but Google wouldn't actually want to buy all of them anyways due to anti-trust issues.

Good investment

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the trillions that will be due from the Limewire case!

and while they're at it....

[conark]

buy up the movie, tv and other publication industries too. either that or just buy up the law firms that represent those industries, create some impossible to earn license for people to practice law in that area then fire everyone from those industries.

You drank the kool-aid?

[reiisi]

Everything I've seen so far from their foundations looks to be both self-serving and more likely to contribute to the real problems.

One thing we have got to quit doing is trying to just throw money at every problem.

(Giving time always works better.)

Re:You drank the kool-aid?

[pugugly]

I'm too lazy to cite the studies, but unless you're giving time in an area of your particular expertise, Typically giving money so they can hire the people with the expertise they actually need works better.

The exception is of course unskilled labor, but frankly I'm lazy and even that is something I'd rather do something I'm good at and tithe a fraction so they can hire unskilled labor - that's better for me *and* them.

Economics rules - {G}

Pug

Re:You drank the kool-aid?

[Eivind]

Unskilled labour is only valid if you're willing to give the same value. Thus if you're from a richer area than the recipient, then giving the money is almost certainly going to be more efficient.

If I work for an hour in rich Norway, and donate what I earn towards unskilled labor in some poor part of the world, they're likely to get a weeks work out of it. Simply because the value of my work in Norway, is so much higher than the value of an unskilled labourer in a poor part of the world.

I earn aproximately $62/hour, and $10/day would be a good wage for an unskilled labourer in many poor parts of the world.

You might be joking

[Weaselmancer]

Then again, you might be brilliant. That's actually a fantastic idea.

Sure beats having the labels rewrite laws to do their thing. If Google made some client that advertised at you while you downloaded music for free it would make them a mint, artists would get paid, and consumers would get their music without funding an industry that is bent on removing their rights.

I love this idea. Go Google GO!

Re:You might be joking

[pspahn]

I really have no idea what I'm talking about here. FYI.

That said, I wonder if there is some threshold we might cross at some point when an elaborate house of cards, built with all of these free ad supported services, comes crashing down on everyone

I like the idea of some things being free and supported by ads, but it seems like a kind of feedback loop in a way. Do we need to question, how many free services are too many?

Re:You might be joking

[Riceballsan]

it is true, in the event that everything is free and ad supported, we'd run out of things to advertise. Obviously it can't go to infiniti, Free music paid for by an ad for free e-mail, the e-mail can be paid for by a free antivirus, that is paid for by it's free _____ etc etc... Only so many levels before it becomes infinant, of course sooner or later that chain can reach actual physical items that people are willing to pay for and can't duplicate, but more likely the chain tends to get broken by trojan horses identity thieves etc...

Re:You might be joking

[pspahn]

but more likely the chain tends to get broken by trojan horses identity thieves etc...

Darwin 2.0?

Re:You might be joking

[blackest_k]

'Free Services' are all about delivering an audience. They are not really free, the costs are carried by the advertisers who gain customers who buy stuff from them and thus increase the revenues and profits of the company that advertises.

If you compare with advertising fliers getting 2,000 fliers printed might cost 13 cents a flier so $260 is invested in the fliers + the cost of delivering them maybe $50 or so to get them dropped in mail boxes. If you generate 50% profit on your sales (a bit optimistic maybe) then you need to sell $620 worth of kit to break even. If average sales are $30 per customer per visit then 25 sales will about cover the cost of advertising after that its increased profits. You need about 1.25% return to break even.

Compared to advertising with google its pretty expensive to get those sales. $310 would buy you the eyes of lets say 200,000 people and if 0.1% are interested that would be 200 new customers on an average spend of $30 making $6,000 gross sales and maybe $3,000 in increased profits if they only come to you once.

In reality each new person you introduce to your business will likely bring you much more than $15 profit as they are going to tell their friends and family.

The only problem with online advertising is it only hits a fraction of the potential market for your products. In my own area a good proportion of sales will come from people over the age of sixty who will not be online and seeing my ads, so to draw them fliers are a more appropriate advertising medium.

