Someone else brought that up and it made me think. One thought was, of course, the possibility of kickbacks. Considering the whole payolla scam with labels, there's got to be some truth to that. Another thought was the notion of feeling like they have to impress someone. "Our label is better to sign with because we have all of these perks" when essentially, other than ties to producers, all major labels are the same. The only edge they have over smaller ones is their distribution network.
With all that being said, who knows. But it's a common practice. The punch line is nothing from the label is free. The artist owes it all back in their royalties until it's paid off.
Still far from the truth. And you seem to be stuck on the idea that performers are the only people in the industry, so that's who is losing revenue. I have to assume at this point that you have no experience in the music industry. I, however, have quite a long history with the industry. The major money makers in music are in the minority. Even Darryl Dodd (country music) has an apartment and a roommate. You would be surprise at what the annual income of people like George Jones, Patti Loveless, and Sara Evans actually is. Some are lucky enough to get paid endorsements (ala Pepsi and Brittney Spears), but again, most aren't.
I agree with your comment regarding copyprotection on everything. However, on some parts of your car it is illegal to take them apart (the computer for instance). The problem is the gubment has no idea how to deal with technology. Napster was easy for them to shut down because it had a central server. It wasn't long before P2P became popular. So they sent out notices to file sharers. That stopped almost nobody, so they resorted to lawsuits. Verizon put a halt to that, so they work on changing the laws. All of that is knee-jerk reaction, and a reaction that nobody in the music industry likes outside of the major labels.
p.s. you were kidding with this comment No-one is talking about banning guns right? You've never heard of Goodbyeguns.org, or HCI, or Americans for Gun Safety, or....
Re:I may screw this up...
on
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Again, you're missing the point. Yes, there are a handfull of stars who make absurd amounts of money, but they're a handful. And illegally copying songs doesn't just take money out of their pocket or the pockets of the label execs, it takes money out of the pockets of other people. The problem, once again, is the business model the labels choose to use, and everyone but them and the RIAA agrees that it needs to change.
But if you're simply trying to convince yourself that somehow that music got put together for free, keep on trying....
Re:I may screw this up...
on
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· Score: 1
Ok, if you need someone to explain the CPI or some other inflation indicator to you, you might not want to spill your wisdom here.
However, to enlighten, the original Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope) was made on a budget of $9.5MM in 1976. By contrast, the Blair Witch project was made on a mere $35k in 1999.
Using the CPI, the Star Wars budget was $28,596,805 in 1999 dollars. Quite a difference from $35,000, although at least I can agree it was much better than BWP.
Re:Welcome to the Dark Ages.
on
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That's ok... I don't want to get in your way of getting the last wo... oh wait.. crap... sorry!
Re:I may screw this up...
on
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But then what happens? Could you imagine Star Wars done on a Blair Witch budget? That's the sort of thing I think we all have to look forward to in the entertainment industry if song/movie sharing continues. Sure, I agree that $20 for a DVD for a movie that made a killing at the box office is a bit much, but that's economics. The price will eventually come down.
The bottom line is it costs to make recordings and movies, no matter what the quality is.
Re:Funny timing
on
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· Score: 4, Informative
I imagine some cost less, some cost more, but that $250,000 was from real experience.
I played with a band that now has 5 CD out independantly. Earlier in their career, they signed a contract with RCA to put their first CD out. They had their own tunes, but RCA demanded they use some "canned hits" as well, and they were wrestled down to only 4 originals on the CD. During recording, the label began catering sessions from restaurants like Sunset Grill (a non-cheap restaurant in Nashville) and the like. Once this band finally realized the catering wasn't free to them, they had it stopped. Then the cost of studio musicians came into play. Added to that, the producer had to find (at the label/band's expense) some obscure rare microphone for just one song, which halted production. Of course, hotels aren't free for the couple of days that you're not working in the studio. When I was a session bassist in Nashville, I was $50 per song, which is scale to the AFM. However, Michael Rhodes, Mike Brignardello, Glen Worf etc... are more like $300 per song. There are other useless extravagent expenses the label throws in, and there's wasted time spent by the label's hand picked producer, all adding to the cost of production. For this particular band, it came out to $250,000.
