Slashdot Mirror
Canadian Media Companies Target CBC's Free Music Site
silentbrad writes, with bits and pieces from the Globe and Mail: "A number of Canadian media companies have joined forces to try to shut down a free music website recently launched by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., claiming it threatens to ruin the music business for all of them. The group, which includes Quebecor Inc., Stingray Digital, Cogeco Cable Inc., the Jim Pattison Group and Golden West Radio, believes that CBCmusic.ca will siphon away listeners from their own services, including private radio stations and competing websites that sell streaming music for a fee. The coalition is expected to expand soon to include Rogers Communications Inc. and Corus Entertainment Inc., two of the largest owners of radio stations in Canada. It intends to file a formal complaint with the CRTC, arguing that the broadcaster has no right under its mandate to compete with the private broadcasters in the online music space. ... 'The only music that you can hear for free is when the birds sing,' said Stingray CEO Eric Boyko, whose company runs the Galaxie music app that charges users $4.99 a month for unlimited listening. 'There is a cost to everything, yet CBC does not seem to think that is true.' ... The companies argue they must charge customers to offset royalty costs which are triggered every time a song is played, while the CBC gets around the pay-per-click problem because it is considered a non-profit corporation. ... Media executives aren't the only ones who have expressed concern. When the CBC service was launched in February, the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers said that when it set a flat fees for the more than 100,000 music publishers it represents, it never envisioned a constant stream of free music flooding the Internet."
As much as Slashdot likes to generally think that it's some huge conspiracy, this is how people are. It's true for media companies, it's true for Microsoft, Apple and Google and it's true for Slashdotters and people in general too. Innovation is hard and everyone tries their best to protect what they have, even if they do the exact same elsewhere. The only solution would be some kind of state-run economy like Soviet Union had and what China has now.
Run for your lives!
Star wars monopoly Edna crabopoly playboy monopoly and now Brian Adams and Alanis morrisette present Canadian monopoly
Isn't it ironic
It seems like the media groups would make more money (longterm) and have a better public image (which means more customers and more willing customers) if they embraced and advertised for CBC. Of course, then again, I suppose the lawyers wouldn't make any money and it's less immediate profit. Wouldn't want to think ahead.
... what the hell, guy?
I am having a hard time even understanding what the hell is going on here. Of course the CBC has a right to compete with private broadcasters... that's sort of what they do. The CBC is there to ensure that people will still have free access to the best in broadcast media, for free, forever, and as far as I can tell the only music that's available for free download is music that the artists have said they're ok with the CBC offering.
The problem is... where?
So now that I've got my initial reaction out of the way...
12.0 Why is there advertising on CBC Music?
Advertising is the primary means that allows us to fairly compensate the artists we play on CBC Music. We signed an agreement with the Audio-Video Licensing Agency (AVLA), which represents over 1,000 music labels. We are very excited to report that through this deal, all artists registered via AVLA will be paid for having their work broadcast on CBC Radio 2, CBC Radio 3, and our 40 web radio stations.
Another reason we've decided to pursue advertising on CBC Music is that, in the current economic climate, CBC cannot afford to have a large new service like CBC Music that isn't self-sustaining. This revenue stream not only allows us to survive, but also helps us to grow and continue to expand CBC Music.
Emphasis added.
So I'm not sure of the full legalities of it, but according to the CBC Music FAQ, they have acquired the right to stream all the music on their site.
What's the problem? My guess is that these are companies that refused to sign, and they're bitching about the fact that they couldn't get the price they wanted for their music. Excuse me while I shed a tear or two.
"The only music that you can hear for free is when the birds sing." In other words, if you haven't paid me and my friends to listen to music, you can't listen to it at all. What an asshole.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
they are using non-profit status to gain a competitive advantage over the rest of the market.
FTA they pay lower royalties and get other concessions for having this status. This is out of the spirit of non-profit and in this case the industry does have a reason to be upset
wtf dumb candian compnays do something else if you cant get into music buisness like make webcomics like homestuck and dinosoar comics that way other people realize canada actualy exists and isnt just a fairy tale told in history books
... is when the birds sing."
He picked a particularly ironic example.
-- Insert witty one-liner here. --
I am so freaking sick of private companies who believe the only way to protect their profits is to legislate against other organisations threatening their market share. And I'm sick of governments and courts indulging them. Take it as an opportunity to better your services and provide something that CBC (or whoever you're whining about) doesn't - there are hundreds of ideas out there. You may actually surprise yourself and become more successful than you ever imagined.
The free market is WONDERFUL, until something happens that the fat cats, criminals and freeloaders of Big Content have their business interests threatened. The stench of hypocrisy is unbearable.
If they can't compete with free, then they can either 1) do something else where they CAN make money; or 2) eat shit and die.
Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers- or SCAMP. Ha, bet they didnt think that through.
I say, let the music flow!
The music must flow!
(yes, it's a Dune reference, deal with it)
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
“These actions further distances the corporation from its mandate, while placing it directly on a collision course with private broadcasters who can only rely on advertising and subscription revenues to sustain their services,”
Isn't one of the mandate of the CBC to promote Canadian art and culture? The CBC does a lot more to promote quality Canadian content then any other broadcaster on that list.
"The only music that you can hear for free is when the birds sing." That guy has probably never been on the internet before... You know, the place where a bunch of bands are releasing their music for free because they love what they do?
The CBC is already paying royalties, apparently these guys just want them to pay MORE royalties.
From the article:
"In Canada, SOCAN applies different formulas for determining how much money it collects from various music-laying services, according to Paul Spurgeon, the group’s vice-resident of legal services. The formula tends to take into account the service’s Internet-based revenues, as well as the number of page impressions, or hits, the service gets. However the ratios are significantly different for various types of services, such as commercial or non-commercial radio stations."
The private broadcasters are upset because CBC is broadcasting free music. Shocking. I mean, it must be wrong / illegal if it goes against the streaming business model of the private broadcasters. I just don't get it. If CBC has rights to that music, they can do whatever they want with it. Just because it may cut into the profits of other distributors, I don't see the leap in logic that makes music intrinsically monetized. Would this be like Napster (or some other pay-to-listen service) suing a radio station for streaming their station live?
Have you looked at the music on offer? A lot of it is stuff that the other play-on-demand sites wouldn't bother providing because it's too obscure.
Perhaps this is false nostalgia - but even from reading history with the gilded age and robber barons, I don't seem to remember a time when industries were so, well, unafraid of being called on their bullshit.
I mean - yeah, the meat industry has had bouts of defending deadly safety conditions leading to not infrequent outbreaks and deaths, and the tobacco industry flexed historic levels of political and legal muscle lying about their products and covering up science they knew to be true for decades - but they really did seem to at least fear being caught in a direct lie.
It just doesn't seem that the music industry even cares about what they're saying - they just mix accusation, whole new concepts of honorable ownership they just made up a sentence ago, and blatant grabs for control as if it were a newly uncovered biblical virtue, and they the new prophet.
The rhetoric borders on empire, or isolated dictatorship in terms of brazen doublethink-style selective "morality" that just amounts to everything belonging to them, under all circumstances.
There's opportunistic jerks in all groups - it's kind of an intrinsic part of everything from game theory to classic social power studies in psychology - it's a basic part of how we explore and interact with eachother.
It's just crazy that in so many nations, so much of the population ends up standing aside, so these particular jerks can be such horrible bastards on such a constant basis, and they're still allowed to buy themselves such a voice in and over our lives - right to the heart of the houses of power.
They're a small parasitic part of the music industry - not a very big industry in the first place. Most other industries dwarf them. Why are they allowed to keep ramping things up seemingly without limit? At what point does this Napoleon meet his Waterloo?
Ryan Fenton
If they're complaining about having to compete with a more advantageous cost structure established by the non-profit for royalty requiring songs, I take it there would be no objection to the CBC streaming public domain and Creative Commons licensed content? (I'm assuming Canadian law doesn't mandate royalties be paid for any playing of any content, but that's an assumption - somebody please correct me if I'm wrong.)
On a broader scale, I sometimes wonder if we need to have a public conversation about the fundamental motivation for allowing and promoting non-commercial activity, and what kind of society we really want to be. As I understand it, non-profits get treated differently because they are (theoretically) providing some benefit to society at lower cost than would be necessary to an organization performing the same service while trying to make a profit at the same time. Lower cost means greater public benefit for the same resources committed, and that greater public benefit is valued more highly by society than the specific lost opportunity for someone to make a profit.
In principle, if you disapprove of non-profit activities, couldn't it be argued that the very existence of ANY non-profit is unfair competition to some potential for-profit company? Do people who think this way see any value in anything that isn't tied to profits? Are municipalities that want to provide public internet to all at low cost as a utility (information becomes just like power and water, not an unreasonable analogy given the way our society currently functions) doing something wrong? Are libraries ruining the commercial market for books and other consumer media? Are museums wasteful institutions because they lock up artifacts that could otherwise be immensely profitable as commodities being bought and sold in the art and collectibles markets? Is public schooling a bad idea because it competes with private schools that would otherwise be able to pick up the business? Where and how do we draw this line?
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Our government recently handed the CBC a massive funding cut. Rogers, Cogeco, ... these are big companies with enough legal muscle to drown competitors in legal fees.
