I worked at a record label for the better part of the 90's and our licensing department had a hell of a time dealing with sample clearances.
The bottom line is this: there are a few artists who it is just 'known' that you are never going to ever in a billion years be allowed to sample, for any reason whatsoever:
#1: The Beatles #2: The Rolling Stones
Probably numerous other ones. To further clarify: we're mostly talking 'Lennon and McCartney' Beatles. They as songwriters have always been pretty firm about it: not allowed. So the label / publishing companies always enforce this. Contrary to what this discussion is heading into, the label would be bound by whatever Paul McCartney would prefer rather than whatever the label would prefer, and this is likely due to the unbelievably unique position The Beatles hold in the annals of pop music. Even if the label felt it was a great idea, they'd still mostly have to go back to Lennon's estate (ie: Yoko) and Mr. McCartney just to be sure.
You can bet that the remaining members have likely heard this recording, not just the label reps.
I hate the way music publishing works. My favorite examples:
How many recent (say 1980's forward) movies which take place in the 60's can you name that *ever* contain a Beatles recording? Specifically a Lennon/McCartney recording? The Big Chill bases itself in 60's motown but apparently they desperately wanted Beatles galore in it. No go.
Ferris Beuller's Day Off. No soundtrack recording has ever been released for this film and when I worked in music stores I can tell you: people wanted it. No go again, licensing was prohibitively expensive.
Speaking as someone who worked in record stores for over ten years, I can tell you: the issue becomes one of the in-store service meeting the claims of the store's slogan. Any chain that claims to have the "biggest selection" of something had better have the staff to weed through it all. In pretty much every store I worked at, I was the only person who knew anything about classical, jazz, and obscure pop or alternative recordings. It got tiresome because out of a staff of dozens I was run off my feet trying to answer all these ridiculous questions from suits who basically wanted to gab about how elite their record collection was. I am thankful every day for the invention of napster et al for the very reason that now nothing is "obscure." Nothing is "limited edition" anymore. Two searches and you're probably able to find whatever it is. If you really need the physical CD, good luck finding anyone who knows how to find it. Not just music either. (Try rare books. Even harder finding anyone who knows their sh*t.)
Anyway my point is yes it's an issue, but I'm not sad to see record stores go away. Add in the fact that anything truly worth purchasing ends up being something you have to special order anyway and I might as well stick with Amazon from now on. Which I do.:)
If Virgin Megastore wants to continue to claim they have the "hugest collection of anything musical on earth", they should step up to the plate and hire people who know more than six months' worth of musical artists. That and pay them for their knowledge (something else that won't happen.)
The same holds true for a Future Shop / Best Buy etc. for electronics. What's the point of claiming you're the "HDTV headquarters" when nobody on the staff even knows what that is?
Is that illegal? After all he's not 'threatening' the spammer, he's merely presenting an offer he was pretty sure this guy was asking to receive. And besides: He can certainly "opt-out" at any time by choosing not to spam...;)
Paying for copyrighted music is a lot like paying for a cab ride. Both are transient events which serve a basic purpose which it is arguable is beneficial to society. Both are now considered woefully overpriced. If I take a ride in a cab, and I don't pay for it: I'm called a thief even though I have not physically stolen anything. I still derived the experience of riding in the cab and beyond that it served me the purpose of getting from point a to point b. Beyond that, it did deprive the "creator" of my cab ride (the driver) from earning a decent living off of the activity of driving his or her cab. If someone figured out a way to duplicate the experience of having a cab ride and gave it away for free it's questionable whether there would be as much public outcry.
If I "steal" music it amounts to exactly the same thing. People equate downloading as being insignificant to the lives of musicians, since they must all be super rich drug-taking cristal-sipping megalomaniacs. In the case of maybe 1% of all musicians that may be true, just as it may be true that 1% of all cab drivers are somehow also living a very decadent and overblown existence (though that could probably be proven otherwise.) The fact is: it costs money to record, it costs money to buy instruments, computers, DJ setups, mixers, microphones, etc. It costs money to learn how to operate all that stuff. It costs money to hire someone who already knows how to operate all that stuff if you don't know how. It would similarly cost me more money to buy a car than it would to pay for a cab ride.
My point: Copyright may be flawed but it is there for a reason. Simply because someone does something creative versus tangible and otherwise contributional to society does not mean it is not worth something, or more importantly that it didn't cost anything in the first place. Even if I make a set of recordings and give them away (which I have done,) it doesn't mean it didn't cost me money or effort. It does. How much that is worth to somebody is a matter of very real debate. I agree that CD's are overpriced but I also agree that copyright in its current form is deeply flawed. One cannot look at any record contract without thinking that immediately. Many clauses remain there to uphold literally hundred-year-old concepts like player pianos and shellac 78's. The record industry definitely had this battle coming. It doesn't mean that anyone is justified in ripping them off.
Whether it's actually a good / reasonable idea having someone formerly in charge of the ATF move over to a racket like the RIAA is definitely a good question.
As far as I can tell, this story and the CTV story from Friday [slashdot.org] are the same story. What SOCAN appears to be doing is using a loophole.
They are indeed.
I responded to the previous posting (on the earlier story) stating how out to lunch thsis concept is. It seems even moreso now.
I'm reminded of the comparison made in the book "Being Digital" (Nicolas Negroponte) about the move from atoms to bits. It seems to me that no long-term association whose job it's been to protect atoms all this time (SOCAN, ASCAP, other publishing royalty nd performing rights organizations) has ever actually made the leap to bits. By that I mean: they understand that physical goods are purchasable (CD's, Cassettes, etc.) They understand that radio waves are licensable (Radio, TV, then Cable, etc.) They can't get their head around bits.
If these regulators were dealing in the physical world, they'd have no trouble making the distinction between radio waves and physical CD's. Piece of cake. But streaming audio versus a downloaded file? Same thing to them. They see no difference. If someone told you that in order to enter a CD store that might be playing music, you would have to pay an admission fee, you would think that was ridiculous. And it is. Because the whole point is that they're selling CD's. Yet they want us to believe that in order to use the internet - a "place" (of sorts) where one could buy or download music (legally or otherwise,) or listen to audio streams which were already provided by traditional radio firms (or others, thanx to Shoutcast,) we'll now have to pay the equivalent of an admission fee to do so. This on top of the fact that everybody has to pay for internet access in the first place, and that most providers of internet service are in one way or another already owners of broadcast facilities, meaning that the copyright holders are already being paid anyway! (Blanket performance rights licenses typically cover any usage in the broadcast medium. I think it would be arguable that internet, as a subsidiary of a broadcasters holdings, should count. They charge for the service, part of that charge is going back into paying for a SOCAN or ASCAP, etc. blanket license.)
Get these geriatrics out of our legal affairs. Get someone who actually uses these services in there instead. Get someone with a clue. Please. Somebody.
Makes me want to go and make some kind of "consumer's statement" at wherever they're holding this thing. Crazy bad.
SOCAN is the Canadian equivalent of ASCAP or BMI. Performance Rights royalties. ie: any public performances of a copyrighted work.
The model which was created for radio, we're talking back in the 1920's here, was that radio stations apply for licenses to be able to play copyrighted works over the airwaves. All well and good. It means that radio - for the consumer who's listening to it - remains "free," since the stations are the ones paying for the music itself.
What SOCAN is asking for here is the equivalent of asking a record store - a place where a consumer already pays for recorded music - to also pay this licensing fee. Which is retarded. Unless they are limiting this only to single hosts who provide ONLY streaming audio (which they are not) I could see it. An entire ISP which may or may not be carrying audio files, audio streams, etc.: that's ridiculous.
Canada's government - and the governments of other media-producing countries - require someone under the age of 75 in these organizations (and the legal community) to speak to both the legal and technological aspects of the changing nature of music distribution. Continuing to apply this nearly two-century-old model to something as "new" as streaming and file downloads is just stupid.
if you really think a living room is a better recording environment, I'd like to hear the argument.
How about anything Stone Temple Pilots has recorded since Purple? They set up in a three storey house in San Bernadino with a full acoutrement of mics and baffles, etc., but no extreme soundproofing was ever done. Apparently (and I can't find any articles online but Mix magazine did an interview with Brendan O'Brien about it at the time) very few overdubs were done on the Purple and Tiny Music cd's. The No. 4 cd did involve more post-beds overdubs. The band still prefers to record in an organic environment. O'Brien in particular is a proponent of setting up wherever the artist is comfortable.
