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IFPI Won't Share Pirate Bay Damages With Musicians
An anonymous reader tips this news from TorrentFreak:
Earlier this year the sentences against the Pirate Bay defendants were made final. Aside from prison sentences, they will have to pay damages to the entertainment industries, including €550,000 to several major music labels. The court awarded the damages to compensate artists and rightsholders for their losses. However, it now turns out that artists won’t see a penny of the money, as the labels have allocated it to IFPI to fund new anti-piracy campaigns. ...While it may come as no surprise that the music industry has a hard time getting money from The Pirate Bay defendants, what comes next may raise a few eyebrows. 'There is an agreement that any recovered funds will be paid to IFPI Sweden and IFPI London for use in future anti-piracy activities,' IFPI writes. In other words, the money that the Court awarded to compensate artists and rightsholders for their losses is not going to the artists at all."
This certainly comes as a huge surprise...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Stop buying music altogether and this problem will go away...
Neither any artists nor "the industry" was part of the trial. Specific organizations were, that fought for what they saw as their rights. Anyone else involved who also considers themselves to have lost money should have their own trial, I suppose.
That's all. .)
They operate like organized crime. (In regional cells and a strict hierarchy ruled by having connections
They harass people like organized crime. (Mostly protection rackets.)
They defraud and steal from people like organized crime. (Getting creative works from others, then asking lots of money for every worthless copy, without moving even a single finger.)
They take drugs like organized crime. (I had a colleague who had to do all the deals with that industry for our company. Often there was no way of even making a deal without at least consuming cocaine and ordering some hookers. [I wish I was just making that up.])
They would shoot and torture people like organized crime, if they weren't openly in the spotlight and could get away with it.
They are organized crime.
So we must treat them like organized crime.
It's the musicians who sign up to these labels. They're the ones doing work for them. They're the ones who could cause the labels to shrivel and die simply by choosing or building alternative distribution methods.
Worst of all are the half a dozen successes who pretend that these scrounging middlemen act on musicians' behalf, with superstar whores acting no better than the celebrity representatives of Scientology from Bee Gees to Metallica to Lily Allen (only joking, Lily - you're no superstar, you're shit).
Judge orders innocent men both prison time and to pay â550,000 to the thieving criminals. More news at 11.
No shit the money isn't going to artists. The IFPI thieves do nothing BUT steal money from the artists, did you honestly think a court ruling would change that?
Now make sure to spread this to every single one of them employed by said company and make them feel guilty as absolute hell for still being under a label as corrupt as they are.
While I know a good chunk of musicians are equally as corrupt, most actually aren't and are just afraid.
Artists don't need these stupid labels anymore.
They made sense back in the disconnected world.
Most of the world is connected up in some way or another, even if it is only indirectly.
In particular, most of the world a musician would care about reaching is connected.
People pirating songs isn't going to do a damn thing.
People pointing out how corrupt they are on some blog or community isn't going to do a damn thing.
Making the artists realize their labels are corrupt and don't give a damn about even their lives IS going to do something. It already has worked before, and it can do it again.
Some labels go as far as walling in their "property", closing them off from reality as much as possible. That is the worst part!
This is a godly piece of information that every artist, musician and anything even remotely related to the industry and label should read. Everyone has to see this, not just generic consumers or bystanders. The labels don't care about opinions.
I'd feel a modicum of sympathy for these musicians if they understood that the record companies have never cared about their careers, just about how much money they could wring out of them before disposing of them and moving on to the next disposable musicians, but they don't.
They naively believed that they're all on the same side and the reality is that they've never been and never will be.
From TFA:
In other words, the money that the Court awarded to compensate artists and rightsholders for their losses is not going to the artists at all.
This is not a logical conclusion. If anti-piracy activities increase future sales by detering illegal copying, the artists will (proportionately) benefit just as much as the labels.
This has been well known from the start. For the RIAA/MPAA/etc, the recording artists are *resources*. Like lumber, or oil, or minerals. Just something to be mined and discarded when it's of no further value. You don't see mining companies making sure their mines are well taken care of, do you? Or taking the profits from the sale of the minerals and pouring the money into old, abandoned mine shafts?
Of course not. Artists are resources to be consumed.
