Hey, you know what? I am a smoker (obviously) and I can't stand the smell of smoke (rather, I can't stand the smell of other people's smoke). I am sympathetic to your cause except for one thing: There were plenty of places in Seattle (and throughout Washington) that were non-smoking. It's not like someone chained you to a barstool in a smoky bar.
And how many bartenders do you know that DON'T smoke? I would say that the VAST MAJORITY of bartenders are smokers (and, of course, drinkers). This argument is totally and completely baseless. Don't like the smoke? Go work for a non-smoking bar. Want to smoke, go to work for a smoking bar. It's not hard.
Personally it's not that big of a deal for me since I usually smoke outside anyway, but what really pisses me off are the do-gooders (see some of the other posts in this thread) who don't believe that a bar owner should have the right to make a bar smoking or non. Seattle had quite a few non-smoking bars before the new law and yeah, they were pretty busy. But the inescapable truth of the whole matter is that even though a fairly small percentage of Seattlelites smoke, that amount increases drastically among people who drink. Most of the bars I go to are somewhere between 50-75% smokers. Why in the world can't they have an environment to do what they want to do?
States like Idaho actually have it right as far as I am concerned. Bars with food=no smoking. Taverns and pubs, up to the owner. I think that is perfect.
But... Seattle is so full of PC numbnuts that will never happen. Oh, well.
I used to think most drivers had at least a modicum of common sense until the other day when I was out having a smoke in front of my local bar and watched a lady in her 50s literally brushing her teeth while driving westbound on 45th. She was doing all of about 5 miles an hour and there was a huge line of cars behind her. When she got pretty much in front of where I was standing, she came to a complete stop (a good couple hundred feet before the light) and really started to brush. She was completely and totally oblivious. The guy behind her looked like he was about to explode, compounded by the fact that I yelled out to him: "She's brushing her fucking teeth!". He turned a color of red I haven't seen before and started honking wildly. It took the lady a good 20 seconds to finally realize she had backed up traffic all the way back to I-5. The absolute best part was that she sped up for several yards until she was right behind another car and then HONKED at that car for not going fast enough. I wished for something Darwinian to happen, but alas, god must have been busy that day.
A little rich kid, what do you know
You had everything don't you think it don't show
A-hiding in the closet just a-facing the wall
Too Much Too Soon - do you recall?
If you don't know who sang that, or to what "Too Much Too Soon" refers, please return to your listening of Dookie.
The whole point of having a stock listing is to get easier access to capital.
Having been the CEO of a public company (well, Pink Sheets) I can tell you that is very wrong. When you initially enter the market you sell blocks of stock to your market makers for pennies on the dollar. It's not like every time Aunt Elma buys 100 shares of stock the company gets the money. Now a company CAN repeat the process of registering more stock for the public float but from experience I would say you should have a DAMN GOOD reason for it. Every time you inject more free-trading stock into the marketplace you run the very real risk of diluting yourself out of existence.
Also, on the split issue many have suggested for SCOX, it MAY work... but in my experience most companies (outside of the very big ones) that do reverse splits will end up with double the shares at half the cost by the time all is said and done. Hell, my company did a 10-1 reverse and within a few months the shares were trading back at the original price for a nice 90% loss in value. I see it happen all the time.
DIGITALLY. It is the only way a consumer can buy the product DIGITALLY. And DMSs are not for those of us who want to/have the know-how to rip it ourselves. The DMS exists as a mass-consumer phenomenon.
How about mentioning some of the other non-DRMed digital music stores? You mention Magnatune and they are awesome, but there are LOTS more out there. How about Audio Lunchbox with over 4500 different labels (including some quasi-major label stuff like Nettwerk, etc.? Or eMusic (who actually does have some EMI content non-DRMd already)?
AllofMP3 does nothing but illicitly make available tracks to make a profit. Sure, they claim to pay the Russian equivelant of BMI/ASCAP but that is not enough! To sell digital music you technically need to have the performance rights (a la BMI/ASCAP, etc...) but ALSO have a master agreement with the label. Oh... and you are also usually required to have a separate license for each region you are selling to. Do you think AllofMP3 has all of that in place?
As someone who has intimate knowledge of how the entire licensing thing goes between the majors and a digital music provider let me just say that this is in no way shocking. The labels will take as large an advance as they possibly can and it is really a matter of whose legal counsel is better. A couple of years ago there was no way you could license all of the (available) major label content for under 500k... unless you paid one of the better known music industry lawyers a couple hundred K. There are only a half-dozen big shot lawyers in the music biz and they tend to play both sides of the field... and charge whatever the hell they feel like.
The contracts for the labels are all wildly different but all of them consist of at least technical due diligence (what are YOU going to do to make sure OUR content does not fall into the wrong hands), financial due diligence, and a marketing plan. This is heavy stuff and can takes months and months to push through. In short, this is a very time-consuming and spendy process to go through.