All of Johnny Cash's work with Rick Rubin has been done at his home in the southern US. It's a shack. Rubin comes in with a very small setup (at one point it was strictly a DAT machine and three mics) and hits record. He captures everything that way. He set up in an abandoned house with the Chili Peppers for Blood Sugar Sex Magik - again: with not much in terms of sound reinforcement or overall noise reduction. Yes it's a million dollar studio setup but I mean... Get over it. People do this all the time. They continue to do so. This is the cool part of small technology.
I do agree about the mics but I think numerous artists and producers would argue the point about soundproofing and absolutely "requiring" a studio to do a "professional" recording.
I think it's very important to realize that literally any record since multitracking was invented has had some form of tinkering done to it. That would be anything since around 1957 or so. Yes the norm was still "live takes" (especially for jazz and early rock and roll.) But artists from Frank Sinatra to Ella Fitzgerald to Elvis Presley to Glenn Gould (who pioneered the editing of his performances in lieu of live performances and single complete takes) has edited in their parts. It gets ridiculous when you look at the modern examples where literally every pop and (especially) country vocalist is being auto-tuned to death. It makes any recordings previous to 1998 sound amateur, even the extremely professional ones. The same is true of beat / tempo correction.
Personally: I'm finding it more and more difficult to listen to an artist like Led Zeppelin as much in comparison to some of the newer rock releases simply because it heightens the attention I pay to how sloppy some of the drumming was, or how pitchy certain vocal takes were. That's what's sad to me. I have no problem with some 12 year old potential mozart never having touched a piano. That's still creative to me. I don't even have a problem with the Britney / NSync / Backstreet phenomenon. It's new. It's not necessarily brilliant but not much else before it could ever have been created in the same way. I don't much care about why it was done or who made the decision to market it in such a big way. Nor do most consumers.
It's often mentioned that Sgt. Pepper's is a good example of creativity in conjunction with technology. In its day that was the closest example to all of the tools the average person could have in their homes right now. Basic synthesizers and samplers (mellotrons and chaimberlains,) editing galore (often individual tracks were spliced out of a multitrack reel) vocel takes at varying pitches, etc. etc. Nobody minded when Queen blew that hugely out of proportion with something like Bicycle Race or Bohemian Rhaphsody. I think most people are mad just because it's so commonplace for someone to get ahold of this technology. That's a catch-22. Most artists have been craving this level of commonality with the technology. Now that it is common: artists get lambasted for using it. Damned if you do / damned if you don't.
When an artist can pull of what I'm hearing on a CD in a small club with basic equipment: that's a statement. Technology can't make me appreciate that more, only the artistry and finesse can. I think that's true of most people.
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Re:This goes back to the early days of Apple
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Beatles Bite Apple
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· Score: 2, Informative
Owning the copyright to The Beatles' music is not the same as owning the Beatles' record company. Michael Jackson purchased the rights to the songs from Apple Records.
Actually neither of these is true:
Michael Jackson's involvement in the Beatles' music has to do with copyright of the songs, which was owned at the time (1987 - 1989) by ATV music. ATV as a company sold all the rights to the Beatles actual songs to Michael Jackson (or rather, a company he ran.) There was furious bidding for this which also involved Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono. Jackson's company won it. For a long time afterward nothing was actually done with the ATV catalogue. It's important to note that ATV only owned the songs penned by Lennon / McCartney, none of George Harrison's songs are in that catalogue.
Also of interest: ATV owns numerous other artists works, not just the Beatles.
This site has a really good breakdown of who owned what before the purchase, and what it all means.
http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/jackson.htm
My point: NONE OF THIS has anything to do with Apple Corps., which was a record label and not a publishing company. Apple Corps. is still a functioning company, they just released the DVD version of the Beatles Anthology TV series. Very much alive and well (and making billions of dollars.)
I know so many people who made this decision months ago. Even major magazines (Entertainment Weekly and Wired, most recently) have had little sidebars about how ridiculous this situation has become.
My favorite quote of the year:
Perhaps on the rare occasion pursuing the right course demands an act of piracy, piracy itself can be the right course? -- Governor Swann Pirates of the Caribbean
And that movie had a trailer before it about not pirating movies.:)
At the rate their sales are dropping, no matter whether anyone thinks it's 100% due to downloading or not, they will be seeing 50% loss of sales inside of the next five years. As far as I'm concerned: if the labels keep allowing the RIAA to represent them by spending their dues on lawsuits like these, they won't be able to afford the mass release (already decreasing) of major label dreck that we've all become so tired of. I look forward to the day when a completely independent artist is able to have a successful single completely without the need of a label or that whole system.
I find it interesting that the RIAA continues the technique of gouging as much as possible from everybody. Entertainment Weekly has a great article in the most recent issue about how the movie industry is down financially over last year, and in itemizing the costs not one mention is ever made about online file swapping. Instead they focused on the obvious: movies are not apealing to people, ticket prices are high, and most major films are opening in more screens than ever. The music industry, which is suffering due to mostly the same obvious reasons, is instead focusing on file swapping as the only reason sales are down.
With the movie industry, whether I agree with how they do things or not (DeCSS, etc.,) at least is willing to admit when other factors are at work. The recording industry: they just want as much money as possible regardless of how they get it. Simply ridiculous.
In response to the question concerning the fact that artists might never see any financial benefit from the recent lawsuit settlements:
...are you suggesting that a royalty dispute between an artist and a label is justification for stealing from both of them? Would you feel free to shoplift a CD from a record store based on that logic? - Matt Oppenheim, RIAA
Of course not: because that still means the label and artist gets the money. The one who doesn't is the retailer. They have to eat that loss, just like they always have when anything is shoplifted. The distributor still gets paid, so therefore (eventually, in a much tinier way) so does the artist.
So basically he's unaware of the methods by which artists already get paid. Nice.:)
This doesn't even broach the topic of record clubs, which generate tons of income for the labels and distributors, but absolutely zero for the artists. Why? They're "promotional copies", given away. Funny how that one is okay since they control it.
I hate the music industry now. I used to love it. It used to be about having more than just "hit" artists. Sure labels had those kinds of cheeseball #1 hit makers, but that allowed them to make mistakes like signing an Elvis Costello or a Bob Dylan, artists who would be dropped before their third album was released if they were signed today.
I support bands by seeing them live. I recommend artists license their works for use in soundtracks or commercials. They shouldn't expect - and probably should never have - to see one thin dime from any label deal based on physical CD's sold. It's a bygone method of income. The industry is doomed by not recognizing that they're the ones who wanted it this way in the first place.
Since a ton of people commented on what was good / bad, etc. I feel its important to note a couple things:
For starters: Any ad on its own (I don't care what kind) is useless unless you have at least three or four other promotional ideas in place. If you have a radio ad, you more than likely want to tie that to a retailer or website where the CD is already available.
If you were expecting pre-orders... I mean.... pre-orders are not where your focus should be. Like at all. Orders, period. Any band that puts money into a radio ad when they don't yet have a finished release already in stores is doomed. Unless that artist is say... Britney Spears / Marilyn Manson, etc. Someone where advance / teaser ads can only be beneficial.
A better approach might have been:
Complete the release and get even single copies into indie stores. Get posters up. Everywhere you can get them up (legally or otherwise.) Play shows. Mention stores that have your cd. Mention websites if you have to but don't take up more than a song's worth of time talking about how available your cd is.
If those three things are in place already, then perhaps that's the time to consider (but not necessarily buy) a radio ad. Radio ads are expensive. Placement of that ad once it's produced is even more expensive. Getting that ad into a better timeslot is even more expensive than that. Personally I think radio is a dead end unless you are the aforementioned Britney / Manson / etc. artist. There is no avenue in major radio for an indie artist, period. I don't listen to radio for that reason. Assuming your music was what I was looking for, you haven't reached me.
That's long winded but it's what I think was missing from this discussion. Don't save up for a single radio ad if you didn't already have at least four or five other marketing items in place.
Good luck though.:)
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P.S. This would be true with or without the RIAA. It's the same in Sweden, Japan, Australia, etc. as it is in the US or Canada. Proper marketing = buzz of any sort.
The first time more than one artist sold anything close to 1 million copies of anything in a first week of sales was 1998 (NSync and Backstreet Boys both did it.) This was a huge deal at the time. Previous to that it was seen as a big deal if any artist was able to sell something over 500,000 copies of anything inside the first week. This was a very concerted effort by the Zomba label to break that record.