The saddest part is after wasting all that money, the label shelved the completed project, not wanting to spend the money on marketing. In reality, they could've had the same quality with $50,000 in the studio, and had $200,000 left over for marketing... or a novel idea, spent less on marketing and having done so, spent less on the project as a whole. But the labels like their model of wasting money on 95% of the artists while 5% of them make the $$ to fund the rest. Anything different would be admitting that the labels have no clue what listeners want, and the Billy Gillman's of the world would never happen.
most of them make enough in a year to retire for ever
Nothing could be further from the truth. For every Christina Aguilera out there, there are hundreds of artists making quite a bit less.
Governments have no right to screw with our rights over this
What rights? The right to have a copy of someone elses work without paying for it? You can listen to the radio for free, you can sing the tune while doing your laundry for free, but if you want the full production with instruments and a professional recording that costs money to produce, then you should pay something for it. Unless, of course, you can convince the $100,000+ recording studios and studio musicians they shouldnt' charge a dime for their part in it.
Totally different arguement. Mine was only for the songwriters... not the artists, and not to cover the production costs associated with recording and distributing music. Labels and independant artists can charge whatever they want for a CD, but the songwriters still get the same amount.
I'm actually sorting through the copyright law (he was in the car when I talked to him) right now, and will repost with a link to the specific law in question.
Re:Welcome to the Dark Ages.
on
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Except that it was a re-published article, and the first link I found to it. Otherwise, I agree that the NYP is a rag.
Re:I may screw this up...
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I hate TV myself... can I hang out at your house? Mine is usually glued to Disney or Nickelodeon (kids), which just makes it worse.
I would probably have the same reaction if I saw those MPAA ads in the theater... targeting the very people that are actually paying to see the movie. I also think they're in a better boat than the RIAA right now because it takes damn longer to download a movie than a song.
You're right in that nothing beats the in theater experience of a good quality movie, even with my slightly larger than average TV and 6.1 speakers.
Maybe I should have typed a few more words, but you're almost right. It's $0.085 per song per CD sold actually. Lots of CD's are pressed, go to BestBuy, and are returned in a few months because they didn't sell. The songwriter gets nothing off of those.
Willie pay me $10,000 to buy the song rightsLegally that cannot happen, as they are prohibited by US law to do so. I'll spend some time sorting through the copyright law and find a link to that specific notion, but I don't have it right now.
I read recently that the average songwriter makes $4,700(US) per year. A good number of those are part time writers, but there is an entire industry of good writers, most of whom are either not good performers, or are not interested in performing. The typical writer works for a publishing company, and gets a $1000-2000(US) retainer (deducted from their royalties) to write songs professionally. BMI or ASCAP tracks the CD sales and radio play, and makes sure the artists get their fair share. The publishing company is paid by the label or artist that uses their writers' songs.
On the $$ point, I once saw a check my friend got for $60,000. That was for a song that was on both a George Strait CD and a Barbara Streisand CD at the same time, and was for 6 months of royalties. I saw another that was under $1000, also for a six month period. Like any performance gig, your income tends to be like a roller coaster ride.
Re:Ironic...
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Go to The RIAA's site where they make no bones at all about the fact that they represent the labels. They make an aside that they sort of represent artists, but only because they fight for freedom of speech so the labels can sell more CD's.
Notice, also, that they're a.com, rather than a.org;)
Re:I may screw this up...
on
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Have you seen the MPAA commercials? They're showing pictures of the production crew, editors, etc... and that downloading movies affects these people and their families. Quite the opposite PR campaign that the RIAA is using which is "stop downloading or these large corporate executives will have to buy a smaller yacht."
I wonder if the MPAA campaign is appealing to the public any better?
Actually, those lawsuits fund more lawsuits, which in turn fund PAC money, which get laws changed in the favor or the RIAA and major labels. Then come more lawsuits....
