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Feature:The Empire Strikes Back
The music industry claims to be re-taking control of the distribution of digital music, after battering by MP3's, rogue bands selling music directly on the Net, the posting of of music files online and on-line audio sites with vast archives and libraries.
Don't bet on it.
The music industry claims to be beating back the Mp3 revolution and regaining control of the sale and distribution of music.
In recent weeks, music industry executives have begun telling the media that they are moving out of the piracy era back into a more "legitimate" - that is to say outrageously monopolistic -- marketplace.
Translation: The Revolution is Over.
But saying so doesn't make it so. Music traffic on websites, ICQ and Hotline, and via private e-mail, suggests this is a fairy tale spun for the benefit of gullible journalists and middle-class consumers.
Five major record labels - Sony, Universal, Warner, BMC and EMI - dominate the $40 billion global music business, outside of the country of Colombia perhaps the world's largest cartel. They control 85 per cent of recorded music sales in the United States.
In recent years, these labels have been caught completely off guard by the Mp3-led Net-based music revolution that permitted music lovers and consumers to acquire for free the music they wanted rather than the expensive CD's the record companies decided they should buy. The companies have also panicked at bands selling music directly over the Net, and on-line audio sites carrying ever bigger archives and libraries.
At first, the industry responded with bluster, confusion and its hallmark greed.
But the Empire has now struck back. The labels have gone to war against free digital music, lobbying colleges to shut down free music sites, threatening legal action against pirate websites, and using their music libraries and stars as weapons to persuade high-tech companies to cooperate with efforts to encrypt and control the digital distribution of music. They say they're winning.
"Eighteen months ago, people in the tech community told me I was crazy to think we could develop an on-line music business" that protects copyright, Hilary B. Rosen of the Recording Industry of America told the New York Times this week. Another music industry analyst said last week that the five major labels had come together re-assert control of cyberspace, banding together for their "collective good."
Whatever takes control of digital distribution, assuming anyone can, you can bet that the collective good of the record companies isn't the same as yours.
Industry executives claim the their recently-adopted Secure Digital Music Initiative, in which recording, technology and consumer electronic companies agreed to standards for protecting music copyrights in on-line music sales, will turn the tide.
In addition to bombarding free music websites with "cease-and-desist" letters from lawyers, shutting down 2,000 of them, according to the record companies, the music companies have spent more than $1 million on a campaign enlisting colleges to join the crackdown and persuade students not to trade pirated music. The companies say more than 200 schools have pledged to try and stop students from using campus computers or Net connections to copy recordings.
The industry is scrambling to clamp down on free online music before fall, when the major labels will begin putting their libraries online. It wants protection in place for the Christmas shopping season, when portable digital players are expected to sell through the roof.
The record companies strategy is clear enough. If the middle-class consumers pouring online get into the habit of buying music on the Web and listening to it on digital players, the companies hope they can break the cycle of free and shared music developed by kids - especially geek and college kids - in the past several years.
It isn't clear whether these industry claims are true or not.
But the reality of music distribution online suggests they aren't. The trading of songs via ICQ and Hotline and e-mail attachments, according to anybody's personal observation, and to music-loving geeks, is continuing to explode.
"That's complete BS," said one Boston geek of the industry's claims. "I've gotten 200 MP3's in the past week. You could shut down 2,000 music sites, and you wouldn't put a dent in the traffic. Not only are there thousands, but they can simply re-form and re-name themselves. The morph, form different nodes. Letters from lawyers are a joke."
And 200 colleges is a fraction of the country's schools. Nor is it clear how deeply the colleges want to get involved in policing campus websites and Net connections, a loser of a mission if ever there was one.
A Chicago music lover e-mailed me that goes on one of the messaging boards nightly where he uses "click-referrals," -- spotters online get a small amount of money - about 25 cents - to steer music buyers to websites where they can get music for little money or for free. [I went on a half-dozen Sunday night]. Countless Web sites were operating openly, along with plenty of individual traders, and all were blissfully unaware of any music industry crackdown.
"Some of the hot places are the messaging boards," e-mailed JE, who ran a free music-trading site until a few months ago. "There are millions of people in ICQ and Hotlines and those guys [the record companies] are nuts if they think they're going to stop this with a few letters and some bullshit propaganda campaigns to colleges. The idea that the websites have vanished is utterly bogus."
The battle between music lovers and the recording industry has enormous economic and political significance for other businesses and institutions.
The core issues are really choice and price, and whether individuals can take back some creative power and influence for the mega-corporations that now control American culture, from music to broadcasting to publishing. Before Mp3's, people had no option but to buy CD's, which invariably include songs they didn't want as well as songs they did. The big labels have also exerted a near total monopoly on the development of new artists, a practice the online distribution of music has also shattered.