Suing copyright infringers is really just fucked. It's like if I, as a citizen, started sending letters to people for jay-walking; I'd sue them in civil court for $5,000 (with photograph evidence obtained legally), or I'd settle for $50. Just sign the papers, fill in your bank details, then we'll deduct the money from your account.
Is that legal? In this specific example, probably not, unless I *owned* the street. Let's say for a moment that I do.
Is it immoral? I'd consider it immoral.
I publish all my books DRM free and I don't give two fucking shits if people download them illegally. Every time one of these fucking "sue the piraters FOR THE ARTISTS", I always say... "Where's my share?" I own the rights to books. I publish them electronically. They get "pirated". Why shouldn't I get free money for it?
Well?
Well?
The real reason is, obviously, the MPAA/RIAA are cunts and the idea that they're doing this for the artists in any way is completely retarded.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
It's the musicians who sign up to these labels. They're the ones doing work for them. They're the ones who could cause the labels to shrivel and die simply by choosing or building alternative distribution methods.
Worst of all are the half a dozen successes who pretend that these scrounging middlemen act on musicians' behalf, with superstar whores acting no better than the celebrity representatives of Scientology from Bee Gees to Metallica to Lily Allen (only joking, Lily - you're no superstar, you're shit).
"we call it Riding the Gravy Train."
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Doesn't surprise me one bit. Here in Belgium you have Sabam which also collects money from different sources but "fails" to get the money to the artist. If I remember correctly last year artists where waiting for about 200 million of euro's and that in Belgium alone. You know how much interests they get on such sums ? And those interests don't get into the pockets of the artists.
They are also masters of getting money out of peoples pocket. When a slick Sabam inspector arrives, you know it will cost you money and they go through some stupid lengths to justify the "extra's" you need to pay.
A flemish satirical program Basta! went even that far to organize a concert with a jar of vegatables (from the brand Suzy Wan), a mixer from Kenwood and another thing that I can't recall. And Sabam slapped them with an invoice for those "artists". So they went with the jar of vegetables and the mixer to the Sabam HQ so the "artists" could sign up to get their money.
Sabam was not amused en when the Basta! guys where planning to give concert with those 'artists', they called the police.
Sabam was even under investigation that they falsified the accounts so they could put money away to bribe officials. But even after all the shenanigans those organisation can still operate. And it isn't that the general public doesn't hate them, they loathe them with a passion.
Check out the current Humble Bundle: http://www.humblebundle.com/
FLAC Audio and DRM-Free, not a penny to the leeches! And if you think that the bands are too hippy, you can choose to send all of your money to the EFF who actively fight said leeches.
Even if we accept the utter bs argument that piracy is stealing(it's not), this would mean the "stealing" is from companies who themselves steal from the artists.
Interesting.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
It was never about the artists. Stop pretending it's about the artists.
this signature has been removed due to a DMCA takedown notice
In other words, the money that the Court awarded to compensate artists and rightsholders for their losses is not going to the artists at all."
Anyone who is at all surprised by this has simply not been paying attention.
This whole lawsuit is very similar to someone suing the telephone company for listing a gun shop in the yellow pages that sold a gun to someone who murdered someone.
The RIAA and the IOC are very similar in this regard. They don't care about the people they make money from. They don't want to pay them. They want to take anything they earn and keep it for themselves. Their weapon of choice is copyright and also trademark in the case of Prince and the Olympics. And they seem to get worse each time you hear about it.
We gotta stop buying shit from these assholes.
To celebrate this very thoughtful decision I decided to share 5 Gigabyte of sacred information per million dollar that has not been distributed to the artists.
Apparently they aren't worth anything and don't need money.
Happy sharing my fellow kopimists!
Crtl+C,Crtl+V be blessed!
That's the basic message these industry groups have sent again and again. I'm sick and tired of being guilt-tripped by anti-piracy campaigns when it's the producers of those same campaigns that have been giving the artists they claim to represent the short end of the stick for decades now.
Except perhaps the court. Everything is a surprise to them, I would prefer courts the got to the truth not justice. Justice is a synonym for revenge.
If revenge is all we need there are no need for courts.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
Is there anyone who was thinking something else would happen? Didn't the RIAA do exactly the same? The institutes work like the mafia. They claime to 'protect' the artists but in fact their only purpose is raking in as much money for themselves as they can.