Funny timing
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I just got off the phone in a lengthy conversation with a friend who is a widely recorded songwriter. You can imagine the arguement between a programmer and a songwriter regarding the issue or piracy. He brought up some interesting points (and I like to think I did too)...
Songwriters feel the RIAA is going about it all wrong. The RIAA is funded by labels, so of course that's the drum they'll beat the strongest. The NSIA believes the RIAA's PR is attricious, and will (already does) hurt the performing industry. Nobody cares that record labels with a bad business model (read, spend too much money on production and marketing per cd) are either not making as much money or losing some. The NSIA (and others) have and continue to pressure the RIAA to change it's tactics.
Songwriters are in a different situation than programmers. I can charge whatever I like for my time or my programs. Songwriters are beholden to federal law (in the US) regarding what they can charge which is $0.085 per song per album cut, and $0.015 per song per radio play. Songwriters cannot charge a salary and forego any rights to what they write legally.
Songwriters love the idea of iTunes and other paid services. Part of reason is their pay per download is likely to go up from their pay per cut. The only downside is the copyright law has to be amended (again) to allow this, and until that happens, iTunes etc.. will have to put the artist money in escrow.
The media hasn't been any help in that corporations going after the little guy are front page news (ala the McDonald's coffee burn woman), while details that emerge later (also ala the McDonald's coffee burn woman) make small print in the back pages. The little girl that was sued by the RIAA got seven messages from them telling her to stop sharing files.
The RIAA is just another group funded by large corporations to pursue their interests, rather than the interests of individuals, and I could care less if they disappeared tomorrow. I know this, though: Sharing songs with no revenue going to the people that created them is financially harmful to the songwriters. Music isn't something that a person can't live without, and listening to radio is free.
Here's something else I know. If labels like RCA didn't spend $250,000 recording a CD (that could be done for easily 1/10 that cost) they'd have less to cry about in the profit news.
Are you kidding? Here in Texas, if you don't advertize your knowledge and ownership of firearms, you get sent to Maryland. Also of note, Texas got rid of the open container laws only last year.
My experience has been the same. I don't recall getting any calls other than from non-profit organizations in quite some time now. And 429,000 complaints in 62,000,000 registered numbers is a mere 0.69%.... I'd say that's a pretty low noise ratio for the first run of this thing.
You're right to an extent, but think of it this way. Typically, MS programmers are good at what they do. It's doing what they're told to do that can be a problem. Or worse yet, teams not communicating with other teams (through their team lead/project manager/development manager) that can cause problems. Even worse than that, it can be QA departments that aren't fully testing or are not communicating all known issues back to development teams.
All of that can actually be attributed to poor management. Not necessarily in the sense of management not understanding the process, but leaning more toward the "ship the products for $$ sake" rather than "build better products for less profit, but better reuptation" business model.
MS is in the business to make money. So far that's worked out quite well for them, regardless of the quality of their products. OSS has done a fairly nice job of forcing MS slightly into the latter business model, but as we all know, not far enough. It may never happen that MS fully embraces the idea of building better products for less $$.
As a programmer with 13 years of professional experience, I can attest to the fact that an app with no defects/bugs/issues/ on the first compile would be a miracle. Programmers have trouble thinking like users and consequently have trouble imagining every possible way of breaking their app.
That being said, I firmly think that most of MS's problems with software have much more to do with management than with the developers themselves.
some developers from MS discuss how they deal with damage control on a daily basis. I think that would drum up some interest.
Typically, that's management's problem, and if it never makes it back to the developers, they continue coding on what they're told to code on.
Funny, because I spent the better part of three years converting code to correct the issue. The companies I consulted for tested their systems and had catastrophic failures. Now, it's not like they were running power grids, but financial transactions became catastrophc monetarily.
Ha! This is offtopic, but I heard WW on a tourbus recently. I've been buying up all I can of him. You're the first person not on that bus to either mention his name or not reply with a "duh" look when I ask if someone's heard of him.
On another note, I understand he died about 8 years ago.
While I agree that converting within the metric system is easier than US, there are a few measurements that make a bit more sense in US.