In the United States, the five labels sell $14 billion worth of music every year. Small wonder kids rebelled and began downloading the music they wanted.
The industry hasn't responded by offering music lovers greater choice - cheaper recorders, more artists, say, or customized CD's sold in smaller, less expensive units. They're reacted mostly by working to preserve their greedy monopoly.
The MP3, like the TV zapper, has turned out to be an intensely political bit of technology. Zappers and switchers permitted TV watchers to take control of their sets back from the three networks that monopolized TV programming for half-a-century. People could make choices about what they wanted to watch, and were no longer forced to choose from the tepid offerings of three networks.
MP3's have done the same for people who listen to music. For the television and music industries -- and for many other businesses to come -- things won't ever be the same, not matter how many press releases come pouring out of corporate offices.
This is an issue many people online feel passionately about. The music companies aren't fighting to preserve artistic control of intellectual property, as they claim, but their monopoly over a fantastically lucrative -- and monopolistic -- chunk of pop culture. Logically, the ability to music listeners to record and distribute music digitally seems far ahead of the means to encrypt and control it. The industry claims that after the initial shock caused by the spread of free music digitally, it's regained the upper hand.
Don't buy it. Their propaganda is a lot more effective than their technology. These myopic pronouncements suggest the record companies haven't yet gotten the real import of interactive technologies like the zapper and the MP3: people are used to participation and choice. And they aren't like to give either up.
Yeah, CDs when they came out in the 80's were overpriced, but they were supposed to come down to be cheaper than tapes once everyone adopted the format and the early adopters paid for the R&D. Well... guess what.... the record companies found out that people will pay a lot for music they like and can't get any other way, and they got greedy off the profits. The price of CDs kept falling, we can see this because in the past few years, CD-Rs which cost more than a pressed CD, has gone from $10/cd down to about $1/cd. I don't even want to think what Sony pays for a pressed CD. They see their cash cow being slain by the mp3 and they are scared. Believe it, they are scared. Their way of life is about to change forever. Just assume for a minute that an established artist like the Beastie Boys fulfills their contract, then decides to offer their latest songs on mp3, cutting out the record company completely? What if everyone follows suit?
The record companies are trying to push SDMI on Mom and Pop who probably don't know a damn thing about where to find mp3s, but they will also be disillusioned when they find out they accidently deleted their song they "bought" or that they can't listen to it anywhere but the PC they downloaded it to (because they lack the knowledge to transfer it anywhere else). The record companies really need to buy a clue and realize what's going on. The profits they have enjoyed for the past 10 years are gone. The control they had over the marketplace is gone. The sooner they realize this, the better off they will be. I don't mind paying for a CD, and in fact, I'd rather have something tangible to display on my shelf, and some pretty cover art to go along with it. But I won't pay $18 for that privledge. CDs have reached a price where they are no longer affordable. For now, I'll download what I want and delete it when I'm tired of it. If I really really like it (I don't want to delete it), I'll go buy it. I don't mind that. But, I'd buy a lot more if they would sell them at a reasonable price.
Like the TV remote-control, MP3 technology gives people choice. Of course, the bulk of people don't want choice - they want convenience. And who can blame them? If we all exercised personal judgement and choice in every area of our lives, we'd have no time for anything but deciding what we want. For any given person, there are maybe two or three areas about which they care sufficiently much that they actually want to exercise those choices.
In other words, even if the music industry's legal apparatus does NOTHING to stop "piracy", the majority of people will STILL buy CD's in record stores, simply because it's less time and effort intensive than downloading MP3's or burning copies of discs.
Industry experts were worried for a long time that sales of VCR's and TV's with remotes would axe commercial revenues for TV. Did they? No: they just increased sales in the home video department - of movies which people would have no trouble copying illegally.
Even if the entire world miraculously came to its senses and scaled back copy-"rights" for creators, there would probably STILL be a booming market for the music industry to package and sell works by consumers' favourite artists in attractive boxes, gathered together in a convenient store.
I think it was an older article on Slashdot which prompted this notion, but I can't find a source, so I'll rephrase it:
This is the saddest part. Information doesn't "want" to be free; it is free. It's the humans who aren't prepared to deal with this.How come every fucking moron quotes the price of the media not the price to produce?
As I understand it, the artist is expected to pay for the production out of the ~10% royalty on the sales of the CDs. Where'd the other ~90% of the money go?