So now I hope you can see that free services are not built on a house of cards but have a very real cost and a genuine return for the advertisers that support them.

It is a bit tricky to keep ad costs low with google, but if you can keep bounce low then google will also keep the click cost down too. Linking to related sites will help with that, you need to ideally move your customers through your site and on to anywhere else but google.

well thats my take on it.

Re:You might be joking

[DrKnark]

You mean like Spotify? It is almost exactly what you describe and has been around since 2006. It's not available outside of Europe yet though, guess there are some "legal" issues there.

However, the ad financed part of it (there are adfree premium subscriptions with higher quality) has had a hard time raking in enough money for artists to consider it worthwhile, and some have pulled their music from it. Metallica most notably.

I do think that the Spotify model in some form will become very widespread however.

Re:You might be joking

[St.Creed]

That model (good music with ads) is already being pioneered by Spotify, but they're under huge pressure now and just caved in (see yesterday's news on Slashdot). Google would be unlikely to have to cave in, would have a HUGE reach from the start, and could effectively force the labels to agree or die.

Re:You might be joking

[St.Creed]

I'm reminded of the Charles Stross story, Accelerando (link: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html). Great novel.

Misread

[Torodung]

I misread this as "Why Google Should Bury the Music Industry," though I'm not sure there's a functional difference when you think through the consequences. Everything the labels do, which is 100% promotion for way too much overhead, Google could do cheaper, for less overhead, and give artists an actual fair shake.

If they do, though, I want them broken up into separate competing units. Google becoming everything is a real problem, whether they're evil or not.

Fight fire with fire?

[reiisi]

Neither busting them up through the courts nor buying them out is going to solve the underlying problems.

Finally, Apple on Apple?

[reiisi]

That would be a great pre-emptory move to prevent the next round of negotiations between the record label and the electronics company on the use of the trademark.

Maybe. On the other hand, it could induce some serious internal squabbling about artistic expression.

GAME: Google Apple Microsoft Entertainment

[Anonymous Coward]

You just lost it.

Who is Apple Corps' parent company?

[reiisi]

Hmm. Apple could own EMI (which I understand is the parent company of the company that at least distributes Apple label.).

Sony owns Sony.

Google could buy Warner.

Who is left for Microsoft and Oracle to buy?

Sounds like some real fun in the works.

Re:Who is Apple Corps' parent company?

[tepples]

Who is left for Microsoft and Oracle to buy?

Universal Music Group, a Vivendi company.

Yeah. Throwing money at the problem always works.

[reiisi]

This is just another example of the natural human tendency to try to solve problems by throwing money at them.

I think I'd rather see a different course tried.

Government will eventually fall to Google

[neiras]

Screw the music industry. Maybe it's time for Google to displace government once and for all.

If Google went and found some backwards, impoverished nation and offered it Google Meritocracy(tm), held a plebiscite, replaced the government, designed a new constitution, and proceeded to make it a shining example of open governance for and by the people, you'd better believe that many small, poor places would be beating a path to their door. And if they demonstrated investment in the people (health care! education! child care! public infrastructure! food supply! money supply!) other, richer nations might start to demand plebiscites.

Imagine the integration! Google would get its own currency, the right to have its own military, and the chance to make some serious waves in the way nations do business with each other. Even if the first country they took over didn't have much in the way of resources, people are the best investment.

Tell people "We are offering free, high quality education. Pick your specialty and go. Once you attain your degree (here or elsewhere) AND a trade certificate, you will gain the right to vote and will pay no personal income tax in your country for the rest of your life. While you are in school, we will provide you with living space if you need it, healthy food, and access to all the tools you need - as long as you are progressing in your studies."

Google the corporation would have to make their governmental services so transparent that no one could accuse them of manipulating their nation for corporate gain. They would make their money on infrastructure services and audits, fraud detection etc.

This would be a multi-generation plan. Maybe we'd end up with something like Orson Scott Card's Free Peoples of Earth, or Star Trek's Federation. As countries joined the GoogleFed and became nothing but administrative units suddenly there would be millions of well-educated and enlightened folk with practical trades in hand, ready to contribute and build.