The group, which includes Quebecor Inc., Stingray Digital, Cogeco Cable Inc., the Jim Pattison Group and Golden West Radio, believes that CBCmusic.ca will siphon away listeners from their own services, including private radio stations and competing websites that sell streaming music for a fee.
It's called competition, get used to it.
I have programs like RarmaRadio and RadioSure and there are literally hundreds, if not thousands of music sites that have free music. I mean, any kind of music. And they're not pirate stations or anything like that.
Does Canada block those online music sites at the border? Or do these guys just pretend they don't exist?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
they are a government funded network, we're already paying for it with out taxes!
Sorry, I cry foul. While I'm not up on the Canadian side, good for them to shake up the field. After all, the big Corps "buy" politicians, so why not throw a little leverage on the Free Music side for once!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
A lot of artists under the Canadian system never see royalties - not that there is much from CBC play anyway. Middlemen tend to eat the royalties leaving artists with the crumbs. Nothing new - musicians have been screwed by business for decades, probably going on a century now.
I *love* the idea of CBC music - especially as lots of independent music is on there. Very few people under a certain age listen to the horrible big-media radio stations that are broadcast. And I love the idea that Canadian artists are featured - the quality of musicians in Canada is generally a lot higher than the U.S.
HOWEVER, the CBC Music site is an implementation mess. Sure they have a dedicated iPhone app, but iPhone is down in 3rd place popularity in Canada. Just try to use the thing on Android and watch your mobile device choke on the layers and layers of Flash badness. The site is horrible. But it should fail for the right reasons, not just because big media wants to kill it and force me to listen to Nickelback instead.
The "All Lightfoot" channel alone is definitely worth fighting aboot!
Oh I agree, I'm on side with the CBC on this one, but not because of the free market argument.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
FREE music site as in the music on it is free , all cbc does is put it all in one place
its the same crap microsoft wants you to think aobut linux , the fact is linux gives the world far more vaule cause you get the job done wihtout paying and then can put more cash into other areas of the economy
SCAM all the listed companies are the worst , im surprised BCE , bell canada isnt on it ....yet
I'm Canadian and would never have heard of this without them whinning... Yeah for me!!! I'm going to be recording to CDs (which I pay a tax on so it's legal for me to do this) like there is no tomorrow! No more money for those asswipes, I got free and legal music 100% now!
Take it as an opportunity to better your services and provide something that CBC (or whoever you're whining about) doesn't - there are hundreds of ideas out there. You may actually surprise yourself and become more successful than you ever imagined.
OK like what?
It's easy to throw out grand pronouncements (which is done so often here on /.) on how to do things, but tell us exactly how to do it?
Yep. Not so easy. No really do it. go ahead and make a zillion dollars and come back here and rub it in our faces. Go ahead - you can't do it.
And all the zipper heads who modd'ed you up couldn't either.
Really you can't because if you could, you wouldn't be spouting off here on /..
Prove me wrong.
You couldn't because I've been there and I know you can't.
/. is just a bunch of big talk'in cubicle dwelling techies and middle managers and small potato business guys - peons.
And yet the Conservatives (Currently in power in Canada) have been found 3 times to have breached these exact same laws (and fudging the elections finance submissions) and nothing has happened (barely even made a blip on the News).
Unfortunately, there are MANY ways around these rules and way too many ways to bend them, thus neutering those laws.
'The only music that you can hear for free is when the birds sing,' apparently doesnt hold in the US. http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/02/26/2141246/youtube-identifies-birdsong-as-copyrighted-music
Koalas. They're telepathic. Plus, they control the weather. -Margaret
Hey Canada, I don't hear music companies down here in Australia jumping up and down complaining about commercial-free ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission)-broadcast radio services such as http://abc.net.au/triplej, the ABC's commercial-free music video program http://abc.net.au/rage or free on-line streaming services such as http://triplejunearthed.com/.
There are also a number of 'community' radio stations in Australia that have blanket licenses to permit them to broadcast copyright work as they please. None of these have had a particularly negative effect on the Australian music industry -- quite the contrary, you have a much better chance in Australia as an independent musician getting your music heard than in Canada or the US, and this has arguably led to the much more dynamic and thriving music culture in Australia.
The for-profit labels seem content to wait for new artists to become known through these non-commercial, ABC-funded arenas -- Triple J, rage and so forth -- then approach them for commercial distribution and concert promotion. Many big international Australian acts gained their start this way.
Maybe the Canadian music labels need to look down under, and stop being dinosaurs. Having the public broadcaster promote music has contributed heavily to Australia becoming the international force in music that it is today.
If a candidate runs on a platform of copyright reform by reducing terms and increasing fair uses I would vote for that candidate.
Guess they shouldn't have banned Creative Commons music from their station then? They can lie in the bed they've made. This is exactly what happens when you try to negotiate with these groups.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Do you see now that it's about control? Do you see now that those scmbags oppose free even when it's legal?