EMI, under the digital music strategy of Ted Cohen, has far and away been the most open of the majors when it comes to licensing. They are simply making an attempt to protect their assets... since it takes so much effort on both sides to conclude a licensing agreement, it makes sense that they (the majors) want to recoup as much of that investment up-front as they possibly can.
People on Slashdot get this wrong all of the time. You see, the majors and the digital music services are in a death-match, with the DMS being hounded by the customer and the majors being hounded by the shareholders. The ONE thing that binds all of those people together (with the possible exception of the customer) is DRM. The major feels a little more secure "knowing" that their music can't be mass-reproduced, the DMS is happy because they can sell the content, the customer is happy because they can get the content, and the shareholder is happy because, well, there is an additional revenue stream.
And FYI...I have never met a music executive who DOES NOT understand that DRM is nearly useless as far as protection of content goes. BUT... as I said above, it is the glue that keeps everything together.
Go spend some time on Digital Music News to fully understand what is going on in the industry. It's not so simple and you cannot say definitively that DRM is harming the consumer because RIGHT NOW the only way to get that content is with DRM. Better than nothing, isn't it? Things will eventually change and this announcement from EMI is a very positive step forward. Don't trash the music industry as a whole until you understand it. I am certainly not saying it is full of kind-hearted souls (very far from it!) but there is more to it than just "let's fuck the consumer and the artist to make a buck!".
That's all well and good and I mostly agree. But... I was the CEO of a public (Pink Sheets) company where I would get calls DAILY from people (and their lawyers) complaining about spam 'pump and dump' faxes and emails being sent to them. I can honestly say that I never knew anything about these spammings. Essentially what can happen is that one or more major shareholders decide to drop a few bucks to increase the value of their holdings. The company never knows but their name is tarnished. I learned the hard way that proving innocence (ie... not knowing nor endorsing) about a pump and dump scheme is almost impossible.
Basically, don't assume that a spam email or fax is being sent from the company directly. While there are most definitely scam artists out there (especially on OTC and Pink Sheets!), there are also a lot of very honest businesses who are at the mercy of their less than honest shareholders.
Thank you! I have a very hard time with people constantly saying "But the labels are screwing the artists!". Sorry to break it to everyone but the artists have WILLINGLY signed a contract that 'screws' them. If I am dumb enough to get a mortgage at 15% do I have the right to say the bank is screwing me? Sure... if I don't believe in personal responsibility at all.
On a side note, as someone who has run an independent (off and on) for 10 years, I gotta say you hit the nail on the head. Most (99%) of indies have either 1) no cash reserves, and 2) shoddy to non-existent accounting practices. As an artist you are taking a much bigger risk going with an indy than a major. That being said, with the right independent the upsides can be huge.
Oh, and on another note... the RIAA is NOT a label. The RIAA is an association made up of a bunch of labels, including a fair chunk of independents. The only large independents (just one step down from majors) that I can think of who are NOT a member of the RIAA are Nettwerk and Epitaph. The RIAA does do some really great things... but it is unfortunate they have sued grandmas and single moms.
Thank you for this post. I have been long wondering what Chixdiggit meant by the song "Going to the Peelers". I always assumed it was some Canadian version of NASCAR. Now I know much better and the song makes a bit more sense.
Explain that to a 5 year old! I caught myself by surprise this morning by being a pedantic fuck when my son said something about "it is cold this winter". I replied "Actually, winter is not for another couple of days." He stared at me, as only the spoils of your loins can, with a look that said "you, dada, are a complete dumbfuck."
This appears to be a translation error between British English and American English. What the OP said was "It's the cat's ass" and you heard that as "the dog's bollocks". Unfortunately this mistranslation does not work because C# is the cat's ass whereas java is the dog's bollocks... neither of which are to be confused with python being the snake's bowels or ruby being the snow monkey's larynx. Perl, of course, is the camel's penis and VB is the sea slug's rectum.
I applaud your comment and find it sad that it will either be ignored or modded as 'flamebait'. The fact of the matter is that capitalism is based on the survival of the fittest and MSFT has been at the top of that game since 1985-ish. That being said, I am currently using Kubuntu and have to say that KDE has come far enough along to be considered a viable alternative for widespread desktop adoption.
Some day someone will knock MSFT from its perch... although it might be several years. The OSS community (specifically those that believe that there should be no such thing as intellectual property and that software should be treated like speech) would do well to study how a company like MS reached its dominance, while skipping the parts that made them a monopolist.
I agree that people should lighten up. It is after all a *television show*. There is no reason to be a pedantic fucktard just because some minor and/or obscure element is off... note: this does *not* make you a fun person to be around.