The court explicitly declared that the money should go to the artists. If the artists decide it should be used for that, fine, but it should be going to the artists first. If they decide to give it to someone else for some other purpose, whatever, but not giving it to the artists is violating a direct court decision.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
But you kind of hit on the reason why this problem is the fundamental problem, but also why getting musicians to act can't possibly be the solution.
That reason is that people like Lily Allen only succeded in the industry because her dad got her there due to his contacts. The fact is the music industry is absolutely full of acts who just wouldn't have gotten anywhere without the industry to turn them into a product. These artists wont leave the industry because it's the only way they can make a living doing what they love - they sure as hell couldn't go it alone because without the music industry's cartel operation to prop them up they wouldn't stand a chance in a free market where they're competing based on talent.
The industry keeps these people employed as "artists" whilst keeping any uncontrolled real talent that hasn't signed up out. It's a protection racket, unless you sign up you've got no hope, and half those who have signed up signed up because they had no hope otherwise anyway due to them having a severe lack of talent compared to everyone else.
There's just trash after trash after trash - Nikki Minaj seems to be the latest abysmal excuse for an artist that's being thrust repeatedly on the radio here in the UK right now. A few good artists make it through, like Rihanna does actually seem to have some talent, for example, but even they get used as tools to prop up the shite - case in point, I don't know what song it is because I don't care but there was a song on the radio a few weeks back which involved some fairly decent singing from Rihanna and then you get that silly Minaj bitch come on to just completely destroy the track. Had she not had Rihanna to prop up the song most sane people would just completely and utterly ignore the track. Christ, I don't even like this type of music, but again, because of the cartel, there's really little choice to listen to anything else during my commute as it's all the radio stations play in the UK.
Instead, the government kept all of that money justifying that they would/might someday provide Medicare for those people -- despite the fact that most did not receive Medicare benefits! The State governments even announced that they were using the funds to build roads and for other projects!
This is one more demonstration that these types of groups seek to champion causes in order to perpetuate themselves, by keeping up the fight (fear), rather than relaying recovered damages back to those who were harmed. It's disgraceful.
That lets us list artists and whether or not they are enslaved to one of these organizations. Make it an easy way to check who its safe to buy from, and to clearly indicate which artists are recording for one of these Organized Crime media companies.
A useful tool to let folks speak with their wallets.
I don't buy any music at all. I also don't download it. I don't listen to it anymore unless it happens to interrupt the talk radio stuff I do listen to (mostly CBC here in Canada).
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Why is this allowed? I hope artists get together and sue RIAA/IFPI. As mentioned in other comments, these organizations are nothing more than bullies.
"The Brady Bunch is back...working homicide"
Sasayaki! Damn, meeting you here of all places! I knew that name sounded familiar. How is your book sale going?
----
I remember reading about his book on TvTropes[1], and he offered his book free for a day. The problem was, it was not available for my region, according to Amazon's rules. So yeah, even if I *do* want to do something legally, I can't do it!
I don't know if the facts and figures match, but I personally feel most of the piracy happens in the developing countries, who simply *can't* get the item! (Don't consider torrents only, due to lack of reliable internet, most pirated stuff is downloaded once, and then burned onto CDs en masse, which are then sold at cost) Frankly, people here are happy with crappy vga cam rips, some thing hollywood could just let out for free and gain much more revenue on ads.
YMMV, but I feel that if you *have* created a global network, let it *remain* a global network.
[1]: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13261689090A06160200
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
Pirate Bay is .... pirates.
RIAA/IFPI are privateers. Want to fix the problem? Rewrite the crazy copyright laws and reduce the terms. Its not about benefits to the artists. It never was. Its all about slipping more cash to the middlemen.
Have gnu, will travel.
THe few whites that are racist keep their mouth shut about it
No, one of them is posting offtopic comments on slashdot.
With posts like this you really don't know if the poster believes it or is just trolling but because of the genuine cranks I have seen I go with the former.
I would not feed him/her but I am just too curious about how people like them experience reality, so let me ask some meta questions:
* Why exactly did you ignore the explanations from the first two links? Were you not able to process them due to cognitive dissonance or did you just expect nobody to actually read your links and thus wilfully omit them?