BTW: all these figures are US-only. Which makes it an even bigger deal, because when one sees those kind of sales numbers, they tend to assume it's worldwide. The fact that it's not represents a very different sales target focus for the record industry.
We're talking about a hundred-year-old (plus) industry when we talk about the music / record / cd industry. The online purchasing industry is nowhere near as old. So I actually do see that as an important statistic. But that's me. I expect we'll see labels begin pushing for well over 2 million copies of anything sold in the first week once they start factoring in downloaded purchases. (Soundscan monitoring acutal cd purchases *plus* online purchases, etc.)
I'm just happy that it's so in the spotlight about the current state of the industry, and the way things have always run.
My only final retort is that yeah the exchange has been: we only give you a teensy amount of $ because look at all the places we can get your music to the people? But I think even that model is busted, particularly in light of all the label mergers. An artist is much more likely to be dropped after even one single album than to ever get their music in front of enough people to warrant a large-scale record deal. That plus (of course) p2p sharing has obviously exposed more obscure music to worldwide listeners than even the most well-meaning of labels.
The store has to recoup all of that from their markup on the CDs - it's a big markup, but it has a lot of costs to cover.
It was stated several times to me, in several stores, that CD's are not where the stores make their money. They make money when you buy the CD racks and other accessories. They make more off of posters in some cases than they do from CD's. Posters are a surprisingly big business in some regions.
How? Copyright does not make the artists sign those deals. Without the copyright, what money would the artist get from retail CD sales, and how?
Because here's the deal: if you don't sign the deal with the label saying you'll take your piddly 3%, you have to either create your own publishing company and take the *same* piddly 3%. Reason being: mechanical rights organizations are the ones who tell publishers: here's the rate, take it or leave it. Why? Cuz that's mandated by the RIAA.
I'm saying: don't even do a record deal. Make the CD's yourself. Sell the CD's at shows. Play lots of shows. Make money that way. (Several others have said that on/.)
If you must do a deal: do a finished goods deal, where the label buys finished CD's from you and you get 100% of what they pay. You own the master, the label distributes it. However it's up to you to promote.
My point is: the whole system is *still* based on mechanical royalties which do not net the artist more than 3% when they sign any sort of deal with anyone, regardless whether it's a record company or a music publisher. If you reeeeally want to be published, it should be with a regard for non-CD-sales-based income like say Soundtrack use (as in: in an actual film, during a scene.) Or radio play. Or perhaps with an eye toward using the songs in a broadway size musical show. Or licensing a song for a car commercial. Etc. All non-standard forms of income.
Copyright in terms of the methods that any record label uses it is useless for the actual creators of music. It is largely there for labels to make more money and the label contracts bear that out. So do most music publishing contracts, but then: they're already very closely tied to record labels in the first place.
Babbly. Sorry. It's not a simple subject.:)
Re: my statement that an artist could get by with 20,000 sales: I do mean without copyright. I'm saying that 20,000 sold, on the road, at shows, can pay for your next album and then some. Can pay for your tour. Can pay for a better bus even. That's not even if you're selling CD's for more than $13 on the road. You get 100% of the $13 if you do it that way. (Again: talking about an artist who chooses not to go for a deal.)
I am all for removing copyright as a "standard" the way it is now. Copyright was originated to protect artists from not being compensated for their creations. As it is today it appears to do very little in that regard.
The biggest chunk of the $15-$20 CD price goes straight into the retailer's account - the "greedy" label only gets a small fraction compared to the other commercial players. For a label, there is no $15 CD, only $3 CDs someone else retails for $15!
Dood: that is nonsense. I worked in numerous retail chains across Canada, and dealt with numerous US retailers. They make next to nothing on a CD. Sure, if they sell a back catalog item at typically full retail price (which is way more than $17 still) then yeah they make a profit on that title. Those titles represent 2% of all retail sales on average.
Copyright is to blame. An artist gets: on average 3 - 5% of sales *after* they have recouped. That's based on mechanical royalties, which is a form of copyright. That whole system is bulls**t in my opinion, and the opinion of most artists. Labels love it. They get the "everything else" that is left over after manufacturing, distribution, marketing and promotional costs are taken into account. And the guy is right: it's still millions. After only gold sales! (500,000 in the US.)
The average good musician *could* survive on 20,000 copies sold in the US at current prices, and make a decent profit if they don't go to a record label to do so. That's a fact. Very few artists do this or know this. They've been brought up on a steady diet of rockstar lifestyle record deals. That's what they want. It's sad and I expect it will not last.
the money is fronted to the band, the band then is required to produce the tracks. how they produce the tracks is not related to the lable
That is incorrect.
Labels are notorious for recommending a completely different mix, often recommending folks who will guarantee a "hit" or top placement at key radio stations. Tom Lord-Alge (name it: he's probably mixed it,) one of the best mixers out there, often manipulates finished individual tracks to "tighten them up." So do people like Andy Wallace. (Limp Bizkit, Faith No More, Linkin Park, etc. etc. etc.)
Labels, since they pay the money, absolutely have an effect on how the tracks are produced. Even to the point of either reassigning a producer, or telling the band to completely re-write the album's worth of songs, or shelving the album altogether. Or: dropping the artist.
The main reason auto-tune is popular right now is this: radio stations love it. As a result: so do labels, since they have to promote the songs.
My biggest problem with this ultra-accurate auto tuning is the fact that now when I listen to older albums which I do like, from before auto tuning was even invented: I notice they're kinda flat. Or sharp. Not "perfect." And it makes me mad that I even care anymore.
And don't even get me started about amp simulators!:)
I find it odd that everyone refers to this as a "pipe dream" when it's precisely the way all broadcast media works today. It's called performance rights. I think it's exactly what should be used in light of the weird product versus performance entity that online P2P sharing represents.
If you hear a song on TV, radio, in a restaurant, on a jukebox: artists do indeed get paid for you hearing the music. ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, SOCAN, and numerous other organizations around the world exist precisely to monitor how much of whose music is heard by whom, how often, in what capacity, etc. The Internet - and in particular P2P sharing - could be monitored in this exact way. In fact Napster would have been the easiest of the P2P tools to perform this kind of tracking, and for producing exactly the "P2P Charts" this guy was talking about.
Additionally: the logging for radio play (including XM / Sirius) is now much more precise thanx to organizations like BDS (Broadcast Data Systems) which actually reads in the coding on all CD's ever played on any radio station so that even if I have only one tiny indie recording, and it gets played only one time on one tiny station: I get paid. It used to be much more arbitrary and artists didn't see a dime. All of that is much more tightly monitored now.
As it sits right now: part of your cable bill (or satellite, or XM Radio or whatever) already does go to numerous performing rights organizations, in a very coordinated way. I don't see why people think this is a pipe dream: it already exists! It's just one more method of logging for these organizations (who are, by the way, non-profit.)
Blanket licensing is what should have been used in the first place. Instead: labels and the RIAA see the files as physical goods, instead of the potentially transient files they usually are in the hands of most consumers.
Your entire post is a red herring. It doesn't matter who is making or losing money because of illegal file trading. The point is that no one should be making non-fair-use copies of copyrighted material. Period. No one has to prove that it's harmful to anyone (though it helps).
What's a red herring is that the labels always fall back on the "this is killing our artists" argument. The argument postulated by the email in the original post is that the RIAA is out of its league in going after this guy who is selling CD-R's of his own works online via eBay. My feeling is: that's correct. It's also correct that folks should see an MP3 file - no matter what the quality - in the same light as they see radio play, since at the end of the day both of them can fall through the cracks (artists typically don't get paid on most radio play either.)
If an artist is not going to get paid for the sale of a record anyway, I don't think it *is* a red herring when I say "they aren't making money from labels in 75% of cases." Nor is it a red herring when I say the whole point is moot if you're signed to a label: you get your advance, and that's usually it.
Consumers should do a lot of things, yes. We should pay for music at some point. However think of allll the other instances in your life when you have heard music for which you have not paid? I'm talking when you go to a restaurant, when you're at a friend's place, at a party, listening to the radio. These are all "free" also, but subsidized in some form (in the case of radio, nightclubs, etc.) Since we can all agree (and in fact there are actual quotes claiming so) that "fair use" is no longer in common usage in copyright law, where do you draw the line? Labels want us to pay for music even if we here it incidentally. I for one do not agree with that, but especially not when I know how little the artist makes out of the deal anyway (unless they do what the original poster was trying to do in the first place.).... But everyone's entitled to their opinion.:)
If you're an artist, and you are signed to a record label, the label advances you $ to record and promote the recording. In most cases - talking more than 75% of recorded works released by major labels - that is all the artist will see from the label. Unless they have a string of successful albums, meaning more than two albums end up in the top ten anywhere in the world, the artist usually owes the label, not the other way around.