As a programmer, I guess I should charge everyone $1 for my custom work
If you were a professional musician, that's about what you'd get for your custom work, $1 per CD.
A couple of weeks ago I went to the Glastonbury festival, where it always strikes me: there are some *really good* unsigned bands. Sure, there are plenty of *bad* unsigned bands, but there are also plenty of bad *signed* bands too.
MP3 gives these bands a chance to distributed their work without involving big record companies, and although it will take time, I'm hoping that this will become a mainstream source of legitimate music. I don't really approve of leeching commercial CDs onto MP3, because it paints MP3 as "just" a means to piracy.
One reason it's easy to find music you like on CD, is that there is a huge infastructure of magazines, radio shows, web sites etc all dedicated to reviewing and publicising new music. At the moment legit MP3s are not a part of that system.
There's a certain class of radio DJ, who I'll call the "independent DJ" - the BBC's John Peel is one of them, I'm sure there are plenty in the US - who choose their own playlists, and get sent dozens of recordings every week from which they choose what to play; I really hope that these people discover MP3 as a medium, so that instead of saying "That was Foo and you can get the CD from Bar records, 117 suburban street, Leeds", they'll say "That one isn't available on CD, but the site with the MP3 is linked from this show's website". It'll happen. Eventually.
And when that happens, I'm pretty sure that many of the bands *I* want to listen to, won't even *want* to sign to a record company.
--
The law has very little to do with morality. A law changes when it becomes more expensive to maintain the law than to change or drop it. Either the enforcement is abandoned and the law forgotten (so-called "blue laws"), or citizens openly flout the law and it is eventually changed (remember the 55 mph U.S. speed limit?).
The 1995 situation with respect to music distribution and record-label monopoly power is founded on copyright law. The record companies are not about to get together and change that law to our favour, and I'd be really surprised if the U.S. congress breaks their tradition of putting big companies' interests first. If we want music in Y2K to look different than 1995, copyright law must change - and we will have to change it ourselves.
One could make a good case for mp3 "piracy" as a legitimate form of civil disobedience. There's a long tradition of deliberately breaking bad laws in order to demonstrate their absurdity. Modern copyright law is certainly absurd; it's unenforceable and often meaningless.
"Piracy" assumes that current copyright law is valid and should be maintained. I do not agree with this assumption.
-Mars
First of all, did we really need an entire Jon Katz article to tell us that the RIA trying to crack down on MP3? What's wrong? Was it a slow news day or something? Is there some reason why Jon Katz is so much more qualified to write this stuff than Rob Malda?
Secondly, much as I think that MP3's are great and the recording industry is fairly evil, why does Jon Katz mince words? Let's face it-- the crackdown is against pirated music being distributed over the 'net. The lawsuit against Rio was BS, surely-- a blatant crackdown against MP3 itself-- but forcibly shutting down many music sites amounts to cracking down on pirated music. Technically, there's really nothing wrong with doing so. That's why they're called _illegal_ copies. So, impotent as this "crackdown" is, why doesn't Katz just call the sites with "free music" what they are? Sites with "pirated" music.
Also, I would bet pretty heavily that most of the people trading and downloading this "free music" are part of the same "middle class consumers" that Katz simultaneously criticizes as tools of the recording industry.
-Dean
John Katz is correct in his assertion that the RIAA (the organization that represents the major labels) is trying desperately to take control of music distribution over the internet. He is also correct in implying that the MP3 music format is part of a revolution that could, if we play our cards right, topple over the stranglehold that the "big 5" have had on music distribution in the United States and all over the world.
Where he is entirely wrong, however, is in the assertion that the sites the RIAA are targeting are in any way associated with this new revolution.
Pirate music sites are nothing new, have been nothing new, and will be nothing new. Nothing that they do will ever have any appreciable affect on the music industry, and anyone who believes so is just buying into the RIAA's propaganda. The RIAA likes to use pirate sites as their straw man because they can't touch the real threat: the musicians and web sites that post MP3s of music that are 100% legal.
As a musician who posts his music on the internet in the MP3 format, I am much more of a threat to the RIAA than a ripped & encoded pirated copy of anything put out by Nine Inch Nails.
Sure, NIN is a lot more popular and well known than the Baptist Death Ray. Sure, NIN is sought after and will be downloaded more than the Baptist Death Ray. But the Baptist Death Ray and other artists with similar beliefs are setting up a dangerous precident: that it's OK for the artist, not a record label, to decide who is allowed to download what music. And that the artist, not the record label, can take full responsibility of his/her product.