* Do you genuinely don't recognize (even mild) racism today or do you chose to ignore it because you don't want to believe it?
* How do you come up with insults like "thinking people think liberals are a bunch of bed-wetting nancyboys"? Seriously, what is going through your head while you write something like that?
"* Why exactly did you ignore the explanations from the first two links? Were you not able to process them due to cognitive dissonance or did you just expect nobody to actually read your links and thus wilfully omit them?"
If you had read what he wrote you would know that it's not because he has cognitive dissonance, it's because he's black.
Two anecdotes from my personal life this week.
I have been discovering a lot of new manga by downloading scanlations. There are so many I look and see what the manga is first from a description on the net. If it is really good and I can find it in the bookstore I buy it, not all of them but the latest and then I tend to buy the ones after that in the bookstore too. Even living in Japan there are tons and tons of manga that are not in the stores (just serialized weekly or maybe just in some specialty shops, or who knows.) And they are not cheap, it can be 5-10 bucks or more per volume. I actually spend quite a lot of money on manga and so what I find on the net (scanlated to English, or sometimes even some raws though I don't tend to buy them) is beyond my budget anyway. Then I find a good one (since I've read all the good series I know of) via scanlated versions and then end up either buying the latest ones in the store, or I just come back to it and buy later.
By the way I should also mention that I have professionally translated manga too. There are sometimes mistakes in scanlations but in general they are good and high profile sites seem to take down manga that are licensed for sale overseas. Translating manga is really not a high margin business anymore, it is harder than ordinary translation I think too.
Actually with science fiction and fantasy, and with manga too, over the years I have developed a fun habit of "rebuying" a collection of books. With manga a series can be like 20 books or more, and it gets to be too much to store or move when you change apartments. So I have rebought entire series over again (I think I bought Hunter x Hunter and Baki both 3 times over). And for great authors like for example Robert Heinlein, whose books I read everything when I was younger (unfortunately missing the chance to send him a letter, I regret that a lot) and then buying them over and over again over the decades, and also re-reading many times digital copies I've found on the net.
I am finding now that free copies (freely given, and also from torrents) are the best way to discover new writers. I really don't like spending money on a lousy book. However it is possible to find book reviews on the net easily and from that discover new promising books and authors.
A case in point is David Adams' Lacuna: Demons of the Void, a new sci-fi author who sells DRM-free books and also welcomes readers who find his work in torrents or wherever. I found out about him on the net, and he was proud to have become visible enough that his book was pirated. Well I still think he has a ways to go, since I tried and tried to find it and it is almost nowhere I looked. While looking I saw he said people were worried the book was too cheap at $2. And he urged people who liked his book to donate to a charity instead, Childs Play.
Well I was intrigued. I looked at Amazon, it was $5 not $2. Hmph. Then it says free to borrow on Kindle, and I happen to have a great Kindle my brother gave me, but you have to pay over $70 to join that library program. Okay... Well more searching. It's a new author, and I have a huge amount of books already I could be reading in print and on my devices. Sample chapters? I hate that. Well long story short I was impressed with his attitude and I turned on my Kindle that was next to me, it picks up wifi from my phone (HTC EVO phone/router), wham I am in the Kindle store. I stay away from that because I discovered it is like a kid in a candy store. Well, search for the book and it downloaded in like 10 seconds to my Kindle, honestly if my time is worth anything at all that would have been the intelligent thing to do. I think finding books and manga on the net is really a game basically now. It was so quick it was like a huh! moment.
Well I don't know how good it is but I am looking forward to it. Another book of his was picked up for a movie recently apparently too. So I would like to send a shout out to David Adams and recommend musicians, writers and other artists to try their utm
This is exactly why I don't buy music from stores. The only discs I have were bought directly from the artist after a live concert. Doing so, I believe I am sponsoring the artist directly because the discs they sell after stage, despite still being produced by their record label, do not contain distribution and retail fees. The disc price might even be higher but that way I really believe I'm sponsoring the artist and not the mafia.
As a side benefit, all of my discs are signed by their respective artists ; )
After all the IFPI/MPAA/RIAA represent the media companies and not the artists.