Free should be illegal. Ever. That's how they think. That's why they keep saying P2P == stealing, even when the first is a technology and the second a felony.
What the CBC is doing here looked like it was going to be a step forward. Now all of those other corporations get to shit all over it. Wonderful.
'The only music that you can hear for free is when the birds sing,' said Stingray CEO Eric Boyko
Any judge should throw out the case just based on this. When I'm playing my piano, anyone can hear it for free, they just don't want to :) ... there is plenty of free music.
But seriously, Mozart, Beethoven,
When the CBC service was launched in February, the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers said that when it set a flat fees for the more than 100,000 music publishers it represents, it never envisioned a constant stream of free music flooding the Internet."
translation: We were shortsighted and blind to the obvious, therefor we'll sue you in an attempt to cover for our fuckup.
Being on the other side of the world, I hadn't heard of http://music.cbc.ca/ before. Cool site. Thanks to the media companies for giving them some free publicity!
Greedy greedy greedy music industry!
Taxes pay for the CBC where even the most obscure artists get free advertising at no cost to their publishers; ... yes, every unit of recording media will be used for pirating.
Taxes on recording media generate money ostensibly meant to cover royalties for the pirating that the publishers have convinced the gov't will be occuring
And the publishers get tax breaks for their role in promoting culture, blah blah blah
And the real kicker, in response to the station a**hole who stated only "bird song" is free, it ISN'T if some publisher gets the 'rights' to a recording of birds singing!
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Actually Lobbying is better than bribery. When lists like "World's most corrupt countries" and Corruption Index List are created, it makes sure countries which have legalized Lobbying will appear much lower in the list than 3rd world countries who still call it bribery.
Your services are no longer required for the dissemination, enjoyment, artist compensation, contribution and access to music as it pertains to your historic, nay, archaic understanding of communications.
And for this: 'The only music that you can hear for free is when the birds sing,' - You can eat a dick because you're so far out of touch with reality that any nourishment should suffice in getting your brain to understand and comprehend that your pathetic, groveling, ignorant ass does not belong in my communications path.
As it were: the proverbial free-ride is over for middle-men. Business model obsoleted. Distribution mechanisms no longer required. Thank you for your prior service however your continued service is not only a burden to those you've once served but your insistence is becoming intolerable and threatens the ongoing development of global human communications - unfettered, unrestrained, unfiltered person to person private communications.
Take your god damn music and hit the fucking road.
\r
After all, if only one side is allowed to negotiate, then there is no negotiating.
And, of course, there's the route of finding a cheaper source of that work. Businesses do it all the time.
The companies argue they must charge customers to offset royalty costs which are triggered every time a song is played, while the CBC gets around the pay-per-click problem because it is considered a non-profit corporation.
If the companies want to be on equal footing with the CBC all they have to do is set themselves up as non-profit corporations as well. Problem solved!
Please do go fuck yourself, Mr. Eric Boyko.
Free music has existed for over a thousand centuries without you, and will go on after you and your vicious little pack of horse thieves are long dead.
Thanks for reminding me how evil the music "industry" is. I've sort of forgotten since the Napster days how much it needs to expire. Not one more penny for music distributors. We'll give the cash to the musicians.
Sell door-to-door fake roof repairs to Alzheimer's patients, Mr. Boyko - your true calling.
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
-Lifeline, published 1939
Piracy is worng! Artists deserve to be paid!
Wait... what you mean... they are getting paid? It's been licensed? Ok well...
Competition is worng! I shouldn't have to compete to stay un business!
But... the future refused to change.
I wouldn't be sorry.. These same companies are also responsible for driving true musicians out of the field.. pushing the lowest common denominator of "art" such that it served solely as a marketing tool to induce *more* sales of "product", product which is solely designed to induce consumption of *more* product, in a vicious loop where the product and the advertising for it are one and the same.. And 'Art" for arts sake...? the money boys won't touch that, sorry... Even if they would, where could one perform anyways, now that the theatres are either alll defunct, or geared for electronic music only.. Jazz.. Blues. and Fusion..? Those of us who perform these forms are no better than those that play the lotteries hoping for the "big win" except our chances are much worse.... If however, we make a video of our art, throw in some sex and violence., or perhaps get a 3 year old to perform it, we MIGHT get lucky with a viral video.. As far as I'm concerned.. the CBC has my FULL SUPPORT!!! Go CBC Go..!
'The only music that you can hear for free is when the birds sing,' said Stingray CEO Eric Boyko
What an ass!!
"The only music that you can hear for free is when the birds sing," He said
'And we're working on that' he thought
-- Stingray CEO Eric Boyko
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media