Totally plausible! Right? RIGHT? :)

Google v Apple for EMI publishing rights

[Anonymous Coward]

From January:

Apple; Should it Buy EMI?
http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2011/apple-EMI.htm

Re:Wouldn't it be more effective to buy the US Gov

[dbIII]

You rent them by the hour.
A President is expensive. The only one we have on public record due to documents being released over time is Ford who was paid by Saharto in Indonesia to look the other way over the East Timor invasion, to declare that the place was full of communists and to put pressure on Australia, Portugal and ultimately the UN on the matter. It's funny how a few million turns the capitalistic democratic regime you were praising one day into communists the next.
Argentina tried a similar thing with the Falkland Islands invasion but could probably only afford Wineburger so the US backing of Argentina in that conflict eventually collapsed.
Take a look at the Charlie Wilson page on wikipedia if you want a really blatant example of a Senator for sale prepared to hire out the US military to the highest bidder so long as they don't grope his wife.

Share price would skyrock

[angel'o'sphere]

If google would start to buy lables, it could afford to buy the forst one, and the second one and then the prices for the remaining lables would skyrock.

However your idee is cool, lets derive from it: google could invest into small lables.

Have a social site centered around music (perhaps movies later) which is driven by content of the lables affiliated with google.

If the big lables want to participate they have to found a "Sonny on Google Inc" sub label and sell half of it to google. The have to transfer the rights to the stuff they want to publish to that sublabel.

And perhaps having an extra contract in case something goes wrong, that the sub label is not liable for infringement but the holding company. (On many music pieces / songs / interpretations on old media, no one really knows who has the rights, but the lables just sell that until they get sued and trouble is handled "internaly")

angel'o'sphere

Don't even need to buy the whole company

[Leemeng]

That's an intriguing idea, and they wouldn't even have to buy the whole company. Plus, they could just use their personal money, and not Google's.

For instance, Vivendi, the parent company of Universal (the largest record label) has a market cap of $25.1 bil; 10% of that is "only" $250 mil. Warner Music has a market cap of only $1.1 bil.

Here's how I'd do it:
1) Buy a 10% stake in the "big four" labels right now.
2) Every month, for the next two years, buy another %1 stake in the labels.
3) Do not negotiate or meet with the labels at all.
4) Attend all shareholder meetings at the labels, but remain silent.

They'll eventually get the message.

Re:so tight

[aztracker1]

I don't think it would be possible for them to buy out the majors... I don't think Sony would sell for starters.

Wouldn't change a thing

[mr100percent]

Despite Google's do-gooder philosophy, the shareholders are not going to allow google to modify the record labels' policies. Do you think if Google suddenly owned a record company that company would cease all DRM? Not if the shareholders get wind of it, you're obligated to grow profits not shrink them.

Re:Wouldn't change a thing

[yuhong]

Luckily, thanks to dual-class stock, this can't happen.

Re:Wouldn't change a thing

[king neckbeard]

You aren't thinking of Google as a whole. Buying the labels and sinking them will bring in more profits for Google's other divisions than running the labels as is. That's the whole point in buying them: it's cheaper to buy them and destroy them than to deal with the mess they make.

Re:Wouldn't change a thing

[mr100percent]

The music industry generated $27.5 billion in 2008. Do you think Google can top that if they destroyed them? If not, the companies' shareholders won't put up with it.

I like the idea, but corporations are driven by profit, not 'the right thing'.

Re:Wouldn't change a thing

[king neckbeard]

In this case, profit and 'the right thing' would be in line. With an acquisition, what the record company does goes from 'What makes the most profit for EMI' to 'What makes the most profit for EMI and Google.' Google is the bigger division by far, so EMI quits trying to ruin the internet.

Re:Wouldn't change a thing

[mr100percent]

I don't think google buying up the record labels and moving them to a DRM-free online business will actually make more money overall. EMI makes its money via sales of physical albums and online downloads via stores like iTunes and Amazon. If google can snatch up EMI, force them to change their business policies and somehow Google+EMI makes more revenue than before, then it will go forward with the shareholders. If Google buys up EMI and cripples their profits so google can make more profit in Google Music, then G.M. will have to make a lot more profit than Google+EMI otherwise the shareholders will put a stop to it. You can't just go buying up publicly-held companies and run them into the ground, the shareholders have voting power over it.