It sounds better that they represent the interests of the famous artists everyone (supposedly?) likes rather than the faceless company that leeches of their talent. After all, it's the media companies who create these groups. This is why performing artists form their own unions and trade organisations to represent themselves. The only way this story could've been interesting is if the IFPI did something that was in the interests of actual artists.
It's unrealistic to expect that the MAFIAA will be stopped if artists no longer sign with them. There are probably 10,000 - 100,000 artists that sign with them. If some fraction decide to stop, they'll just sign some more to replace them. And what's the average lifetime of most artists nowadays... less than 5 years? So they're easily replaceable.
Besides, these so-called artists don't even really do very much. The MAFIAA makes its killing on the major 'stars' who don't honestly do very much themselves. All they do is find find a woman that has no respect for herself or her image or a boy that'll make 12-year-old girls horny, then they manufacture a song and market the shit out of it. Let's face it - there will always be at least 100 people who are stupid and/or desperate enough in America to enter some kind of ridiculous bargain like this. So there really isn't much of a way to stop these 'artists' from signing them.
Now as for the rest of the artists who aren't stars but still actually make their own work, you could argue that we need to fund independent labels so they don't sign with the corrupt labels, but what do you expect that to achieve? It's gonna take a lot of artists and a lot of marketing to make any success for them.
But regardless, the only hope of breaking these industries is to break their public image. There needs to be created a New World Order of sorts in the music industry, one which will make the current labels look antiquated and corrupt. Explore new revenue models: support real online music stores like Jamendo and Bandcamp that actually support the ones who make the music and cut out the middlemen. If we break their image, then we can start to push them out of the way. They will try to take us back over, but if we tarnish their image so much that they can't recover, then maybe there will be hope
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
Listen to Radio 4. No music, just science documentaries, comedy and interesting talk. A little island of sanity in the otherwise bullshit laden electromagnetic spectrum
The last money I gave to an artist was a direct donation of 5â for giving his songs under a CC license. I believe that no artist ever received that much money from me. A 20â CD usually ends up at 2 or 3 for an artist.
The CD model sucks and is dead. Let's dance on its corpse.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Uh... Rihanna has some talent doing what? Because it isn't singing. In live performances, she often has major troubles with intonation, and all I hear when she sings is whining. On top of that, she seems to think she can mask her awful singing with a thick, forced vibrato.
Otherwise, I'm with you on them signing people with poor musicianship. They're after people they can prop up to stardom, which is really more about appearance or backstory or anything that can make attract people. Musicianship is hardly required, and sadly, Rihanna is just another example of what you claim.
The guy who had the patent for how windshield wipers worked took decades to prove it in court, getting settlements that never even covered his many hundreds of thousands in lawyer fees.
The system is set up for lawyers. Note 99% of politicians are also lawyers.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
That album was released in 1975, 37 years ago. Back then there was no Web, the Internet was still ARPANET, copyright in the US only lasted 28 + (optionally) 28 years and the RIAA wasn't suing their customers left and right. It's not comparable.
Dilbert RSS feed
Hear hear. I strongly recommend Just a Minute for anyone who wants to know what "Britishness" really is.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
A lot of aspiring musicians don't realize how bad the industry is before they sign. Once they sign their first contract, they're pretty much stuck unless they want to break a contract as the companies involved won't release their final contracted album until they sign a new contract.
It's the musicians who sign up to these labels. They're the ones doing work for them. They're the ones who could cause the labels to shrivel and die simply by choosing or building alternative distribution methods.
Worst of all are the half a dozen successes who pretend that these scrounging middlemen act on musicians' behalf, with superstar whores acting no better than the celebrity representatives of Scientology from Bee Gees to Metallica to Lily Allen (only joking, Lily - you're no superstar, you're shit).
Why would anyone think they are acting on the artists behalf? That's like thinking that McDonalds is acting on behalf of the guys making your big mac. The artists are not that important. They are the product, not the customer.
There are several things to do to be a successful rock band. Which part do you think is harder?
1. Playing music
2. Marketing
In the grand scheme of things, musicians are of little importance to the final product.
Lawyers want to keep other people's money for themselves? Who coulda seen that coming?
Why doesn't piratebay use this for good publicity? Offer to pay 20% more if the IFPI agrees to give all the money to the artists and make all communication public.
Create a donation system where it is guaranteed that 100% of the money will go to artists one way or the other.