So the reason I have zero problem with downloading as much music as I like is: it's music which is already paid for anyway. By that I mean: when you see the video for a song on MTV / MuchMusic / M2 / whatever, that's paid for by advertising. In Canada, the videos are often paid for by grants *and* advertising. The artist sees income from the actual airplay (if they actually wrote the song.)
If you hear a song on the radio, that's also generating income for the artist. You can tape it if you like since there really *is* no legislation in place to stop that from happening. But the bottom line is: it's already paid for.
If, however, I see an indie band on stage, I am much more tempted to buy their cd. The reasons are obvious. They probably only sell their music at the shows, or via very small indie stores, or online through various sites (CDBaby being the most prevalent.) I feel *zero* sympathy for record labels. They're the ones that put this whole system together. I think the last time a music video was actually relevant to *generating* interest in a band was possibly 1986 or so. By that I mean: most videos these days if they show up on MTV or any other station: it's because the single is already a guaranteed hit or has already been approved to place very high on most charts. Again I say: already paid for.
The bigger artists like a Michael Jackson, a Sheryl Crow, etc.: they probably *are* losing some money due to downloading, but not enough to warrant cutting back on bloated music video costs or independent promotion costs. The day it is announced that several artists had to be dropped because of *quantifiable* statistics that show that an album was downloaded rampantly but not sold in stores: I'll stop downloading. So far the exact opposite has been the truth. The Eminem Show was downloaded in its entirety for a month before it came out and still debuted at #1 in sales, selling just shy of 1.2 million copies it's first week. Britney Spears continues to sell despite notable mass copies being available online. The demand is still there. If the RIAA prefers to believe their own numbers, based on outdated concepts of supply and demand, using a system which is so outmoded that it really should be wake up time for all involved: fine by me. I choose to ignore them. If the RIAA didn't like it, they should have thought about all of this when they approved the CD and CD-R formats years ago. Or they shouild have investigated indie promotion in the radio industry more closely, since that's where a ton of money conveniently gets spent as "promotional" expenses. Guess who owes that money at the end of the day, whether the single gets charted or not? Not the label.
I have worked in the music industry for years in numerous capacities including dealing with radio, distribution, indie bands and grassroots marketing, and major label marketing and production. I do know whereof I speak.:)
The comparison between physical goods and intellectual property is always a bad one, but in the cases of the music and movie industry: the term "intellectual property" and "copyright" take on a vastly different meaning than what they were intended to be in the first place.
If Stephen King publishes a book, who owns the original manuscript of the book? Stephen King does. It's his right at the end of any contract with a publisher like Viking or Faber or whoever to take his own manuscript (original master copy) of his intellectual property (his novels) anywhere he likes. Meaning that if he wanted to make it independently available online in some serialized format: he could do that. (and in fact he did, though his publisher supported him in doing so.)
This is the pure use of actual copyright, and it follows the model that most copyright was originated to protect.
If an artist like Michael Jackson (for example) wants to take his songs and sell them after he leaves a label like Epic, he will have to basically sue Epic to gain the right to do so. Epic records owns the original masters, not him. If James Cameron wants to release Titanic on his own, he has to sue Paramount and 20th Century Fox to do so. He doesn't own those masters, they do.
This is the crux of the "problem" with downloadable content. It's a completely new animal where the artists themselves actually get that it's a useful medium (and in many cases a helpful one for new artists) but since they don't own their own recordings, they're unfortunately at the mercy of their record label and must wait for a "legitimate" downloadable solution to be put in place, even if it sucks (which they do.) Same for film companies, although that is much less of an issue since the downloading has yet to significantly impact sales of DVD's (for example.)
Kazaa and Napster, to my mind and that of many in the entertainment industry, should be perceived as a "distribution solution" which has been sorely missing from the record labels and film distribs. It had to break some existing laws in order to prove it was useful and that there was a consumer model that could be built upon. But it was a solution.
Instead, since the law of the land says "downloading unless you own master or license = bad", it's illegal. If the mindset would change, if the contracts would change, if the business model would adapt: everyone could have been pretty rich by now. Instead the labels and associations killed off what was easily the best model for this (Napster.)
You all knew this already, but I think it's important to note the nature of actual "ownership" when it comes to media products as opposed to the printed word or a painting.
If there is a serious answer to my question (what do bands DO for 3 months), please respond...I'm curious...
The point here is we're talking about rock music, not jazz. Jazz recordings: the focus of a session is to "capture" a take in as natural a setting as possible. Particularly solo or small group recordings. This is very much also the case with classical recordings. In most cases with a classical recording, no compression or other outboard gear of any sort is allowed. It has to be as pure as possible.
Rock and pop music: the focus is much more about the presentation. Artifice. Have you heard the drums in a rock record lately? They don't resemble real drums in any way whatsoever. Mixing the drum sound on a recording so that it in any way sounds like Limp Bizkit or Marilyn Manson: that takes days. Days!
Many bands now, on a major label recording, it goes like this:
Spend several days setting up for beds. Set things up so everyone can see each other and you can all track live off the floor. However when you first hit "record", the only thing you're keeping from that session will be the drums. That's it. Drums alone can take days of tracking, then it's thrown over to protools guys for time optimizing (matching it rigorously to a click track.) That can take an extra day or three. ProTools engineers alone charge $8000 a day just to be on site (whether they actually do anything or not.)
Next step: is guitars. They're laid down very strategically so that they're tracked clean, but that the effects settings for mixing can evolve. That can change drastically from the first day of tracking to the last. Average time for that with most bands is a week. There are entire books written about micing instruments, and guitar amps in a rock recording can eat up more than two thirds of those books.
By the time we get to vocals, now you hire specific protools people for post production retuning of vocals. If you are dealing with a band which in any way is expected to get airplay or top-ten status, if you're not using protools retuning or retiming, radio is not interested. Vocals in most pop / rock recordings are not at all "natural" vocals. They're sweetened, processed, compressed, punched (ie: retaken in portions even for single words, or syllables of words.) Often they're doubled for reinforcement (ie: the vocalist has to retrack the "keeper" vocal as closely as possible to the original keeper.)
On and on.
Mixing a track can take anywhere from one day to eight days. Then the label can still say it requires a remix. "The drums need more punch", "The vocals aren't loud enough", "those guitars need more crunch", "Bass is too loud", "Too much / too little autotuning", "Rock radio will never accept that vocal take", etc.
This is the reality of most if not all recordings you hear on radio today. I am not making any of this up.
Talk to independent musicians, then talk to those who signed with the multi-national. Which ones are happier with their label's support? Which ones know where the money from their sales is going? Which ones are going to complain about free promotion?
Well that all depends doesn't it?
I worked for a label that was on the cusp of moving out of "indie" status and more towards "major" aspirations, just by the nature of their artists' success. So my feeling is: There are artists out there who are quite happy with their major label. The successful ones.
If you want to just enjoy making music and see what happens my feeling is labels are not even a good way to go. Do it completely yourself. If, however, you have songs which anyone thinks are million selling singles, or a stage charisma that demands a larger venue to play: major labels are extremely good at high-level, mass promotion of that style of artist. Anyone who thinks that by signing with Columbia or Atlantic they're going to be "nurtured" is in for a massive wake-up call.
This is where I think both labels and artists need to be more realistic. By that I mean: Columbia still to this day talks about itself as this warm fuzzy place that signed Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel and took them by the hand and turned them into the successes that they are. How long ago was that again? When was the last time they did this with a new artist exactly? When was the last time anyone heard of a major label "developing" a new artist into a success, rather than "foisting" a new artist?
Key thing to remember: there are bagillions of artists out there who honestly see "making money" as the last thing on their minds when they're writing songs. I mean that sincerely. Most musicians I know are just happy to get the creative ball rolling. If it goes further: wahoo!! But if it doesn't, after you're suddenly thrust into this corporate structure etc.: non-wahoo. This is why I think labels - and label deals - are ultimately irrelevant these days.
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Score 1 my ass!
Score: +1, Ass
I worked at a record label for the better part of the 90's and our licensing department had a hell of a time dealing with sample clearances.