Of course, the RIAA can't force musicians to go to labels, can't force musicians to relinquish their rights to their music, so they claim they are trying to protect their artists from piracy. Bull. They are trying to protect the industry from the Baptist Death Ray, Bruce Satinover, Mickey Dean and his Talking Guitar, MadelynIris, and every other musician who wilingly, of their own volition, and more importantly legally releases their music in the MP3 format for free download and distribution.
The RIAA has been targeting sites of pirated music and forcing the site maintainers to shut them down. Whoopee. What they can't do, and what will really bring them down if this takes off, is make me and my comerades-in-arms stop releasing music under the MP3 format.
Chris Wright
the Baptist Death Ray
Baptist Death Ray on MP3.com
Baptist Death Ray on AMP3.com
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
I wrote this on a local mailing list sometime ago, I think it's relevant to this:
My guess is that the record companies are going to change. if they will not they will die. This will not take place in the immediate timeframe, but in a space of, five- ten years. definitely. The analogy I an thinking of is what happened with the music sheet printing industry..
Before recorded media was common place (phonographs) the biggest music industry players ware printing companies who made sheet music for musicians. a lot of people had pianos and other musical instruments so they used to by the latest music as sheets of paper with the staff notes.. (singles..) and books of their favorite composers work (albums..) with recorded media it took some time, but eventually the printed music industry has become irrelevant in relation to the recorded
media industry. The interesting thing is that the music did become more accessible as a result: you didn't have to know how to read notes and play the piano/violin/whatever to enjoy music, you could just by the new record stick it in your phonograph and enjoy.
The MP3 revolution (basicly electronic distribution revolution of which the MP3 is the killer application) is doing the same in a roundabout way. it's not making music more accesible to consumers. It's making the CHOICE of music more accessible to consumers : more musicians can release music then ever before since it's cheaper and more convenient to do so via the traditional routes (via record company).
Artist are free to do the kind of music they want to do with out pressure of record companies to make music which is "easy to sell". everyone wins. especially the consumer: again: in a free market the key is choice!
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wrong. AFAIK most musicians LOOSE money from record deals.
The useal deal is that the artists gets an advance to produce a recording, from the record company. He pays it back from the money he profits from the record sales - that is HIS CUT OF THE PROFITS! arround 10%.
care to do the math again?
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Alternatively, if there's a CD with a few songs you like, send money to the artist directly for each MP3 you store. And don't redistribute them indiscriminately.
That's what I'd do.
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
I mean really, of course you're going to lie, cheat, and fight against anything that you see as taking money away from your pockets.
They can see the beginning of the end this Christmas season. As Jon says, those Rio's and other MP3 players will fly off the shelves this year. This is gonna be one of those times when the music industry is going to have to make what we want, not what they want to shove down our throats.
And I can't wait. They can still make money with MP3, just like Red Hat and others can make money with a "free" OS like Linux. They will just have to change their tactics. I think this whole thing will be better for us, and the artists.
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Basically, the only people to benefit from Music piracy are people who copy - individually, individual gain from somebody elses work. This surely flies in the face of causes such as Free Software or Open Source? Becuase in this situation, the originator suffers - sucky eh?
I think this may have been brought up before with regards to software "piracy", but just because someone pirates a song/album does not necessarily mean that someone is losing out. This does not legitimize piracy, but claiming that it is inherently harmful to "the originator" is not correct. In fact, it could be beneficial to the originator. Say I get an MP3 from someone, I like the sound of it and buy the entire CD.
To address your point about free software... Every time you boot up your linux machine you're benefiting from someone else's work (at no cost to you, for that matter). Furthermore, you're allowed to distribute unlimited copies without compensating the originator. The only difference (besides that whole against-the-law stuff) is that artists (or more specifically, the record label) generally don't give their permission for you to do so without compensating them.
I don't know about the rest of you all, but I actually have bought more CD's since I started collecting MP3's. Generally it goes that I'll hear one or two good songs, off the CD, and then decide that I want to buy the album to support the artist.
"Protect our intellectual property!", screams the recording industry.
"Stop ripping us of with overpriced recordings!", replies the Annoyed Consumer.
The interesting thing is... it can actually happen this way. I've seen it. Granted... not in the US. The law does not allow for it.
I spent some time in Saudi Arabia a few years back. There's nothing like a shoping trip at the local Saudi mall and/or shopping district to give you an "Old World Bizzare" kind of feel. One of the interesting things was that the Saudis (at least at that time - this is changing as I understand it) did not recognize International copyrights. As you can imagine, this lead to stores who's main traffic were copied software and music tapes.
The tapes were cheap. They came in all genres of music. And they often included "extra tracks" of that artist's music, or perhapse a simular artist. The recording quality was OK, but the tape itself and its packaging were inexpesively done.