Re:Wouldn't change a thing

[king neckbeard]

Profit from music has nothing to do with why Google would do this. Someone said EMI's asking price is $2 Billion. If Google buys EMI and lets them fall apart, then it costs cost them $2 billion, but if EMI not messing things up for Google results in Google making $10 billion more in advertising revenue over the next 5 years, then it's profitable for Google to do this even if they completely eat the cost of the acquisition.

Better Idea

[jcwayne]

Why not just buy Congress? It would solve many more problems and at a cheaper price.

Re:Wouldn't it be more effective to buy the US Gov

[stretch0611]

Unfortunately, there is no set price for our elected officials; we all know they are each sold to the highest bidder. Even google does not have enough money to get more than a few minutes of time from small handful.

As proof, here is what congress really thinks of google: As a shakedown target.
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-reason-dc-wants-to-hold-google-hearings-2011-3

Oh good ...

[BenBoy]

Splendid idea. Because the music industry is definitely not too concentrated already ...

Build a future, don't buy the past

[swb]

The problem with buying the labels is that you have to kind of keep running them labels as they are now, at least in the near term. Artists have contracts with them, employees have contracts with them -- you can't just say "I own this and it's all different today." And Google will find it HARD to run the business differently, especially negotiating with $rising_stars who want "the same deal $current_star got, only more".

The main problem with buying the labels is that after some period of N years (5? 10?) the artists they have will be as uninteresting and essentially non-salable as Peaches and Herb, Christopher Cross and many other "stars" that sold a bunch of records and then disappeared. Tastes and trends will change.

What Google needs to do instead is think long and hard about what's broken in the music industry -- it goes way beyond simply suing some ignorant single mother for $10 million dollars because she ran limewire -- and invent a label that does it differently top to bottom to begin with -- treats talent better, treats fans better, and "gets" the internet better.

This way they start with a stable of musicians philosophically aligned with them and chances are pretty good they will be able to attract other musicians (eg, Radiohead), too.

Just launch a music payment service.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been downloading free music -- really free as in non-paid _and_ legal. Some of the songs are so cool it hurts.

Just to cite a few: Aluco, Amplifico, Blackmore's Knight, Carlos Saura, Daniel Chappell, Holly Kirby, Josh Wooward, Raagapella, The Crooked Fiddle Band and ...

Google is present in many countries, they could get e.g. my money and make sure performers get something... either as donation or a full price no-DRM song. Just an idea, maybe not the best, but that's my 2.

Re:Just launch a music payment service.

[Anonymous Coward]

/. swallowed a Russian name: Aleksyei Rybnikov.

This is so idiotic: letting Politics make you dumb...

Re:Wouldn't it be more effective to buy the US Gov

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is run by the government.
http://www.infowars.com/facebook-google-are-cia-fronts/
http://www.infowars.com/group-calls-for-hearings-into-googles-ties-to-cia-and-nsa/

And besides the USA is already a full fledged corporation.
http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/us_corporation.htm
http://www.abodia.com/2/United-States-is-a-corporation.htm

So Google already owns the US and the US already owns Google. And we can see how that relationship is making this country a lot better. Maybe we should just get up off our bums and say no to this Corporate Government talk. And put it back together the way it was meant to be "For the people, by the people".
V for Victory

One Word...

[Lord of the Fries]

...

Advertisements

That's what Google's business is. If Google owned the music industry, music artists might go the same way of the bloggers, news sites, and other media entity. Artists could get promoted more if they mention certain products. Listeners would get free music, if you're willing to watch targeted ads.

Re:Wouldn't it be more effective to buy the US Gov

[artor3]

Don't be naive. That may work on some people, but a lot of people in government are already millionaires in their own right - often because they've already been bought.

skynet...

[Spanishinvader]

Related Story: Google becomes self-aware...