The bottom line is this: there are a few artists who it is just 'known' that you are never going to ever in a billion years be allowed to sample, for any reason whatsoever:
#1: The Beatles
#2: The Rolling Stones
Probably numerous other ones. To further clarify: we're mostly talking 'Lennon and McCartney' Beatles. They as songwriters have always been pretty firm about it: not allowed. So the label / publishing companies always enforce this. Contrary to what this discussion is heading into, the label would be bound by whatever Paul McCartney would prefer rather than whatever the label would prefer, and this is likely due to the unbelievably unique position The Beatles hold in the annals of pop music. Even if the label felt it was a great idea, they'd still mostly have to go back to Lennon's estate (ie: Yoko) and Mr. McCartney just to be sure.
You can bet that the remaining members have likely heard this recording, not just the label reps.
I hate the way music publishing works. My favorite examples:
How many recent (say 1980's forward) movies which take place in the 60's can you name that *ever* contain a Beatles recording? Specifically a Lennon/McCartney recording? The Big Chill bases itself in 60's motown but apparently they desperately wanted Beatles galore in it. No go.
Ferris Beuller's Day Off. No soundtrack recording has ever been released for this film and when I worked in music stores I can tell you: people wanted it. No go again, licensing was prohibitively expensive.
I for one welcome our non-copyright overlords...
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Speaking as someone who worked in record stores for over ten years, I can tell you: the issue becomes one of the in-store service meeting the claims of the store's slogan. Any chain that claims to have the "biggest selection" of something had better have the staff to weed through it all. In pretty much every store I worked at, I was the only person who knew anything about classical, jazz, and obscure pop or alternative recordings. It got tiresome because out of a staff of dozens I was run off my feet trying to answer all these ridiculous questions from suits who basically wanted to gab about how elite their record collection was. I am thankful every day for the invention of napster et al for the very reason that now nothing is "obscure." Nothing is "limited edition" anymore. Two searches and you're probably able to find whatever it is. If you really need the physical CD, good luck finding anyone who knows how to find it. Not just music either. (Try rare books. Even harder finding anyone who knows their sh*t.)
:)
Anyway my point is yes it's an issue, but I'm not sad to see record stores go away. Add in the fact that anything truly worth purchasing ends up being something you have to special order anyway and I might as well stick with Amazon from now on. Which I do.
If Virgin Megastore wants to continue to claim they have the "hugest collection of anything musical on earth", they should step up to the plate and hire people who know more than six months' worth of musical artists. That and pay them for their knowledge (something else that won't happen.)
The same holds true for a Future Shop / Best Buy etc. for electronics. What's the point of claiming you're the "HDTV headquarters" when nobody on the staff even knows what that is?
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Is that illegal? After all he's not 'threatening' the spammer, he's merely presenting an offer he was pretty sure this guy was asking to receive. And besides: He can certainly "opt-out" at any time by choosing not to spam... ;)
Paying for copyrighted music is a lot like paying for a cab ride. Both are transient events which serve a basic purpose which it is arguable is beneficial to society. Both are now considered woefully overpriced. If I take a ride in a cab, and I don't pay for it: I'm called a thief even though I have not physically stolen anything. I still derived the experience of riding in the cab and beyond that it served me the purpose of getting from point a to point b. Beyond that, it did deprive the "creator" of my cab ride (the driver) from earning a decent living off of the activity of driving his or her cab. If someone figured out a way to duplicate the experience of having a cab ride and gave it away for free it's questionable whether there would be as much public outcry.
If I "steal" music it amounts to exactly the same thing. People equate downloading as being insignificant to the lives of musicians, since they must all be super rich drug-taking cristal-sipping megalomaniacs. In the case of maybe 1% of all musicians that may be true, just as it may be true that 1% of all cab drivers are somehow also living a very decadent and overblown existence (though that could probably be proven otherwise.) The fact is: it costs money to record, it costs money to buy instruments, computers, DJ setups, mixers, microphones, etc. It costs money to learn how to operate all that stuff. It costs money to hire someone who already knows how to operate all that stuff if you don't know how. It would similarly cost me more money to buy a car than it would to pay for a cab ride.
My point: Copyright may be flawed but it is there for a reason. Simply because someone does something creative versus tangible and otherwise contributional to society does not mean it is not worth something, or more importantly that it didn't cost anything in the first place. Even if I make a set of recordings and give them away (which I have done,) it doesn't mean it didn't cost me money or effort. It does. How much that is worth to somebody is a matter of very real debate. I agree that CD's are overpriced but I also agree that copyright in its current form is deeply flawed. One cannot look at any record contract without thinking that immediately. Many clauses remain there to uphold literally hundred-year-old concepts like player pianos and shellac 78's. The record industry definitely had this battle coming. It doesn't mean that anyone is justified in ripping them off.
Whether it's actually a good / reasonable idea having someone formerly in charge of the ATF move over to a racket like the RIAA is definitely a good question.
</babble>
As far as I can tell, this story and the CTV story from Friday [slashdot.org] are the same story. What SOCAN appears to be doing is using a loophole.
They are indeed.
I responded to the previous posting (on the earlier story) stating how out to lunch thsis concept is. It seems even moreso now.
I'm reminded of the comparison made in the book "Being Digital" (Nicolas Negroponte) about the move from atoms to bits. It seems to me that no long-term association whose job it's been to protect atoms all this time (SOCAN, ASCAP, other publishing royalty nd performing rights organizations) has ever actually made the leap to bits. By that I mean: they understand that physical goods are purchasable (CD's, Cassettes, etc.) They understand that radio waves are licensable (Radio, TV, then Cable, etc.) They can't get their head around bits.
If these regulators were dealing in the physical world, they'd have no trouble making the distinction between radio waves and physical CD's. Piece of cake. But streaming audio versus a downloaded file? Same thing to them. They see no difference. If someone told you that in order to enter a CD store that might be playing music, you would have to pay an admission fee, you would think that was ridiculous. And it is. Because the whole point is that they're selling CD's. Yet they want us to believe that in order to use the internet - a "place" (of sorts) where one could buy or download music (legally or otherwise,) or listen to audio streams which were already provided by traditional radio firms (or others, thanx to Shoutcast,) we'll now have to pay the equivalent of an admission fee to do so. This on top of the fact that everybody has to pay for internet access in the first place, and that most providers of internet service are in one way or another already owners of broadcast facilities, meaning that the copyright holders are already being paid anyway! (Blanket performance rights licenses typically cover any usage in the broadcast medium. I think it would be arguable that internet, as a subsidiary of a broadcasters holdings, should count. They charge for the service, part of that charge is going back into paying for a SOCAN or ASCAP, etc. blanket license.)
Get these geriatrics out of our legal affairs. Get someone who actually uses these services in there instead. Get someone with a clue. Please. Somebody.
Makes me want to go and make some kind of "consumer's statement" at wherever they're holding this thing. Crazy bad.
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SOCAN is the Canadian equivalent of ASCAP or BMI. Performance Rights royalties. ie: any public performances of a copyrighted work.
The model which was created for radio, we're talking back in the 1920's here, was that radio stations apply for licenses to be able to play copyrighted works over the airwaves. All well and good. It means that radio - for the consumer who's listening to it - remains "free," since the stations are the ones paying for the music itself.
What SOCAN is asking for here is the equivalent of asking a record store - a place where a consumer already pays for recorded music - to also pay this licensing fee. Which is retarded. Unless they are limiting this only to single hosts who provide ONLY streaming audio (which they are not) I could see it. An entire ISP which may or may not be carrying audio files, audio streams, etc.: that's ridiculous.
Canada's government - and the governments of other media-producing countries - require someone under the age of 75 in these organizations (and the legal community) to speak to both the legal and technological aspects of the changing nature of music distribution. Continuing to apply this nearly two-century-old model to something as "new" as streaming and file downloads is just stupid.
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if you really think a living room is a better recording environment, I'd like to hear the argument.
How about anything Stone Temple Pilots has recorded since Purple? They set up in a three storey house in San Bernadino with a full acoutrement of mics and baffles, etc., but no extreme soundproofing was ever done. Apparently (and I can't find any articles online but Mix magazine did an interview with Brendan O'Brien about it at the time) very few overdubs were done on the Purple and Tiny Music cd's. The No. 4 cd did involve more post-beds overdubs. The band still prefers to record in an organic environment. O'Brien in particular is a proponent of setting up wherever the artist is comfortable.
