The RIAA is a non-profit organization, and makes no money, and therefore does not appear on the Fortune 500.
The only major American record company, Warner Bros., is a tiny portion of Time-Warner, which itself is #45 on the Fortune 500, and which itself is dwarfed by such Big, Bad, Evil Corporations(tm) as Albertson's and Target.
Time-Warner's revenue is $27 billion per year. The record sales are a tiny fraction of that.
No, you're the one who misunderstands the law. It is blatantly commercial use when people use it as a substitue for buying the CD. Which part of this don't you understand?
Proof please? You need to provide proof that without a physical commodity that the price of music could retain its current price schedule. You need to prepare a list of the components of the price of a CD and show that 75% of that is the physical packaging & distribution. Please provide this proof here, and give a source for all of your figures. You need to retract your statement and admit that you pulled that number out of nowhere if you cannot supply this proof.
It doesn't cost the RIAA anything to make an MP3 available on the web, so $1 IS reasonable; they have no production costs, you aren't getting any physical media for your buck. More would be a rip-off.
You are so clueless. It costs between $100,000-$500,000 to record a classical album. This is a FACT which you cannot dsipute. (proof: Who Killed Classical Music copyright 1997 by Norman LeBrecht). Do you think $100,00-$500,000 is "no production costs"? Can you afford to blow that much money on something and give it away to the world for free?
Most music is not "songs". Only top 40 teeny bopper pop music is. Everybody else listens to concertoes, sonatas, preludes, symphonies, operas, and other, more interesting genres. So you're going to ban music, and only market "songs"? You're going to destroy western civilization's greatest artistic achievement?
You better care if you like music, because if more than a couple of those do not have satisfactory answers, there will be no music. Prarticularly important is the "who will be for the costs fo recording", which NOBODY has been able to adequately answer (save for selling t-shirts... yeah right). It's not a matter of the recording industry dying, it's a matter of recorded music dying.
That's true, but at least it was possible to find indie or minor label stuff. If I go to my local mall, what are my odds of finding ANY of that much less sampling it?
If you think your only choices are the mall, and Napster, your experience with the world is SEVERELY LIMITED. Three other resources you need to tap are local independependent record stores, mail order sources, and internet retailers.
Sampling before listening is overrated. It is only useful for top 40 music. For serious music, you need to listen to the whole album 15-20 times before you can even think about formulating an opinion on it. Most record stores are not going to allow you to stay in for 20 hours! Reviews are a much better resource for finding music than sampling, which is inherently based on first impressions. When music choosing is replaced by sampling, music will suffer because everybody will try to impress in the first few minutes instead of coming up with somehting quality. Say no to pre-purchase sampling!
Sterolab and LDP are not obscure AT ALL. I couldn't think of anything much more mainstream that isn't Britney Spears and such. Napster only lists these types of artists with massive followings. Show me a listing for Lemzo Diamono and I'll be impressed. And even THAT I can get at the neighborhood CD store.
If 10 million Napster users got seriously active and organized, there's actually a real possibility of pressuring congress into 'clarifying' the current Copyright rules to make it clear that things like napster are OK.
Yes, but practically every Napster user is a high school or junior high student, and they can't vote anyways!
This is considerably less than half a million USD.
Hyperion is a tiny label and records mostly chamber music. The half million dollar figure is from the majors, who record operas and large orchestras, and have major stars, are much more expensive and difficult to record!
Anyway, the RIAA site does give that 90% non-profitable figure, but what does that mean? How much does the average "non-profitable" recording actually lose? $1? $1,000? $100,000? How does that balance against the huge amounts that something like a Brittney Spears CD rakes in?
Ah! You're asking the right questions!
The widely quote break-even point is 500,000 units. We do not know the cost of producing that record. I use the figure of $100,000-$500,000 for a classical record as a jumping off point; pop music records usually take much longer to record, have to pay more royalties, and have bigger name (more expensive) producers. It must cost AT LEAST the high end of that to make a pop record.
Britney Spears is VERY profitable. The fixed cost of producing it is (for practical purposes) zero, and the fixed cost is small. Suppose her record company makes $8 @ 12,000,000 copies, that's a hundred million dollars!
HOWEVER, Britney Spears is a 1 in 10,000 ocurrence (literally). It is not correct to say the record company made $100 million from her, because in order to do that, it had to make similar investments in 9,000 other artists who LOST money, and 999 other artists who made less money.
The fallacy of assuming that Britney Spear's record company makes $100 million is the 'Britney Spears Accounting Myth'. It is one of the most pervasive myths about the industry in wide circulation. A massive chunk of that profit is offset by the huge number of unprofitable acts who were also invested in.