Re:Wouldn't it be more effective to buy the US Gov

[Anonymous Coward]

That might pay for their on-paper salaries, but it is unlikely to compete with their other existing kickbacks. Or did you really think politicians at that level only had one source of income?

your song is brought to you by....

[Anonymous Coward]

"Thank you for using Google Tunes(TM), your free song will start playing but before it does, did you know you can save 15% of more by switching your car insurance to GEICO? It pays to save, visit g-e-i-c-o.com to get started." *music starts* S-S-S-S & M-M oohhhouohhh~

Channeling a bit of Andrew Carnegie?

[KingAlanI]

Andrew Carnegie seems to be a prime example of that archetype.

credit unions

[KingAlanI]

credit unions come off very much like nonprofit banks.

Some thoughts

[KingAlanI]

Seems Google could avoid some antitrust issues if they buy only some of the Big Four.
EMI and Warner are standalone companies; Universal Music Group and Sony Music are subsidiaries that the parent companies may or may not be willing to divest, and same applies for any of them, and would any of them divest components of their music business?
Of course, that doesn't get into buying smaller labels, or starting their own operation, etc.

It would shake up a concentrated industry, that's for sure.

Re:Worry about the movie and book industries inste

[yuhong]

It doesn't help that they decided to make AACS mandatory for replicated Blu-Ray, unlike HD DVD which can be DRM-free.

The plan

[Legion303]

1. Buy labels.
2. Hang current executive boards by the neck until dead. (Or fire them, whatevs.)
3. Voluntarily release all copyrights back to the original artists.
4. ???
5. PROFIT

Re:The plan

[sl3xd]

I think a more practical idea.

1.) Wait. The current trajectory of the music labels is hopeless unless somebody gets a clue. I doubt it will happen.
2.) Laugh at their utter ineptness (loudly, publicly, and constantly, to increase the humiliation), which will:
3.) Drive their stock prices even lower, as investors learn they really are clueless, with no plan for the present, let alone for the future. Turning back the clock isn't an option, and it's not a good business plan.
4.) Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. can pick up the pieces at fire sale prices.
5.) Those who don't want to be evil will give the copyrights back to the musicians.
6.) Walk away and let the Musicians figure out what's best for them.

I don't think paying for recordings is going away - there's value being able to go to Amazon, iTunes, etc. and buy your music from a nice service, with fast downloads, easy/trustworthy payment, and the ability to suggest other music you may like as well...

Frankly, I don't think it'll be too long until anything that's DRM'd will follow suit: there's a fundamental flaw to the idea that you can keep your treasure chest locked when you give the chest and the key to a mob. It's not like DVD's and Blu-ray discs can't be ripped...

Cat got your tongue?

[MindPhlux]

you're missing the point. 'the record industry' qua 'entertainment promoting' is dead. it's now an unsustainable model that really noone has any interest in following. disagree? can think of a contrary example? the artist you likely have in mind is being driven by the current record industry.

google doesn't need to promote any artist - artists do that themselves. all google needs to do to close down an aging and broken shop is to offer a better distribution model, and the rest will fall into place.

Instead of "buying"...

[Taco Cowboy]

Instead of "buying", which would result in Google paying those sons-of-bitches loads of money, Google should provide the true artists - the singer-song-writers, for example - a "place" where they can interact with their fans world-wide, without restriction.

The "Pay-per-view" "Pay-per-hear" business concept is obsolete, and Google ought to use its cloud (no pun intended) to lay that old dog down.

Re:Instead of "buying"...

[RobDude]

It doesn't work.

It's wonderful idea - providing a place where anyone can create and share. But here is the thing; the vast majority of us are very social creatures. We want to 'fit in'. Even if we want to be different from the mainstream; we strive to fit into our well defined, conforming social circle (see goth kids).

People don't want to just listen to music. They want to listen to the *same* music as their friends. They want to talk about the band. The little girls all want to crush on the same boy band members. The high school kids want to go to a show and see NAME_OF_BAND_PEOPLE_KNOW.