All of Johnny Cash's work with Rick Rubin has been done at his home in the southern US. It's a shack. Rubin comes in with a very small setup (at one point it was strictly a DAT machine and three mics) and hits record. He captures everything that way. He set up in an abandoned house with the Chili Peppers for Blood Sugar Sex Magik - again: with not much in terms of sound reinforcement or overall noise reduction. Yes it's a million dollar studio setup but I mean... Get over it. People do this all the time. They continue to do so. This is the cool part of small technology.
I do agree about the mics but I think numerous artists and producers would argue the point about soundproofing and absolutely "requiring" a studio to do a "professional" recording.
$0.02 + tax
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I think it's very important to realize that literally any record since multitracking was invented has had some form of tinkering done to it. That would be anything since around 1957 or so. Yes the norm was still "live takes" (especially for jazz and early rock and roll.) But artists from Frank Sinatra to Ella Fitzgerald to Elvis Presley to Glenn Gould (who pioneered the editing of his performances in lieu of live performances and single complete takes) has edited in their parts. It gets ridiculous when you look at the modern examples where literally every pop and (especially) country vocalist is being auto-tuned to death. It makes any recordings previous to 1998 sound amateur, even the extremely professional ones. The same is true of beat / tempo correction.
Personally: I'm finding it more and more difficult to listen to an artist like Led Zeppelin as much in comparison to some of the newer rock releases simply because it heightens the attention I pay to how sloppy some of the drumming was, or how pitchy certain vocal takes were. That's what's sad to me. I have no problem with some 12 year old potential mozart never having touched a piano. That's still creative to me. I don't even have a problem with the Britney / NSync / Backstreet phenomenon. It's new. It's not necessarily brilliant but not much else before it could ever have been created in the same way. I don't much care about why it was done or who made the decision to market it in such a big way. Nor do most consumers.
It's often mentioned that Sgt. Pepper's is a good example of creativity in conjunction with technology. In its day that was the closest example to all of the tools the average person could have in their homes right now. Basic synthesizers and samplers (mellotrons and chaimberlains,) editing galore (often individual tracks were spliced out of a multitrack reel) vocel takes at varying pitches, etc. etc. Nobody minded when Queen blew that hugely out of proportion with something like Bicycle Race or Bohemian Rhaphsody. I think most people are mad just because it's so commonplace for someone to get ahold of this technology. That's a catch-22. Most artists have been craving this level of commonality with the technology. Now that it is common: artists get lambasted for using it. Damned if you do / damned if you don't.
When an artist can pull of what I'm hearing on a CD in a small club with basic equipment: that's a statement. Technology can't make me appreciate that more, only the artistry and finesse can. I think that's true of most people.
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Owning the copyright to The Beatles' music is not the same as owning the Beatles' record company. Michael Jackson purchased the rights to the songs from Apple Records.
Actually neither of these is true:
Michael Jackson's involvement in the Beatles' music has to do with copyright of the songs, which was owned at the time (1987 - 1989) by ATV music. ATV as a company sold all the rights to the Beatles actual songs to Michael Jackson (or rather, a company he ran.) There was furious bidding for this which also involved Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono. Jackson's company won it. For a long time afterward nothing was actually done with the ATV catalogue. It's important to note that ATV only owned the songs penned by Lennon / McCartney, none of George Harrison's songs are in that catalogue.
Also of interest: ATV owns numerous other artists works, not just the Beatles.
This site has a really good breakdown of who owned what before the purchase, and what it all means.
http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/jackson.htm
My point: NONE OF THIS has anything to do with Apple Corps., which was a record label and not a publishing company. Apple Corps. is still a functioning company, they just released the DVD version of the Beatles Anthology TV series. Very much alive and well (and making billions of dollars.)
There ya go.
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I know so many people who made this decision months ago. Even major magazines (Entertainment Weekly and Wired, most recently) have had little sidebars about how ridiculous this situation has become.
:)
My favorite quote of the year:
Perhaps on the rare occasion pursuing the right course demands an act of piracy, piracy itself can be the right course?
-- Governor Swann
Pirates of the Caribbean
And that movie had a trailer before it about not pirating movies.
At the rate their sales are dropping, no matter whether anyone thinks it's 100% due to downloading or not, they will be seeing 50% loss of sales inside of the next five years. As far as I'm concerned: if the labels keep allowing the RIAA to represent them by spending their dues on lawsuits like these, they won't be able to afford the mass release (already decreasing) of major label dreck that we've all become so tired of. I look forward to the day when a completely independent artist is able to have a successful single completely without the need of a label or that whole system.
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I find it interesting that the RIAA continues the technique of gouging as much as possible from everybody. Entertainment Weekly has a great article in the most recent issue about how the movie industry is down financially over last year, and in itemizing the costs not one mention is ever made about online file swapping. Instead they focused on the obvious: movies are not apealing to people, ticket prices are high, and most major films are opening in more screens than ever. The music industry, which is suffering due to mostly the same obvious reasons, is instead focusing on file swapping as the only reason sales are down.
With the movie industry, whether I agree with how they do things or not (DeCSS, etc.,) at least is willing to admit when other factors are at work. The recording industry: they just want as much money as possible regardless of how they get it. Simply ridiculous.
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In response to the question concerning the fact that artists might never see any financial benefit from the recent lawsuit settlements:
...are you suggesting that a royalty dispute between an artist and a label is justification for stealing from both of them? Would you feel free to shoplift a CD from a record store based on that logic? - Matt Oppenheim, RIAA
:)
Of course not: because that still means the label and artist gets the money. The one who doesn't is the retailer. They have to eat that loss, just like they always have when anything is shoplifted. The distributor still gets paid, so therefore (eventually, in a much tinier way) so does the artist.
So basically he's unaware of the methods by which artists already get paid. Nice.
This doesn't even broach the topic of record clubs, which generate tons of income for the labels and distributors, but absolutely zero for the artists. Why? They're "promotional copies", given away. Funny how that one is okay since they control it.
I hate the music industry now. I used to love it. It used to be about having more than just "hit" artists. Sure labels had those kinds of cheeseball #1 hit makers, but that allowed them to make mistakes like signing an Elvis Costello or a Bob Dylan, artists who would be dropped before their third album was released if they were signed today.
I support bands by seeing them live. I recommend artists license their works for use in soundtracks or commercials. They shouldn't expect - and probably should never have - to see one thin dime from any label deal based on physical CD's sold. It's a bygone method of income. The industry is doomed by not recognizing that they're the ones who wanted it this way in the first place.
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Since a ton of people commented on what was good / bad, etc. I feel its important to note a couple things:
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For starters: Any ad on its own (I don't care what kind) is useless unless you have at least three or four other promotional ideas in place. If you have a radio ad, you more than likely want to tie that to a retailer or website where the CD is already available.
If you were expecting pre-orders... I mean.... pre-orders are not where your focus should be. Like at all. Orders, period. Any band that puts money into a radio ad when they don't yet have a finished release already in stores is doomed. Unless that artist is say... Britney Spears / Marilyn Manson, etc. Someone where advance / teaser ads can only be beneficial.
A better approach might have been:
Complete the release and get even single copies into indie stores.
Get posters up. Everywhere you can get them up (legally or otherwise.)
Play shows. Mention stores that have your cd. Mention websites if you have to but don't take up more than a song's worth of time talking about how available your cd is.
If those three things are in place already, then perhaps that's the time to consider (but not necessarily buy) a radio ad. Radio ads are expensive. Placement of that ad once it's produced is even more expensive. Getting that ad into a better timeslot is even more expensive than that. Personally I think radio is a dead end unless you are the aforementioned Britney / Manson / etc. artist. There is no avenue in major radio for an indie artist, period. I don't listen to radio for that reason. Assuming your music was what I was looking for, you haven't reached me.
That's long winded but it's what I think was missing from this discussion. Don't save up for a single radio ad if you didn't already have at least four or five other marketing items in place.
Good luck though.
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P.S. This would be true with or without the RIAA. It's the same in Sweden, Japan, Australia, etc. as it is in the US or Canada. Proper marketing = buzz of any sort.
I don't think that's clueless.
The first time more than one artist sold anything close to 1 million copies of anything in a first week of sales was 1998 (NSync and Backstreet Boys both did it.) This was a huge deal at the time. Previous to that it was seen as a big deal if any artist was able to sell something over 500,000 copies of anything inside the first week. This was a very concerted effort by the Zomba label to break that record.
BTW: all these figures are US-only. Which makes it an even bigger deal, because when one sees those kind of sales numbers, they tend to assume it's worldwide. The fact that it's not represents a very different sales target focus for the record industry.