What's half of an inch? Half an inch. What's half of a centimeter? 0.5cm, or 5mm
What's half of that in inches? 1/4 inch. What's half on the metric side? 0.25cm or 2.5mm.
Half of that? 1/8 inch, 0.125cm or 1.25mm.
Half again? 1/16in., 0.0625cm or.625mm
Many of the Empirical/US measurements were based on what made sense at the time. In building houses, 1/16 is typically the smallest measurement needed, and not all that often. Measuring down to that small size is a little easier when dealing with fractions rather than decimals. Of course now more industries use much smaller measurements than 1/16" or.625mm, so the reasoning becomes a bit moot.
So what I'm getting at is the answer to this question... Do you really think that our mind is naturally suited to 3s and 4s? is "yes, in some cases."
Slashdot Mirror
Someone else brought that up and it made me think. One thought was, of course, the possibility of kickbacks. Considering the whole payolla scam with labels, there's got to be some truth to that. Another thought was the notion of feeling like they have to impress someone. "Our label is better to sign with because we have all of these perks" when essentially, other than ties to producers, all major labels are the same. The only edge they have over smaller ones is their distribution network.
With all that being said, who knows. But it's a common practice. The punch line is nothing from the label is free. The artist owes it all back in their royalties until it's paid off.
Ok not most but allot of people make shit loads.
Still far from the truth. And you seem to be stuck on the idea that performers are the only people in the industry, so that's who is losing revenue. I have to assume at this point that you have no experience in the music industry. I, however, have quite a long history with the industry. The major money makers in music are in the minority. Even Darryl Dodd (country music) has an apartment and a roommate. You would be surprise at what the annual income of people like George Jones, Patti Loveless, and Sara Evans actually is. Some are lucky enough to get paid endorsements (ala Pepsi and Brittney Spears), but again, most aren't.
I agree with your comment regarding copyprotection on everything. However, on some parts of your car it is illegal to take them apart (the computer for instance). The problem is the gubment has no idea how to deal with technology. Napster was easy for them to shut down because it had a central server. It wasn't long before P2P became popular. So they sent out notices to file sharers. That stopped almost nobody, so they resorted to lawsuits. Verizon put a halt to that, so they work on changing the laws. All of that is knee-jerk reaction, and a reaction that nobody in the music industry likes outside of the major labels.
p.s. you were kidding with this comment No-one is talking about banning guns right? You've never heard of Goodbyeguns.org, or HCI, or Americans for Gun Safety, or....
Again, you're missing the point. Yes, there are a handfull of stars who make absurd amounts of money, but they're a handful. And illegally copying songs doesn't just take money out of their pocket or the pockets of the label execs, it takes money out of the pockets of other people. The problem, once again, is the business model the labels choose to use, and everyone but them and the RIAA agrees that it needs to change.
But if you're simply trying to convince yourself that somehow that music got put together for free, keep on trying....
Ok, if you need someone to explain the CPI or some other inflation indicator to you, you might not want to spill your wisdom here.
However, to enlighten, the original Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope) was made on a budget of $9.5MM in 1976. By contrast, the Blair Witch project was made on a mere $35k in 1999.
Using the CPI, the Star Wars budget was $28,596,805 in 1999 dollars. Quite a difference from $35,000, although at least I can agree it was much better than BWP.
That's ok... I don't want to get in your way of getting the last wo... oh wait.. crap... sorry!
But then what happens? Could you imagine Star Wars done on a Blair Witch budget? That's the sort of thing I think we all have to look forward to in the entertainment industry if song/movie sharing continues. Sure, I agree that $20 for a DVD for a movie that made a killing at the box office is a bit much, but that's economics. The price will eventually come down.
The bottom line is it costs to make recordings and movies, no matter what the quality is.
I imagine some cost less, some cost more, but that $250,000 was from real experience.