Note to self: I should save this reply for any Slashdot article covering games, Windows, or politics.
I somewhat agree about the "wholesale" term. But that being said, what else would one call it: it is an amount that you pay the label on every sale... very similar to what you would pay the distributor every time you sell a CD.
The vast majority of content from the majors is wholesaled at.70 now, not.65. In fact, several of the larger indies are also at the.70 rate. If retailers like iTunes drop the retail price any further they will actually *lose* money per sale. What the Justice Department is investigating has nothing to do with retail; rather it has to do with the possibility of the majors working together to make sure that the wholesale remains consistently at at least that.70 mark. I have seen the contracts... there is most definitely collusion.
I wonder what that poor fucknuts is going to say when he logs in tomorrow and sees 25,000 new profile views? Alas.... that is not even close to some of the worst profiles.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, you know what? I am a smoker (obviously) and I can't stand the smell of smoke (rather, I can't stand the smell of other people's smoke). I am sympathetic to your cause except for one thing: There were plenty of places in Seattle (and throughout Washington) that were non-smoking. It's not like someone chained you to a barstool in a smoky bar.
And how many bartenders do you know that DON'T smoke? I would say that the VAST MAJORITY of bartenders are smokers (and, of course, drinkers). This argument is totally and completely baseless. Don't like the smoke? Go work for a non-smoking bar. Want to smoke, go to work for a smoking bar. It's not hard.
Personally it's not that big of a deal for me since I usually smoke outside anyway, but what really pisses me off are the do-gooders (see some of the other posts in this thread) who don't believe that a bar owner should have the right to make a bar smoking or non. Seattle had quite a few non-smoking bars before the new law and yeah, they were pretty busy. But the inescapable truth of the whole matter is that even though a fairly small percentage of Seattlelites smoke, that amount increases drastically among people who drink. Most of the bars I go to are somewhere between 50-75% smokers. Why in the world can't they have an environment to do what they want to do?
States like Idaho actually have it right as far as I am concerned. Bars with food=no smoking. Taverns and pubs, up to the owner. I think that is perfect.
But... Seattle is so full of PC numbnuts that will never happen. Oh, well.
I used to think most drivers had at least a modicum of common sense until the other day when I was out having a smoke in front of my local bar and watched a lady in her 50s literally brushing her teeth while driving westbound on 45th. She was doing all of about 5 miles an hour and there was a huge line of cars behind her. When she got pretty much in front of where I was standing, she came to a complete stop (a good couple hundred feet before the light) and really started to brush. She was completely and totally oblivious. The guy behind her looked like he was about to explode, compounded by the fact that I yelled out to him: "She's brushing her fucking teeth!". He turned a color of red I haven't seen before and started honking wildly. It took the lady a good 20 seconds to finally realize she had backed up traffic all the way back to I-5. The absolute best part was that she sped up for several yards until she was right behind another car and then HONKED at that car for not going fast enough. I wished for something Darwinian to happen, but alas, god must have been busy that day.
A little rich kid, what do you know
You had everything don't you think it don't show
A-hiding in the closet just a-facing the wall
Too Much Too Soon - do you recall?
If you don't know who sang that, or to what "Too Much Too Soon" refers, please return to your listening of Dookie.
Having been the CEO of a public company (well, Pink Sheets) I can tell you that is very wrong. When you initially enter the market you sell blocks of stock to your market makers for pennies on the dollar. It's not like every time Aunt Elma buys 100 shares of stock the company gets the money. Now a company CAN repeat the process of registering more stock for the public float but from experience I would say you should have a DAMN GOOD reason for it. Every time you inject more free-trading stock into the marketplace you run the very real risk of diluting yourself out of existence.
Also, on the split issue many have suggested for SCOX, it MAY work... but in my experience most companies (outside of the very big ones) that do reverse splits will end up with double the shares at half the cost by the time all is said and done. Hell, my company did a 10-1 reverse and within a few months the shares were trading back at the original price for a nice 90% loss in value. I see it happen all the time.
I appreciate your struggle but don't you mean 'Particle Man'? This is from a guy who used 'Birdhouse in Your Soul' as his wedding song.
If memory serves correctly it sounds something like "WHOOOOOAAAAAAAAA". I may be off on the number of A's though.
That was my point. CDs are ditigal but music downloaded from a DMS is DIGITAL. See the difference?
DIGITALLY. It is the only way a consumer can buy the product DIGITALLY. And DMSs are not for those of us who want to/have the know-how to rip it ourselves. The DMS exists as a mass-consumer phenomenon.
AllofMP3 does nothing but illicitly make available tracks to make a profit. Sure, they claim to pay the Russian equivelant of BMI/ASCAP but that is not enough! To sell digital music you technically need to have the performance rights (a la BMI/ASCAP, etc...) but ALSO have a master agreement with the label. Oh... and you are also usually required to have a separate license for each region you are selling to. Do you think AllofMP3 has all of that in place?