While these "pirate" stores were common, the amazing thing was to see stores selling "legitimate" recordings too (sometimes at the same store). The label-produced recordings were more expensive, but I noted that they weren't MUCH more expensive. And the big selling point? Quality. The legitimate tapes were better quality in both recording as well as materials.
Quality production and a competative price allowed intellectual property holders to sell their wares even in a marketplace that allowed copies of those same products to be sold cheaper.
Now... this isn't to say that intelectual property laws are wrong. I'm certainly not advocating dropping these laws and spawning a "legitimate" piracy industry. Instead, I think the interesting thing to note was that legitimate products CAN sell against cheap knock-offs IF the legitimate version offers additional value.
In our case, a cheaper CD may remove the economical insentive to overlook convenience, quality, and legality lacking in pirated music. It's worked elsewhere.
The cd's are more popular than cassettes and therefore they can charge more in good capitalist ethic. The royalties they give the actual artist are a pittance for all but the highest sold artists.
That they think that their new format for music and/or legal action against mp3 sites is just not realistic. Free music for the taking, and they think they can police the net for *mp3, HA!
This is the downfall of the music monopoly.
I see the future of music being that the artist sells either albums or mp3s off of a site like mp3.com or off of their direct website.
However, in defense of what the music industry is doing right now... We are all stealing property by downloading mp3s that we don't own the cds for. This hurts the artists, the record companies, and us as consumers by raising the prices for the albums we do buy.
I'll admit, I trade mp3s, my friends do, business partners trade with me for songs, it's everywhere. I try to make it a point to buy cd's that i really like, but with the massive amounts of music out there for the taking, who can say no to free music?
We are all at fault who have a mp3 collection, but i'd suggest buying music when you can to support artists, especially good independent ones. Sure i don't buy all the music i have an mp3 for, but i do still buy cds.
Support the cause, buy Linux apps/games, buy Music from online vendors, help development.
We are all geeks, just admit it and get on with your life.
With the ridiculous prices of CD's nowadays, is it any wonder that mp3's are booming? I was at the local Tower Records this past Monday for the first time in about a year, and I don't plan on going back for another year. Their regular price for CD's is $18.99! Typically the CD's are about 45 - 50 minutes long, which translates out to a rip off. Why buy a CD when you can just get the one or two songs you want off the net? Small wonder artists are starting to put their songs on the net. With the high prices no one buys the CD's and so the labels keep upping the price. It's a vicious loop with the artists and customers getting screwed. I laugh at the thought of the labels shutting down illegal music sites. 2000 sites shut down to date is a mere blip. Hardly noticeable at all. Good luck major record labels! You're screwing yourself!
According to what I've been reading, it's SDMI players, not MP3 players, that'll be rolling off Wal-mart's shelves this Christmas. Diamond Multimedia has announced that they'll support means to suppress piracy (if only to stave off lawsuits). The five record companies have untold gobs of money to spend, and they are fighting for their stock-holding lives right now. They're cleverly going straight to the colleges to try and stamp out the enlightenment going on. Watch out for the record industry, 'cause I have a feeling they're going to give Mp3 a run for it's money (or lack of it).
Remember, people are tech-stupid. They'll shell out for "Easier Digital Music".
Wah!
The Music Industry differs a bit from the software industry. The actual musicians get but a small cut of profits, the rest goes to the companies coffers.
...Student, Artist, Techie - Geek *
I'm all for avoiding getting ripped off, but I kinda feel for the Artists.
I'm pretty happy to use "free" Microsoft products - well, as happy as one can be when using MS stuff! But I always feel a little guilty if I copy a song.
Yes, we're being ripped off, yes CD's are overpriced, yes... erm, yes - the phone went... I've forgot. But if we could somehow get lower prices and ensure the artist gets a fair cut, then I'd be happy.
I'm completely hypocritical in saying this (in respect of my HD contents), but Piracy is theft.
I dunno what to say to justify my saying this, but... Don't be sitting there, smugly grinning, knowing you have 1000's of MP3s on your system. Instead, sit there, safe in the knowledge that the big companies are ripping of you, me, the artists, the vendors. Everyone.
Basically, the only people to benefit from Music piracy are people who copy - individually, individual gain from somebody elses work. This surely flies in the face of causes such as Free Software or Open Source? Becuase in this situation, the originator suffers - sucky eh?
And yes, I am a musician... kinda shows huh?
Mong. Apologising for his disjointed argument.
* Paul Madley
*...Slacker, Artist, Techie - Geek *
Remember: Nothing is Cool.