Something like that...
IOW, the more things change, the more they stay the same. :-)
It seems we have the beginnings of a new business model for the labels:
Artists sign contracts to produce music and get paid on sales.
Pirates distribute the music to listeners and possibly make money from it.
Labels sue pirates and keep all of the money not sharing with artists.
Does anyone think the time won't come when labels secretly encourage piracy and pirates settle out of court leaving labels with all of the profits? Like newspapers, it looks like the major labels are a dying business model. Maybe someone like Zukerberg, Ellison, or Apple Corp could just buy *all* of the major labels and fix the business model. It relative terms, they're really not that big.
artist: Rush
single: The Spirit of Radio
song: The Spirit of Radio
Label: Mercury Records
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_of_Radio
It's the musicians who sign up to these labels. They're the ones doing work for them. They're the ones who could cause the labels to shrivel and die simply by choosing or building alternative distribution methods.
Worst of all are the half a dozen successes who pretend that these scrounging middlemen act on musicians' behalf, with superstar whores acting no better than the celebrity representatives of Scientology from Bee Gees to Metallica to Lily Allen (only joking, Lily - you're no superstar, you're shit).
That's because, back in the Bad Old Days before the Internet, a record deal was 1 act in a thousand or so were hyped into stardom to show that 'it could be done' if you 'worked hard and did what your label told you to do', baiting more thousands into willingly selling their souls for a chance to do the same. Nowadays, anybody can post a music video of themselves on Youtube and have the chance to do the same. Bieber originally did that, and got co-opted by the labels because somebody thought they could make money off him if they kept up the hype, NOT because they thought he had talent.
Hell, in this day and age, talent is a hinderance in pop culture. Prime example: Snookie.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
According to this model they would use the money to sue more people in order to get even more money from the state they could use to sue... Anything else would be against the market's principles.
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
Rihanna has an instrument in her throat, thats all. Shes not an artist, shes a performer. I like her newest single, but I fully realize that she is jsut singing words given to her, to a beat laid down for her. Total synthetic pop.
Of course, the MAFIAA isn't getting any money either, because the Pirate Bay people don't have any.
How does a thought in a white person's head make innocent black children prefer whites?
No idea, perhaps you've just read bullshit "studies" on bullshit sites? What I do know, however, is that you don't influence anyone's thought, be that a "white" or a "black" or, more likely, a person of mixed color.
With autotune these days you can get a frog sing like a opera singer... No talent needed. Looks good? Check. Accepts orders w/o a big deal? Check. Will work for peanuts? Check. Okay, one more sucker ready for the pop-music meat grinder!
That has always been the case. Singer-songwriters have been the exception in the music industry, not the rule.
Most of the world is connected up in some way or another, even if it is only indirectly.
As I see it, there is such a thing as too indirect. Recording artists not signed to major labels get their works played only on the Internet, not on FM radio. So if people discover new music during drive time, how can artists reach listeners who happen not to subscribe to a cellular data plan? Or what am I missing?
And how many of those artists do you think are going to risk their careers by standing up and complaining about it?
I'd love to answer that question.
Maybe someone like Zukerberg, Ellison, or Apple Corp could just buy *all* of the major labels
That would require Apple (AAPL, mkt cap $548.5B) to not only buy Sony (SNE, $12.4B), Vivendi (VIV, €19.8B or $24.4B), and a privately held company, but also to convince competition regulators in multiple countries that this isn't foul play.
It's the musicians who sign up to these labels. They're the ones doing work for them. They're the ones who could cause the labels to shrivel and die simply by choosing or building alternative distribution methods.
Nope! Go to any city and you'll find quite a few bands who'd like to record some music and sell it. Most of them suck but there are so many of them that even if 1% don't suck you've still got more musicians than you could ever need for making recordings. So no, the labels will never shrivel up and die for lack of being able to hire talent because there is far more talent out there than there is any need for - far too many people want to be musicians compared to how much music there is a need for. That's why the labels can treat their talent like they do. The labels have what's actually rare - professional marketing, production, packaging, distribution, connections. The talent has no power because there is too much talent.