We're talking about a hundred-year-old (plus) industry when we talk about the music / record / cd industry. The online purchasing industry is nowhere near as old. So I actually do see that as an important statistic. But that's me. I expect we'll see labels begin pushing for well over 2 million copies of anything sold in the first week once they start factoring in downloaded purchases. (Soundscan monitoring acutal cd purchases *plus* online purchases, etc.)
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So... um....
:)
:)
Wanna start an indie distributorship?
You make some excellent points.
I'm just happy that it's so in the spotlight about the current state of the industry, and the way things have always run.
My only final retort is that yeah the exchange has been: we only give you a teensy amount of $ because look at all the places we can get your music to the people? But I think even that model is busted, particularly in light of all the label mergers. An artist is much more likely to be dropped after even one single album than to ever get their music in front of enough people to warrant a large-scale record deal. That plus (of course) p2p sharing has obviously exposed more obscure music to worldwide listeners than even the most well-meaning of labels.
Oh yeah! Protools! Protools rocks! There.
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The store has to recoup all of that from their markup on the CDs - it's a big markup, but it has a lot of costs to cover.
/.)
:)
:) )
It was stated several times to me, in several stores, that CD's are not where the stores make their money. They make money when you buy the CD racks and other accessories. They make more off of posters in some cases than they do from CD's. Posters are a surprisingly big business in some regions.
How? Copyright does not make the artists sign those deals. Without the copyright, what money would the artist get from retail CD sales, and how?
Because here's the deal: if you don't sign the deal with the label saying you'll take your piddly 3%, you have to either create your own publishing company and take the *same* piddly 3%. Reason being: mechanical rights organizations are the ones who tell publishers: here's the rate, take it or leave it. Why? Cuz that's mandated by the RIAA.
I'm saying: don't even do a record deal. Make the CD's yourself. Sell the CD's at shows. Play lots of shows. Make money that way. (Several others have said that on
If you must do a deal: do a finished goods deal, where the label buys finished CD's from you and you get 100% of what they pay. You own the master, the label distributes it. However it's up to you to promote.
My point is: the whole system is *still* based on mechanical royalties which do not net the artist more than 3% when they sign any sort of deal with anyone, regardless whether it's a record company or a music publisher. If you reeeeally want to be published, it should be with a regard for non-CD-sales-based income like say Soundtrack use (as in: in an actual film, during a scene.) Or radio play. Or perhaps with an eye toward using the songs in a broadway size musical show. Or licensing a song for a car commercial. Etc. All non-standard forms of income.
Copyright in terms of the methods that any record label uses it is useless for the actual creators of music. It is largely there for labels to make more money and the label contracts bear that out. So do most music publishing contracts, but then: they're already very closely tied to record labels in the first place.
Babbly. Sorry. It's not a simple subject.
Re: my statement that an artist could get by with 20,000 sales: I do mean without copyright. I'm saying that 20,000 sold, on the road, at shows, can pay for your next album and then some. Can pay for your tour. Can pay for a better bus even. That's not even if you're selling CD's for more than $13 on the road. You get 100% of the $13 if you do it that way. (Again: talking about an artist who chooses not to go for a deal.)
I am all for removing copyright as a "standard" the way it is now. Copyright was originated to protect artists from not being compensated for their creations. As it is today it appears to do very little in that regard.
IANACL (I am not a copyright lawyer.
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The biggest chunk of the $15-$20 CD price goes straight into the retailer's account - the "greedy" label only gets a small fraction compared to the other commercial players. For a label, there is no $15 CD, only $3 CDs someone else retails for $15!
Dood: that is nonsense. I worked in numerous retail chains across Canada, and dealt with numerous US retailers. They make next to nothing on a CD. Sure, if they sell a back catalog item at typically full retail price (which is way more than $17 still) then yeah they make a profit on that title. Those titles represent 2% of all retail sales on average.
Copyright is to blame. An artist gets: on average 3 - 5% of sales *after* they have recouped. That's based on mechanical royalties, which is a form of copyright. That whole system is bulls**t in my opinion, and the opinion of most artists. Labels love it. They get the "everything else" that is left over after manufacturing, distribution, marketing and promotional costs are taken into account. And the guy is right: it's still millions. After only gold sales! (500,000 in the US.)
The average good musician *could* survive on 20,000 copies sold in the US at current prices, and make a decent profit if they don't go to a record label to do so. That's a fact. Very few artists do this or know this. They've been brought up on a steady diet of rockstar lifestyle record deals. That's what they want. It's sad and I expect it will not last.
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the money is fronted to the band, the band then is required to produce the tracks. how they produce the tracks is not related to the lable
:)
That is incorrect.
Labels are notorious for recommending a completely different mix, often recommending folks who will guarantee a "hit" or top placement at key radio stations. Tom Lord-Alge (name it: he's probably mixed it,) one of the best mixers out there, often manipulates finished individual tracks to "tighten them up." So do people like Andy Wallace. (Limp Bizkit, Faith No More, Linkin Park, etc. etc. etc.)
Labels, since they pay the money, absolutely have an effect on how the tracks are produced. Even to the point of either reassigning a producer, or telling the band to completely re-write the album's worth of songs, or shelving the album altogether. Or: dropping the artist.
The main reason auto-tune is popular right now is this: radio stations love it. As a result: so do labels, since they have to promote the songs.
My biggest problem with this ultra-accurate auto tuning is the fact that now when I listen to older albums which I do like, from before auto tuning was even invented: I notice they're kinda flat. Or sharp. Not "perfect." And it makes me mad that I even care anymore.
And don't even get me started about amp simulators!
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I find it odd that everyone refers to this as a "pipe dream" when it's precisely the way all broadcast media works today. It's called performance rights. I think it's exactly what should be used in light of the weird product versus performance entity that online P2P sharing represents.
If you hear a song on TV, radio, in a restaurant, on a jukebox: artists do indeed get paid for you hearing the music. ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, SOCAN, and numerous other organizations around the world exist precisely to monitor how much of whose music is heard by whom, how often, in what capacity, etc. The Internet - and in particular P2P sharing - could be monitored in this exact way. In fact Napster would have been the easiest of the P2P tools to perform this kind of tracking, and for producing exactly the "P2P Charts" this guy was talking about.
Additionally: the logging for radio play (including XM / Sirius) is now much more precise thanx to organizations like BDS (Broadcast Data Systems) which actually reads in the coding on all CD's ever played on any radio station so that even if I have only one tiny indie recording, and it gets played only one time on one tiny station: I get paid. It used to be much more arbitrary and artists didn't see a dime. All of that is much more tightly monitored now.
As it sits right now: part of your cable bill (or satellite, or XM Radio or whatever) already does go to numerous performing rights organizations, in a very coordinated way. I don't see why people think this is a pipe dream: it already exists! It's just one more method of logging for these organizations (who are, by the way, non-profit.)
Blanket licensing is what should have been used in the first place. Instead: labels and the RIAA see the files as physical goods, instead of the potentially transient files they usually are in the hands of most consumers.
$0.02
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Your entire post is a red herring. It doesn't matter who is making or losing money because of illegal file trading. The point is that no one should be making non-fair-use copies of copyrighted material. Period. No one has to prove that it's harmful to anyone (though it helps).
.... But everyone's entitled to their opinion. :)
What's a red herring is that the labels always fall back on the "this is killing our artists" argument. The argument postulated by the email in the original post is that the RIAA is out of its league in going after this guy who is selling CD-R's of his own works online via eBay. My feeling is: that's correct. It's also correct that folks should see an MP3 file - no matter what the quality - in the same light as they see radio play, since at the end of the day both of them can fall through the cracks (artists typically don't get paid on most radio play either.)
If an artist is not going to get paid for the sale of a record anyway, I don't think it *is* a red herring when I say "they aren't making money from labels in 75% of cases." Nor is it a red herring when I say the whole point is moot if you're signed to a label: you get your advance, and that's usually it.
Consumers should do a lot of things, yes. We should pay for music at some point. However think of allll the other instances in your life when you have heard music for which you have not paid? I'm talking when you go to a restaurant, when you're at a friend's place, at a party, listening to the radio. These are all "free" also, but subsidized in some form (in the case of radio, nightclubs, etc.) Since we can all agree (and in fact there are actual quotes claiming so) that "fair use" is no longer in common usage in copyright law, where do you draw the line? Labels want us to pay for music even if we here it incidentally. I for one do not agree with that, but especially not when I know how little the artist makes out of the deal anyway (unless they do what the original poster was trying to do in the first place.)