When confronted with 1,000 really amazing songs, people as a whole, are going to latch onto a handful, declare it the best, mock people who don't like their choice, and then latter, declare that those handful of songs are 'old and busted'. The nature of how we, as a people, enjoy things means we're always going to seek out ways to establish a few 'groups' we choose to be apart of. Music is very strongly associated with identity (for reasons I don't understand). This is why a song that was literally topping the charts last year is never played this year.

The same is true of fashion.

Anyway, you'll never have a utopia where people create great music and other people enjoy it without the confines of a media label. Sure, you can remove the media label; but people are going to ACTIVELY SEEK OUT something or someone else to tell them what is good.

Re:Instead of "buying"...

[cmarkn]

Isn't telling people what's good why Facebook was invented?

Military = for resources take overs

[cheekyboy]

I thought that the only reason for the existence of the US military is to take over world resources like oil and gas and 'drug crops', and to secure industrial contracts. Those gun trigger grunts know nothing about freedom (mostly).

Freedom? That doesnt make money, exclusive monopolies do.

Saying that id rather usa take over the planet than any soviet or chineese rulers.

A planet earth speaking all french, that would make it a nice alternative timeline movie reality.

Youtube is a fit, eyeball for advertising ...

[perpenso]

Remember, Google is a for profit company with shareholders. They can't purchase something expensive, hemorrhage cash on it, and expect the shareholders to accept that.

... like Youtube?

Youtube fits Google's business, which is advertising. More eyeballs to view ads that are along side the content. If they got into the business of selling music where would the ads go? The music store would not be enough, that is too infrequent a stop. They can't put it along side the content like all their other "side" ventures.

Re:Youtube is a fit, eyeball for advertising ...

[BotnetZombie]

Google could make a music player that streams targeted ads along with music. The incentive for the user would be that it would be cheaper or even free with ads attached, but more expensive without it.

Re:Youtube is a fit, eyeball for advertising ...

[perpenso]

Google could make a music player that streams targeted ads along with music. The incentive for the user would be that it would be cheaper or even free with ads attached, but more expensive without it.

Google would have to abandon open source (ex Android). Folks would update the player to skip the ads. ;-)

Re:Youtube is a fit, eyeball for advertising ...

[BotnetZombie]

Not everything Google does is open source. And even if this would be open source, yes some people would use an alternative player but most would use what's handed to them by Google. Anyway, if it's streaming we're talking about, it could be browser-based, similar to youtube.

hmmmm...

[smash]

... am i the only one who parsed the headline as "why google should BURY the music industry"?

UKlaw is bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

The copyright for music lasts far too long IMHO. I mean when you die, your music should be open to the public. I can't believe that the music industry has managed to get so long, to profit out of dead artists. I mean for 60 friggin years, after you die?

It's not like a tune takes 100's of people years of research and expensive equiptment, so why is it treated in such an over protective manner? It's more like 2-10 people and a years work. The music industry likes to think they are the facilitators - talent spotters and media experts so they need to make the most out of it all. This inequality means artists only earn a few percent of the actual sales. They 'gamble' money, marketing artists / bands - getting them guest appearances on different prime time shows to increase awareness. But they have always failed (IMHO) to invest in the future generations, lobbying goverments for better music in schools etc.. instead the short sighted fat cats just look at the here and now... so the additional protection is to allow maximum profit.

www.happyshopping100.com

[irisfff]

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Re:You might be brilliant

[TaoPhoenix]

Thank you for the optimism!

The big problem with the tone of this age so far is the whole campaign of fear thing. It's an Emperor Has No Clothes thing. Whatever else their faults, we think Google mostly understands tech. You could start a cultural earthquake with:

"Hi. We're Google. We just bought some music. No, wait - we just bought ALL of it (the big labels anyway). All pending lawsuits are dropped. No future lawsuits will be filed under the following X scenarios described on the exhibit attached. All the songs are now Creative Commons - Attribution licensed.

We bought something else. We bought ALL the airlines and ALL the airports! Therefore the TSA will no longer be needed because we can do a far better job dealing with potential threats under our own risk models, thank you. Have a nice day! (Free ebook by WWE wrestler Mick Foley at this link!) "

Positive impact on Sony

[janimal]

Sony entered the music label business not too long ago, and they went for a billion $ spending spree, they paid their way into the music industry. Whatever their sins, they're not as bas as the RIAA; they're on the fence with DRM (they did initially offer the Other OS option), but seem to be influenced by their music industry affiliation now.