But here's the rub... this welfare system which exists in the industry is GOOD. The system takes away money from the richest artists, and uses it to fund the poorest artists. Herbert von Karajan recorded over 900 records in his lifetime and is one of the most prolific musicians of the 20th century, but almost nothing he did make money; his records were funded by disco, rock, punk, and the other money-makers. These pop genres fund the others genres.
Can you imagine if this welfare system was not implemented, and artists sold direct (a system which many clueless slashdotters advocate)? For starters, Britney Spears would be a lot richer than she is now - she should have $100 million, from recording, alone. Furthermore, no 'unprofitable' artists could still record, because they need to pay the bills (which are currently paid by Britney Spears, routed through the record industry). The industry would be a free-for-all and only the most watered down, most mass appealing, most beautiful artists would survive. The current system allows for 90% of artists who are not successful to pay their bills, and a direct sales system would reduce the pool of recorded musicians to 10% of what it is currently.
Proof please? The average cost of producing a classical CD is $500,000 (this is "insignificant"?), and sells between 2,000 and 3,000 copies in its lifetime. Do the math. There is no profit for 90% of CD's produced. The only CD's which profit is stuff like Britney Spears, but most of that profit goes to pay for the unprofitable music (90% of titles). That is where the money is going; contrary to the myth on slashdot, it is not lining record exec's pockets.
OK, this may be a bit recursive, but do you have any kind of proof for those statistics you just quoted?
Sure. The figures on classical music are from Norman LeBrecht's Who Killed Classical Music copyright 1997, which is an in depth view on classical music business. There is also an article on Hyperion's web site (I forget the URL...) which comes to similar conclusions. The 90% non-profitable is widely quoted in the industry; the RIAA web site on the cost of the CD uses that figure, and that number is widely, widely quoted in others parts of the industry also.
But, it has already been said numerous times on Slashdot that the RIAA takes such a large percentage, the artists don't get any significant amount of money off of CD sales.
Because it's "been said" on slashdot doesn't make it true! In fact, the RIAA is a non-profit company and doesn't make any money.
Assuming you misspelled "record companies", do you care to give proof of this statistic? You need to give a breakdown of the income of several musical acts in order to prove this. One data point I can give is Michael Jackson, who pocketed $6 per copy of Thriller, and sold 20 million copies. He had a three year world tour afterwards, which grossed $30 million. The album took six months to record, and the tour took three years, but the album was still four times more profitable. This doesn't mean the case holds true for all artists, but it is one data point.
They make all their money on concerts instead.
Proof please? And if this is true, why for every single concert I have ever been to, does the artist say, "Please support us and buy our CD"?
Considering the insignificant cost of producing a CD and the percentage which goes to the artist, your profit margin on CDs makes up nearly all of the cost.
Proof please? The average cost of producing a classical CD is $500,000 (this is "insignificant"?), and sells between 2,000 and 3,000 copies in its lifetime. Do the math. There is no profit for 90% of CD's produced. The only CD's which profit is stuff like Britney Spears, but most of that profit goes to pay for the unprofitable music (90% of titles). That is where the money is going; contrary to the myth on slashdot, it is not lining record exec's pockets.
Obviously, this story is a troll, a page-view-whoring attempt by Hemos who wants even more millions in his massive, multi-million dollar estate in Michigan, but we need a test of how sincere Hemos and the rest of the slashdot people are about being anti-IP. Obviously, Commander Taco and Hemos have become multi-million dollar media moguls and their income is derived almost entirely from IP. Somebody needs to copy all of the content in real time on slashdot, put on a faster server, but get rid of all of the ads, and put their own ads in, and collect revenue from that. Then see how quickly Commander Taco and Hemos sue. I give them two hours.
So once films are distributed digitally to theaters, and RipoffTheaters can download the terabyte or so from Moviester and display it in digital perfection at no cost to them, filmmakers should just scare up $50,000,000 they'll never see again just so they can do what they love? That's ridiculous. The only movies we'd see would be crappy Blair Witch knockoffs or 2-hour commercials for Pepsi.
Indeed. How much did the Star Wars Episode I cost to make? The Matrix? X-Men? All of these costs millions of dollars to produce. Every slashdotter goes ga ga and drools at the mouth over these, and wants them free. That doesn't make sense.
The logical extension - when people won't pay for content - is to commercialize it. Enjoy movies which don't have ads, and music which isn't jingles, while they last, because their days are numbered. If people won't pay for these things, advertisiers will. Would you like Shostakovich or Mahler with your Cheez Whiz ads? The Vienna Philharmonic will play the AT&T jingle between movements of Sibelius's Second, and the singers in La Boheme will be dressed in Tommy Hilfiger. And this is supposed to be better than just paying for the content?
Complain all you want about the latest pop crap on the radio or good-only-as-kindling bestseller books, but if there is no real incentive for artists to create, they won't. And yes, by that I mean money. Warm fuzzy feelings are nice, but they don't put food in your stomach or let you buy that new car you want. Of course, somehow, magically, you think "they'll pay for it one way or another" when the very reason this is a problem is that people who demand free music/movies/books are unwilling to pay what the artist asks.