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My take on this whole spiel
:)
If you're an artist, and you are signed to a record label, the label advances you $ to record and promote the recording. In most cases - talking more than 75% of recorded works released by major labels - that is all the artist will see from the label. Unless they have a string of successful albums, meaning more than two albums end up in the top ten anywhere in the world, the artist usually owes the label, not the other way around.
So the reason I have zero problem with downloading as much music as I like is: it's music which is already paid for anyway. By that I mean: when you see the video for a song on MTV / MuchMusic / M2 / whatever, that's paid for by advertising. In Canada, the videos are often paid for by grants *and* advertising. The artist sees income from the actual airplay (if they actually wrote the song.)
If you hear a song on the radio, that's also generating income for the artist. You can tape it if you like since there really *is* no legislation in place to stop that from happening. But the bottom line is: it's already paid for.
If, however, I see an indie band on stage, I am much more tempted to buy their cd. The reasons are obvious. They probably only sell their music at the shows, or via very small indie stores, or online through various sites (CDBaby being the most prevalent.) I feel *zero* sympathy for record labels. They're the ones that put this whole system together. I think the last time a music video was actually relevant to *generating* interest in a band was possibly 1986 or so. By that I mean: most videos these days if they show up on MTV or any other station: it's because the single is already a guaranteed hit or has already been approved to place very high on most charts. Again I say: already paid for.
The bigger artists like a Michael Jackson, a Sheryl Crow, etc.: they probably *are* losing some money due to downloading, but not enough to warrant cutting back on bloated music video costs or independent promotion costs. The day it is announced that several artists had to be dropped because of *quantifiable* statistics that show that an album was downloaded rampantly but not sold in stores: I'll stop downloading. So far the exact opposite has been the truth. The Eminem Show was downloaded in its entirety for a month before it came out and still debuted at #1 in sales, selling just shy of 1.2 million copies it's first week. Britney Spears continues to sell despite notable mass copies being available online. The demand is still there. If the RIAA prefers to believe their own numbers, based on outdated concepts of supply and demand, using a system which is so outmoded that it really should be wake up time for all involved: fine by me. I choose to ignore them. If the RIAA didn't like it, they should have thought about all of this when they approved the CD and CD-R formats years ago. Or they shouild have investigated indie promotion in the radio industry more closely, since that's where a ton of money conveniently gets spent as "promotional" expenses. Guess who owes that money at the end of the day, whether the single gets charted or not? Not the label.
I have worked in the music industry for years in numerous capacities including dealing with radio, distribution, indie bands and grassroots marketing, and major label marketing and production. I do know whereof I speak.
Thanx for reading,
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The comparison between physical goods and intellectual property is always a bad one, but in the cases of the music and movie industry: the term "intellectual property" and "copyright" take on a vastly different meaning than what they were intended to be in the first place.
If Stephen King publishes a book, who owns the original manuscript of the book? Stephen King does. It's his right at the end of any contract with a publisher like Viking or Faber or whoever to take his own manuscript (original master copy) of his intellectual property (his novels) anywhere he likes. Meaning that if he wanted to make it independently available online in some serialized format: he could do that. (and in fact he did, though his publisher supported him in doing so.)
This is the pure use of actual copyright, and it follows the model that most copyright was originated to protect.
If an artist like Michael Jackson (for example) wants to take his songs and sell them after he leaves a label like Epic, he will have to basically sue Epic to gain the right to do so. Epic records owns the original masters, not him. If James Cameron wants to release Titanic on his own, he has to sue Paramount and 20th Century Fox to do so. He doesn't own those masters, they do.
This is the crux of the "problem" with downloadable content. It's a completely new animal where the artists themselves actually get that it's a useful medium (and in many cases a helpful one for new artists) but since they don't own their own recordings, they're unfortunately at the mercy of their record label and must wait for a "legitimate" downloadable solution to be put in place, even if it sucks (which they do.) Same for film companies, although that is much less of an issue since the downloading has yet to significantly impact sales of DVD's (for example.)
Kazaa and Napster, to my mind and that of many in the entertainment industry, should be perceived as a "distribution solution" which has been sorely missing from the record labels and film distribs. It had to break some existing laws in order to prove it was useful and that there was a consumer model that could be built upon. But it was a solution.
Instead, since the law of the land says "downloading unless you own master or license = bad", it's illegal. If the mindset would change, if the contracts would change, if the business model would adapt: everyone could have been pretty rich by now. Instead the labels and associations killed off what was easily the best model for this (Napster.)
You all knew this already, but I think it's important to note the nature of actual "ownership" when it comes to media products as opposed to the printed word or a painting.
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If there is a serious answer to my question (what do bands DO for 3 months), please respond...I'm curious...
The point here is we're talking about rock music, not jazz. Jazz recordings: the focus of a session is to "capture" a take in as natural a setting as possible. Particularly solo or small group recordings. This is very much also the case with classical recordings. In most cases with a classical recording, no compression or other outboard gear of any sort is allowed. It has to be as pure as possible.
Rock and pop music: the focus is much more about the presentation. Artifice. Have you heard the drums in a rock record lately? They don't resemble real drums in any way whatsoever. Mixing the drum sound on a recording so that it in any way sounds like Limp Bizkit or Marilyn Manson: that takes days. Days!
Many bands now, on a major label recording, it goes like this:
Spend several days setting up for beds. Set things up so everyone can see each other and you can all track live off the floor. However when you first hit "record", the only thing you're keeping from that session will be the drums. That's it. Drums alone can take days of tracking, then it's thrown over to protools guys for time optimizing (matching it rigorously to a click track.) That can take an extra day or three. ProTools engineers alone charge $8000 a day just to be on site (whether they actually do anything or not.)
Next step: is guitars. They're laid down very strategically so that they're tracked clean, but that the effects settings for mixing can evolve. That can change drastically from the first day of tracking to the last. Average time for that with most bands is a week. There are entire books written about micing instruments, and guitar amps in a rock recording can eat up more than two thirds of those books.
By the time we get to vocals, now you hire specific protools people for post production retuning of vocals. If you are dealing with a band which in any way is expected to get airplay or top-ten status, if you're not using protools retuning or retiming, radio is not interested. Vocals in most pop / rock recordings are not at all "natural" vocals. They're sweetened, processed, compressed, punched (ie: retaken in portions even for single words, or syllables of words.) Often they're doubled for reinforcement (ie: the vocalist has to retrack the "keeper" vocal as closely as possible to the original keeper.)
On and on.
Mixing a track can take anywhere from one day to eight days. Then the label can still say it requires a remix. "The drums need more punch", "The vocals aren't loud enough", "those guitars need more crunch", "Bass is too loud", "Too much / too little autotuning", "Rock radio will never accept that vocal take", etc.
This is the reality of most if not all recordings you hear on radio today. I am not making any of this up.
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Talk to independent musicians, then talk to those who signed with the multi-national. Which ones are happier with their label's support? Which ones know where the money from their sales is going? Which ones are going to complain about free promotion?
Well that all depends doesn't it?
I worked for a label that was on the cusp of moving out of "indie" status and more towards "major" aspirations, just by the nature of their artists' success. So my feeling is: There are artists out there who are quite happy with their major label. The successful ones.
If you want to just enjoy making music and see what happens my feeling is labels are not even a good way to go. Do it completely yourself. If, however, you have songs which anyone thinks are million selling singles, or a stage charisma that demands a larger venue to play: major labels are extremely good at high-level, mass promotion of that style of artist. Anyone who thinks that by signing with Columbia or Atlantic they're going to be "nurtured" is in for a massive wake-up call.
This is where I think both labels and artists need to be more realistic. By that I mean: Columbia still to this day talks about itself as this warm fuzzy place that signed Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel and took them by the hand and turned them into the successes that they are. How long ago was that again? When was the last time they did this with a new artist exactly? When was the last time anyone heard of a major label "developing" a new artist into a success, rather than "foisting" a new artist?
Key thing to remember: there are bagillions of artists out there who honestly see "making money" as the last thing on their minds when they're writing songs. I mean that sincerely. Most musicians I know are just happy to get the creative ball rolling. If it goes further: wahoo!! But if it doesn't, after you're suddenly thrust into this corporate structure etc.: non-wahoo. This is why I think labels - and label deals - are ultimately irrelevant these days.