I played with a band that now has 5 CD out independantly. Earlier in their career, they signed a contract with RCA to put their first CD out. They had their own tunes, but RCA demanded they use some "canned hits" as well, and they were wrestled down to only 4 originals on the CD. During recording, the label began catering sessions from restaurants like Sunset Grill (a non-cheap restaurant in Nashville) and the like. Once this band finally realized the catering wasn't free to them, they had it stopped. Then the cost of studio musicians came into play. Added to that, the producer had to find (at the label/band's expense) some obscure rare microphone for just one song, which halted production. Of course, hotels aren't free for the couple of days that you're not working in the studio. When I was a session bassist in Nashville, I was $50 per song, which is scale to the AFM. However, Michael Rhodes, Mike Brignardello, Glen Worf etc... are more like $300 per song. There are other useless extravagent expenses the label throws in, and there's wasted time spent by the label's hand picked producer, all adding to the cost of production. For this particular band, it came out to $250,000.
The saddest part is after wasting all that money, the label shelved the completed project, not wanting to spend the money on marketing. In reality, they could've had the same quality with $50,000 in the studio, and had $200,000 left over for marketing... or a novel idea, spent less on marketing and having done so, spent less on the project as a whole. But the labels like their model of wasting money on 95% of the artists while 5% of them make the $$ to fund the rest. Anything different would be admitting that the labels have no clue what listeners want, and the Billy Gillman's of the world would never happen.
most of them make enough in a year to retire for ever
Nothing could be further from the truth. For every Christina Aguilera out there, there are hundreds of artists making quite a bit less.
Governments have no right to screw with our rights over this
What rights? The right to have a copy of someone elses work without paying for it? You can listen to the radio for free, you can sing the tune while doing your laundry for free, but if you want the full production with instruments and a professional recording that costs money to produce, then you should pay something for it. Unless, of course, you can convince the $100,000+ recording studios and studio musicians they shouldnt' charge a dime for their part in it.
Totally different arguement. Mine was only for the songwriters... not the artists, and not to cover the production costs associated with recording and distributing music. Labels and independant artists can charge whatever they want for a CD, but the songwriters still get the same amount.
I'm actually sorting through the copyright law (he was in the car when I talked to him) right now, and will repost with a link to the specific law in question.
Except that it was a re-published article, and the first link I found to it. Otherwise, I agree that the NYP is a rag.
I hate TV myself... can I hang out at your house? Mine is usually glued to Disney or Nickelodeon (kids), which just makes it worse.
I would probably have the same reaction if I saw those MPAA ads in the theater... targeting the very people that are actually paying to see the movie. I also think they're in a better boat than the RIAA right now because it takes damn longer to download a movie than a song.
You're right in that nothing beats the in theater experience of a good quality movie, even with my slightly larger than average TV and 6.1 speakers.
Maybe I should have typed a few more words, but you're almost right. It's $0.085 per song per CD sold actually. Lots of CD's are pressed, go to BestBuy, and are returned in a few months because they didn't sell. The songwriter gets nothing off of those.
Willie pay me $10,000 to buy the song rightsLegally that cannot happen, as they are prohibited by US law to do so. I'll spend some time sorting through the copyright law and find a link to that specific notion, but I don't have it right now.
I read recently that the average songwriter makes $4,700(US) per year. A good number of those are part time writers, but there is an entire industry of good writers, most of whom are either not good performers, or are not interested in performing. The typical writer works for a publishing company, and gets a $1000-2000(US) retainer (deducted from their royalties) to write songs professionally. BMI or ASCAP tracks the CD sales and radio play, and makes sure the artists get their fair share. The publishing company is paid by the label or artist that uses their writers' songs.
On the $$ point, I once saw a check my friend got for $60,000. That was for a song that was on both a George Strait CD and a Barbara Streisand CD at the same time, and was for 6 months of royalties. I saw another that was under $1000, also for a six month period. Like any performance gig, your income tends to be like a roller coaster ride.
I couldn't agree more...
When watching a movie like Fahrenheit 9/11
;)
You didn't download that movie did you? What was your IP address again?
Not to mention that Fahrenheit 9/11 was crap.
Go to The RIAA's site where they make no bones at all about the fact that they represent the labels. They make an aside that they sort of represent artists, but only because they fight for freedom of speech so the labels can sell more CD's.