The contracts for the labels are all wildly different but all of them consist of at least technical due diligence (what are YOU going to do to make sure OUR content does not fall into the wrong hands), financial due diligence, and a marketing plan. This is heavy stuff and can takes months and months to push through. In short, this is a very time-consuming and spendy process to go through.
EMI, under the digital music strategy of Ted Cohen, has far and away been the most open of the majors when it comes to licensing. They are simply making an attempt to protect their assets... since it takes so much effort on both sides to conclude a licensing agreement, it makes sense that they (the majors) want to recoup as much of that investment up-front as they possibly can.
People on Slashdot get this wrong all of the time. You see, the majors and the digital music services are in a death-match, with the DMS being hounded by the customer and the majors being hounded by the shareholders. The ONE thing that binds all of those people together (with the possible exception of the customer) is DRM. The major feels a little more secure "knowing" that their music can't be mass-reproduced, the DMS is happy because they can sell the content, the customer is happy because they can get the content, and the shareholder is happy because, well, there is an additional revenue stream.
And FYI...I have never met a music executive who DOES NOT understand that DRM is nearly useless as far as protection of content goes. BUT... as I said above, it is the glue that keeps everything together.
Go spend some time on Digital Music News to fully understand what is going on in the industry. It's not so simple and you cannot say definitively that DRM is harming the consumer because RIGHT NOW the only way to get that content is with DRM. Better than nothing, isn't it? Things will eventually change and this announcement from EMI is a very positive step forward. Don't trash the music industry as a whole until you understand it. I am certainly not saying it is full of kind-hearted souls (very far from it!) but there is more to it than just "let's fuck the consumer and the artist to make a buck!".
That's all well and good and I mostly agree. But... I was the CEO of a public (Pink Sheets) company where I would get calls DAILY from people (and their lawyers) complaining about spam 'pump and dump' faxes and emails being sent to them. I can honestly say that I never knew anything about these spammings. Essentially what can happen is that one or more major shareholders decide to drop a few bucks to increase the value of their holdings. The company never knows but their name is tarnished. I learned the hard way that proving innocence (ie... not knowing nor endorsing) about a pump and dump scheme is almost impossible. Basically, don't assume that a spam email or fax is being sent from the company directly. While there are most definitely scam artists out there (especially on OTC and Pink Sheets!), there are also a lot of very honest businesses who are at the mercy of their less than honest shareholders.
On a side note, as someone who has run an independent (off and on) for 10 years, I gotta say you hit the nail on the head. Most (99%) of indies have either 1) no cash reserves, and 2) shoddy to non-existent accounting practices. As an artist you are taking a much bigger risk going with an indy than a major. That being said, with the right independent the upsides can be huge.
Oh, and on another note... the RIAA is NOT a label. The RIAA is an association made up of a bunch of labels, including a fair chunk of independents. The only large independents (just one step down from majors) that I can think of who are NOT a member of the RIAA are Nettwerk and Epitaph. The RIAA does do some really great things... but it is unfortunate they have sued grandmas and single moms.
Thank you for this post. I have been long wondering what Chixdiggit meant by the song "Going to the Peelers". I always assumed it was some Canadian version of NASCAR. Now I know much better and the song makes a bit more sense.
From what I understand They (the Illuminati) have secretely made the tubes bigger. You can even put whole CDs and DVDs through them.
Ah... parenthood.
You obviously haven't used a TMobile MDA running Windows Mobile 2005. It is painful.
I hope that helps.
Some day someone will knock MSFT from its perch... although it might be several years. The OSS community (specifically those that believe that there should be no such thing as intellectual property and that software should be treated like speech) would do well to study how a company like MS reached its dominance, while skipping the parts that made them a monopolist.
Note to self: I should save this reply for any Slashdot article covering games, Windows, or politics.
I somewhat agree about the "wholesale" term. But that being said, what else would one call it: it is an amount that you pay the label on every sale... very similar to what you would pay the distributor every time you sell a CD.
The vast majority of content from the majors is wholesaled at .70 now, not .65. In fact, several of the larger indies are also at the .70 rate. If retailers like iTunes drop the retail price any further they will actually *lose* money per sale. What the Justice Department is investigating has nothing to do with retail; rather it has to do with the possibility of the majors working together to make sure that the wholesale remains consistently at at least that .70 mark. I have seen the contracts... there is most definitely collusion.
I wonder what that poor fucknuts is going to say when he logs in tomorrow and sees 25,000 new profile views? Alas.... that is not even close to some of the worst profiles.
You, sir, are a comic genius. I am laughing so hard as I type this that my wife is almost concerned.