Canadian Recording Industry Ass'n Lets DJs use MP3s

Yannick writes "Wired is reporting that Canadian [mobile] DJs are now (legally) permitted to use MP3s in their 'performances'. Seems that there's CA$200 cover charge (and further fees per additional hard disk). The whole thing has some interesting implications for the music industry in general..."

Comments

RIAA & MP3s

[Chemical Serenity]

The RIAA doesn't have a problem with mp3's per se, just what people are doing with them.

I'm working on a project right now to stream .mp3s while remaining in RIAA guidelines (quite a steaming pile of some nasty-ass legalese... I've been on the phone with them and my contractor's lawyer more than a few times trying to get it all straight).

What appears to be the RIAA's biggest worry (as evidenced by thier legal stuffies) is not that people have .mp3s, or even that they're broadcasting them over the net (or at a party or dance or whatever), but that their use is allowing people to bypass buying CDs. Take, for example, this snippit from the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (one of the documents one must adhere to for compliance), which states:

Sound recording performance complement. A Webcaster may not play in any three-hour period (1) more than three songs from a particular album, including no more than two consecutively, or (2) four songs by a particular artist or from a boxed set, including no more than three consecutively.

This is designed so that people can't simply set up a recording device of some sort and 'recreate' an album just by tuning in an pushing the button with the red dot. Other entries in there also seem geared towards non-copying things (some outright, others more hidden).

Under the circumstances, it seems pretty unlikely that DJs using mp3s in the field are going to be doing so for copying/trading purposes, so the RIAA probably wouldn't really give much of a care... and even if they did, the ability to police every kegger, rave and school dance is an impracticality of enormous proportions.

BTW - The site is at www.quicktracks.com. Please note that in its current incarnation we're *not* compliant. I'm working on that software right now, so the beastie will be up and down a bit over the next week or so as I poke at it.

--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)

Red flags, trains, cars, horses and evolution

[Morgaine]

You've got it back to front I think. Despite throwing the occasional olive branch as in this case, the RIAA has a massive problem with MP3s, because they're fighting for their very survival, even more so than the musicians. There are a lot of possible scenarios for the future of the music industry in which the RIAA ceases to exist utterly, along with the studios that they represent.

Their current actions are like the red flags that pressure groups walked in front of locomotives, and their mega-industry is every bit as collosal as the one that used to be centred on the horse for transport and which now does not exist at all except in tiny niches. The lesson of history is that even the most extensive and solid of institutions is not as permanent as it may seem in its heyday.

In the case of music, that impermanence couldn't be more clear. Before the invention of recording, it wasn't possible to make money from replication of musical performances. Then recording was invented but replication required massive plants and capital, which created the opportunity for an industry to be born and collosal profits to be made. And now the wheel of technological progress has turned again: replication can be performed by anyone and costs almost nothing, and the window of opportunity for making profits from it has closed again.

Despite their self-righteous rationalizations, there is no law of nature that says that the music industry will always be as lucrative as it has been for the last few decades. There are no fixed points where technology is concerned, and MP3s are a sign of that. This newest chapter in the empowerment of individuals effectively means that the time for massive profits from replication and controlled distribution is over, that the RIAA is in the throes of extinction or at least severe mutation, and that the relationship between musicians and their audience is in transition. And so be it.

Bye bye RIAA. No one really expects you to die quietly, but die you will, just like other prehistoric giants who were too set in their ways to adapt to changing conditions. And that's not a bad analogy, because once again it's those pesky little creatures underfoot that are in the ascendency.