.com, rather than a .org ;)
Notice, also, that they're a
Have you seen the MPAA commercials? They're showing pictures of the production crew, editors, etc... and that downloading movies affects these people and their families. Quite the opposite PR campaign that the RIAA is using which is "stop downloading or these large corporate executives will have to buy a smaller yacht."
I wonder if the MPAA campaign is appealing to the public any better?
Actually, those lawsuits fund more lawsuits, which in turn fund PAC money, which get laws changed in the favor or the RIAA and major labels. Then come more lawsuits....
The RIAA is just another group funded by large corporations to pursue their interests, rather than the interests of individuals, and I could care less if they disappeared tomorrow. I know this, though: Sharing songs with no revenue going to the people that created them is financially harmful to the songwriters. Music isn't something that a person can't live without, and listening to radio is free.
Here's something else I know. If labels like RCA didn't spend $250,000 recording a CD (that could be done for easily 1/10 that cost) they'd have less to cry about in the profit news.
Are you kidding? Here in Texas, if you don't advertize your knowledge and ownership of firearms, you get sent to Maryland. Also of note, Texas got rid of the open container laws only last year.
I'm ok with the charities, at least the honest ones, because the sheer volume of annoying calls in the evening has come way down.
Did you get a chance to report that company that bothered you?
My experience has been the same. I don't recall getting any calls other than from non-profit organizations in quite some time now. And 429,000 complaints in 62,000,000 registered numbers is a mere 0.69%.... I'd say that's a pretty low noise ratio for the first run of this thing.
You're right to an extent, but think of it this way. Typically, MS programmers are good at what they do. It's doing what they're told to do that can be a problem. Or worse yet, teams not communicating with other teams (through their team lead/project manager/development manager) that can cause problems. Even worse than that, it can be QA departments that aren't fully testing or are not communicating all known issues back to development teams.
All of that can actually be attributed to poor management. Not necessarily in the sense of management not understanding the process, but leaning more toward the "ship the products for $$ sake" rather than "build better products for less profit, but better reuptation" business model.
MS is in the business to make money. So far that's worked out quite well for them, regardless of the quality of their products. OSS has done a fairly nice job of forcing MS slightly into the latter business model, but as we all know, not far enough. It may never happen that MS fully embraces the idea of building better products for less $$.
As a programmer with 13 years of professional experience, I can attest to the fact that an app with no defects/bugs/issues/ on the first compile would be a miracle. Programmers have trouble thinking like users and consequently have trouble imagining every possible way of breaking their app.
That being said, I firmly think that most of MS's problems with software have much more to do with management than with the developers themselves.
some developers from MS discuss how they deal with damage control on a daily basis. I think that would drum up some interest.
Typically, that's management's problem, and if it never makes it back to the developers, they continue coding on what they're told to code on.
My $0.02 anyway.
Funny, because I spent the better part of three years converting code to correct the issue. The companies I consulted for tested their systems and had catastrophic failures. Now, it's not like they were running power grids, but financial transactions became catastrophc monetarily.
Ha! This is offtopic, but I heard WW on a tourbus recently. I've been buying up all I can of him. You're the first person not on that bus to either mention his name or not reply with a "duh" look when I ask if someone's heard of him.
On another note, I understand he died about 8 years ago.
While I agree that converting within the metric system is easier than US, there are a few measurements that make a bit more sense in US.
.625mm
.625mm, so the reasoning becomes a bit moot.
What's half of an inch? Half an inch. What's half of a centimeter? 0.5cm, or 5mm
What's half of that in inches? 1/4 inch. What's half on the metric side? 0.25cm or 2.5mm.
Half of that? 1/8 inch, 0.125cm or 1.25mm.
Half again? 1/16in., 0.0625cm or
Many of the Empirical/US measurements were based on what made sense at the time. In building houses, 1/16 is typically the smallest measurement needed, and not all that often. Measuring down to that small size is a little easier when dealing with fractions rather than decimals. Of course now more industries use much smaller measurements than 1/16" or
So what I'm getting at is the answer to this question... Do you really think that our mind is naturally suited to 3s and 4s? is "yes, in some cases."