Google could buy another label and make competition for Sony. They would put pressure on the music industry and make money on that (I would certainly spend more money on music if it wasn't a ripoff), and they would put pressure on Sony to continue what they started. Sony could use a good slap to wake them up; it's a sorry company nowdays. I have some Sony stuff, but with each purchase I get more and more convinced that there's no actual premium value in buying Sony any more.

Or, they could buy Sony and... oh man, I would love for the PS3 to get a decent browser and media playing capability.

Adsongs?

[Max_W]

Including small advertisements in songs according to the song's theme.

Power to the people.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't we just buy them? Kickstarter project.

Buy the music industry and turn it into one of the new B-Corporations, serving the public interest whilst making a profit. Profit would be distributed amongst artists and control would remain with a hundred million investors who voted annual online.

I love it.

Re:Worry about the movie and book industries inste

[houghi]

The music industry has already lost. They lost it in 1979 when the compact disc was released.

Before that there were tapes. Before that, music sheets were copied.

The music industry is not loosing. It is playing the underdog that it is loosing an industry they created on the basis of imaginary rules.

Before that people just copied songs all the time by hearing them and singing them together.

Re:Worry about the movie and book industries inste

[Anonymous Coward]

> (If you pirate music, though, you're just a cheapskate.)

I'll just put this Sony music CD into my computer and *no carrier*

Is this responsible?

[nuggz]

Well I own google stock.
As an owner (tiny tiny fraction), I don't think buying the music industry is a good use of googles money.
If google was to spend a few billion on buying the music industry, what sort of return on investment would we see?

I don't imagine the big guys selling out anyway.

Googriaa

[revxul]

All your content are belong to us?

Not that I think it's the best idea, but honestly I like Google more than I like the RIAA.

Re:You might be brilliant

[Chris Johnson]

Hm. Creative Commons-Attribution is very similar to endorsement. What do you think of French moral rights, such as right of association?

Currently in the field of music we're getting some rumblings on this front, such as David Byrne suing Charlie Crist for using his song 'Road to Nowhere' in politics- it goes back further with Rush vs. Rand Paul, and Jackson Browne and Van Halen vs. John McCain.

Earlier, both parties tried to co-opt Bruce Springsteen's "Born In The USA", which has lyrics hinting obliquely at the futility of the Vietnam war.

I use CC myself- the same one Trent Reznor went for, which is not straight-up CC-Attribution. Let's assume you know an artist (not me! I'm a nerd! :D ) capable of writing music that seizes the emotions and powerfully moves people, with lyrical themes which are simple and general (as good lyrics often are). This means the work in question, while powerful, isn't real specific. It can be personal, in other words, the meaning is spelled out by context.

To what extent do you feel popular culture should get to override moral rights such as right of association? If someone does a powerful but ambiguous song, and their arch-enemies (in terms of belief systems) seek to use their work to back and support themselves, to what extent does the artist get to prohibit that particular use? Under ordinary copyright the artist can do this, and under CC-Attribution it is quite the opposite: the arch-enemy not only gets to use the work, but is required to also attribute, associating the artist's name with their worst enemy.

I think one counterargument is that attribution lets people look up the original artist and learn more about their differing beliefs and values- but you're going to run into a problem with asymmetry of information, where most people will not look and will assume the artist is sympathetic if the musical theme seems like it might be sympathetic to the cause.

And why they should not:

[nurb432]

1 - Monopolies are bad
2 - Total Power breeds Total Corruption by its nature.

I don't care if we think Google is good today, that can change tomorrow and do you want them owning 1/2 the planet when they do turn 'corporate'?

Google Tools for Musicians

[bill_mcgonigle]

That must be why google bought Alta Vista, and then leveraged that to buy yahoo and dog pile.

Exactly. Google has all the company skills and talent necessary to build a Google Tools for Musicians service, where artists could upload their music, their videos, their merchandise, have it promoted, distributed, sold, etc., all online. Heck, they could mandate a 14-year public domain license if they wanted to (seeing as all the trouble Copyright has caused Google over the years).