Makes the model Apple selected for their App Store look generous beyond words. I'd buy music from Record Labels if I knew 70% was going to artists. Since I know they get pennies (less than 1% most times), I'll not buy from them again. Feels too similar to buying a stolen CD from someone. I only buy directly from musicians.
didn't the IFPI just commit piracy? If you take from the pirate what he has plundered and not return it to it's rightful owner and 'repurpose' the bounty aren't you just as guilty?
some people are a "glass half empty" some are "glass half full" i'm a "there is something in the glass be happy" person
This is total BS. Of course the labels are ripping off everyone around. At the same time, the musicians themselves don't constitute 100% of the product. As much as you might not like it, someone has to record this stuff, market it, create artwork for covers, take pictures, put all of this together, make sure it actually happens. Some musicians are organized enough, and most of them can't do squat about 90% of this stuff. That's why studios came to existence and that's why there are music producers. After some time in the business, musicians start to know enough that they become producers themselves and once their brand is good enough, they don't need to put so much into marketing, but until they get there, someone has to help them. It does not help that musicians rip each other off, too. You're putting this like musicians are the saints here. They are at the bottom of the food chain, but not really all that better than the rest of the squad.
one of the biggest problems is that while artists can unsign themselves from a label, they can not (in most of the world) unsign form the copyright protection monopoly "representatives" which collect fees for radioplay, public performances and so forth, part of that money is then used to do things like sue piratebay. worst part is that that their business is approved - and awarded to the specific org. through law.
so once you sign up you're registered forever and you will have to pay.. for even performing your own shit. so even if new artists would stop signing up it would take a loong time for their income base to flush out(and in some cases they'll take the money for artists they don't even represent anyways).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
.... Let's face it - there will always be at least 100 people who are stupid and/or desperate enough in America to enter some kind of ridiculous bargain like this. ...
I don't think you pay attention. There is 100 of thousands of people who would. Those same people that try out for American Idol and other shows like that, the cam whores on youtube. The reality TV stars. We have way too many people who will do whatever to be a star.
Be seeing you...
No, McDonalds is acting on behalf of the cows!
There are several things to do to be a successful rock band. Which part do you think is harder?
1. Playing music
2. Marketing
In the grand scheme of things, musicians are of little importance to the final product.
Let me guess ... you are working in marketing.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
In the Iron Triangle:
Cops seize assets when throwing criminals in jail, then use proceeds from those assets to throw more people in prison.
Peace sells, but who's buying?
Alternatives are getting here I would say.
Agreed. I donated a few bucks even though I don't like any of the bands
the industry hates the pirate bay because artists can use it to distribute their music and films for free, that's why the industry really hates them.
Once artists fully get their heads around the internet, and how to use it to make a living, the better off they will be.
Let me give the artists a small hint, release your music in high res FLAC or WAV direct to your fans and we will buy by the petabyte.
its also why i feel so good downloading 250gb of media at month for the cost of a DSL connection.
fuck the MPAA MPIA, they are greedy assholes living off the sweat of talented people and have been for decades if not more.
it's just put on the business account from which also the artists are paid.. In regard to articles like this, a lot of people are soo biased and twist everything to make the industrie look bad.. Well, it's those entertainment companies who get the money, it's the entertainment companties who pay the artists (mind you, most artists are just some form of regular employee's)..
But people think those companies do nothing for the artists and take all their money.. Well think again, does your boss give you extra money because the product you made sells much more? you have a contract with your boss, you read it, you signed it, and you didn't have to go for it if you didn't like it.. Especially these days, artists can record and promote themselves, but still they choose to go through the companies, why do you think that's still happening?
Without those companies there wouldn't be the entertainment you like/enjoy/hate so much, but a lot of people still want it for free, and then bitch they rip the content because the money isn't going to the artists themselves.. How hypocritical can you be, you're worse than the companies the artists work for, because you won't even pay anything even though you consumed the content..
"I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue" has the around the right number of single-entendres to provide an insight into Britishness.
I know the truth and I know what you're thinking
Sure but my point was she at least has that, whereas in contrast, Nikki Minaj doesn't but is still thrust upon our radios for some reason.
Even if they can sing it's something, but most of them can't even do that now.
This is exactly why I don't buy music from stores. The only discs I have were bought directly from the artist after a live concert. Doing so, I believe I am sponsoring the artist directly because the discs they sell after stage, despite still being produced by their record label, do not contain distribution and retail fees.
To get the discs even pressed, you need to have its contents registered. You have to report the sales numbers. If you are under contract, you have to hand over your proceeds. The usual percentages will be taken out, and at the end of the year, all responsible artists (composers, arrangers, performers) will get their share, with the respective processing fees taken out. Even if you bypass the pressing and burn CDs for sales yourself, the same applies if you are under contract.
The only way to escape paying the MAFIAA is to a) not be under contract, b) not use any copyrighted material except your own, c) burn the disks yourself.
Note that you are not eligible for getting back the flat copying fees on the blank disks, never mind that the content is just your own. If you are under contract, you are eligible for a percentage of _all_ blank disk fees, according to the number of disks with your own music you brought into circulation as compared to all content brought into circulation by RIAA contractors.
So no, except in rather rare circumstances, buying from the artist directly does not mean that the sharks don't get their share.
Let's face it - there will always be at least 100 people who are stupid and/or desperate enough in America to enter some kind of ridiculous bargain like this.
Sounds like a Faustian bargain, except that the devil bypasses the step where he is bestowing the skills required for the desired success. A reasonable optimization: skills are harder to come by nowadays than mass stupidity.
And so yet another group has figured out how to profit from piracy. It's now in their best interest for piracy to continue. If they stamp it out their business model fails.
Because if the damages are awards to the musicians "harmed", then the one saying so is now proven wrong.
I guess that TPB will be able to use this to appeal.
That's rather useful, isn't it?
And unlike this suit, the actual victims of smoking cancer don't have to give up their right to sue the tobacco companies.
If they told the courts that they were suing on behalf of the artists, isn't that perjury?
I am just using a proxie so it makes no difference to they will never stop peer to peer its so silly to even think they can shows how much they know about the internet i can name at least 3 ways to get onto the piratebay and im not even good on computers
google translate pirae bays url and translate to spanish
or go to mirror sites
piratebayy.info
piratereverce.net
pirateparty.se
and about 500 more sites being added every day
1st of all stop bashing NIkki Minaj..... the poor girl cant hardly make ends meet..and has resorted to ham smuggling.
If you listen carefully, in between the NPR crap and the Jebus channels, you will find the small 10 and 100 Watt College Radio stations.
Unless there are so many NPR and Jesus stations in a given city that the FCC doesn't have any frequencies below 92 MHz left for a secular college radio station. I seem to remember this being the case in Fort Wayne, Indiana: Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW) wanted to start a radio station, but there wasn't any open frequency.
i think it's worthwhile distinguishing between "listeners whose only exposure to new music is drive time radio" and "listeners who are reachable by other means". having redefined our target listeners as the latter group [...] where exactly are these other listeners reachable?
And how many of these other listeners are there? Before fully committing to the latter, we also need to compare the size of the former with the size of the latter in order to rule out the latter being so microscopic that it is an edge case not worth serving, much as home theater PC owners are widely considered an edge case not worth serving within the video game market.
Lily Allen (only joking, Lily - you're no superstar, you're shit).
I think Dan Bull said it a bit more eloquently...
I mean, you, as a major corporatation, don't want to deal with *artists* or *authors*, who are notoriously difficult to handle, and have their own opinions[1], and want a real share of the profits[2], you want "content creators", who produce work for pay, and can be easily replaced, like any packages boy band, girl band, or whatever.....
mark
1. For example, as a corporation, you might have deals with airlines....
2.
Let's try this again: footnote 2: http ://www.janisian.com/reading/internet.php
mark "gotta be some way to add a link"
Rihanna? Seriously? Her autotuned nasal dronings make my ears bleed. Yet another godawful urban yodeller spouting dreary, overproduced shit.
Not that Micky Minj ( acheap knockoff of Lady Gaga) is any better.
covering behind the artists when trying to cover the "loss" allegedly caused by pirates, doesn't mean that the artists will get any money. Well of course not. It has never been the intention to reward the artists - they're just a necessary evil in the money making music business industry. The people running the business is only interested in the money - not the artists and their rights.
Well, all this does is make me want to pirate more.
Actually the artist usually has to buy those discs from the label, at a price that includes those markups. Or at least so I gather when I've asked bands about it.