Since it doesn't already exist we can assume that Google has already decided it's not interested in doing it, or it's determined that the model is infeasible. Or... OK, let's give them a little more time now that Larry & Sergi are in charge again.

Re:What's in it for them?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Right, as the Internet gets better integrated into listening (Pandora, et. al) this is effectively the radio-station model, but with the ability to know precisely how big the audience is, how many people are listening to a song, how many people skip a song before it's over, etc.

The radio/ad model is well-established and successful. Google has the resources to bring this to the Internet level. Instead of getting paid 4 cents per song at iTunes, Google artists would only get paid half a cent per song impression, but sell a thousand times as many as at iTunes. And then there's still the offline listening option for people who hate ads or don't have a ubiquitous connection.

Fiduciary duty of the board of directors?

[jonaskoelker]

Shareholders cannot simply demand things. Google's duty to its shareholders is to make money, plain and simple.

Isn't the fiduciary duty of a board of directors to serve the shareholders' interests? If the shareholders agree that their interests go beyond making money and are willing to trade off, why shouldn't the BoD obey?

(I'd love for you to cite law, but I'm lazy too...)

Re:Fiduciary duty of the board of directors?

[RoFLKOPTr]

If the shareholders agree that their interests go beyond making money and are willing to trade off, why shouldn't the BoD obey?

Good point. Call me when the majority of shares in a corporation votes that it is not in their interest to make money and I will buy you dinner and award you sexual favors.

Re:Fiduciary duty of the board of directors?

[jonaskoelker]

Good point.

You too :-)

Re:attribution

[TaoPhoenix]

Hi there.

Great answer, and it gives me stuff to work with.

Atribution is not at all the same as endorsement. Endorsement is the "like" thing, aka "____ approves this content".

Attribution simply lists the prior source of the content, (preferably 2 levels deep so an average user would get both Vanilla Ice and Queen etc.)

Your context thing might be optional. I could begin with "original context is ____" , but I may totally disagree where the end results lie.
Made up example: "Did you know that while you were working on music theory context ___ , you accidentally hit information theory _________ " ?

Or hard drive stability theory hits cloud storage, etc.

Innovation comes from attributing the source, then taking it WAY outside the box.
(total fiction example, I have no idea what means - rhetoric only) "Did you know that your song construction applies to space suit safety for martian astronauts?!!"

As long as you attribute it and avoid the plagarism problem, I think that's enough.

What does Google/Massive Dynamic do?

[Anonymous Coward]

What dont they do?

Re:per song impression

[TaoPhoenix]

Hm. Songs.

If I listen to any one qualifying song more than some five times, it hits a threshold where I'll add it to a possible-playlist, and then its value increases some 20X. (The others fade away and get under 4 playings). So I am just in the verge of spending some $200 to get songs I like so I can legitimately call them Format Shifted Research Copies (not shared) because I like tempo or speed dropped versions of songs.

With minor grumbling, I'll view ads to get to my authorized copies. Just quit the campaign of terror where five copies of Liam Kyle Sullivan's shows might cost me my house.

Simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy the vinyl, download the music for free! :-)

Won't solve the problem

[Nyder]

Look the problem is the industry, it's the fucked up laws that the industry paid for.

Why don't we fix the copyright problem, stick it back to 7 years, take away the copy right on all things greater then 7 years.

That would be progress.

And better for us.

Re:What does Google know?

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't have to know about entertainment producing. Keep the creative people. Keep the essential business types. Fire the legal departments and other business deadwood.

Let the people with track records of developing and recognizing talent do what they do best.

Principals of the company

[Max Hyre]

Like Brin, Page, and Schmidt? I'm not sure whether that's a typo or genius.

Stand by and watch

[MattBD]

Honestly, I think Google are better off not getting involved. The labels are doing a pretty good job of screwing themselves over. All Google would need to do is counter their political lobbying to prevent them from getting insane laws such as the Digital Economy Act passed, something they can do in coordination with the many ISP's who are opposed to these laws.