It should be in the self-interest of any fan of any art to fund the artist as much as possible, and to give him as much time as possible. If the musicians have to go to selling t-shirts (what the fuck is that supposed to be all about?) as their day job, they will have less time to produce music, and their quality will suffer. How will this produce better music? Oh, it'll all be free, but there will be less of it, and the fewer recordings won't be as good as before.
Music should be free. Yes, of course the artists have a right to make a living off their music, that's what they do. So go to their concerts, buy a fscking t-shirt.
Musicians, who are professionally competent in composing music, performing music, and producing music, should ditch their real skills, and go into the t-shirt business? That just doesn't make sense. Please explain your logic behind this one. You want a musician turned into brand with his logo splattered across your chest? You want music even more commodified and commercialized? Most fans of John Eliot Gardiner or Sir Colin Davis do not wear t-shirts, how should they be funded? Should they go into the neck-tie business?
Concerts? Glenn Gould did not perform live for the last several years of his career, because he understood that the record was a much more powerful mode of communication and had the ability to reach a wider audience. The Beatles did the same thing. African pop music has a loyal following in the US, but seeing the musicians live is not an option. How do I support them? Should I fly to Africa every time one of my favorite musicians is performing in the local pub? Or should I buy the t-shirt? Do Africans even wear t-shirts?
How are older musicians supposed to make money? Rudolf Serkin is in his 80's, probably doesn't have the energy to tour, but still puts out great records. Dead musicians? Enrico Caruso died in 1920, but his complete works are available on a 12 CD set - painstakingly remastered from 78 RPM acetates. Who would have funded this project if they wouldn't be paid? The Beatles can't tour any more since Lennon is dead, but surely the other three deserve money for the recordings? How will these be funded?
Name an artistically significant concert which has happened in the last fifty years (hint: Woodstock wasn't). Records have completely replaced concerts as the medium for artistic expression. No longer do we have events such as the premiere's of Le Sacre du Printemps or Pierrot Lunaire, but ritualistic, predictable, ultra-produced, arena rock.
The artists get something on the order of 12 cents for every album that's sold, the rest goes to the label, the A&R guys, and the promoters.
Proof please?
Where does the cost of making the record figure into that? You did know that the average classical record costs $500,000 to record, didn't you? Where does that fit into your little scheme? I do not see any of the following on your little price schedule: studio time, professional musicians salaries, production, royalties. All of these are extremely significant portions of the cost, and aren't figured into your cost. Who's going to pay this? My closet will get too full if a buy a t-shirt for every recorded symphony I like. Maybe the musicians should branch into socks also?
%80 of all napster users go out and BUY CD's of the bands they download
Proof please?
Where there are no more CD's to buy (as you assert that music should be free), how do I support the artist if I want to? Remember, my closet is too full of t-shirts, and almost all of the musicians I like do not tour, or live overseas, or at least on the east coast.
You are right, radio has better market penetration. What about those bands that aren't on major labels or are not on heavy rotation on all those Top 40 stations? Isn't that part of the initial success of www.mp3/com?
Success of mp3.com - not of Napster. mp3.com does indeed have a respectable business model. They foster new musical talent by investing money into artists. They behave exactly look the record companies except for that they distribute the music electronically instead of on wax. Napster is merely a conduit for distribution; it depends on record companies (including, potentially, mp3.com) for actually creating the music.
In terms of signal quality, yes. Not in terms of having in your hands a musical recording that you did not pay for. MP3s are by no means digital masters, "ripping" means compressing means loss of information. Maybe publisher's fees is the solution
MP3's are not currently digital masters, but it is also not the be-all and end-all of digital music formats. In the future the digital music format may be identical to the digital master (when bandwidth gets better), and in the nearer future it may be audibly indistinguishable. What's the record company to do then? Why should it invest millions of dollars into producing a record if some warez boy can put it on the internet for the world to download? In online distribution, are we sentenced to listen to music which is inexepensive to produce - lo fi punk rock?
Eh? That doesn't make sense. RIAA doesn't sell any products, and offers services only to a very limited groups of persons (professional musicians). A boycott against the RIAA would mean that the people represented by the RIAA would seek other representation.
Assuming that Commander Taco irresponsibly misspelled "record companies" as "RIAA", I love the implications: would it be moral for me to boycott Walmart if they have a long history of prosecuting shoplifters? Would anybody with a clue even consider that?
Napster probably provides more exposure to recording artists than radio play.
In the US, penetration of radio is damn near 100%. Penetration of PC's is less than 50%, and to the internet even less. Of those who have access to the internet a small portion actually use Napster. Radio is inherently better at promotion since it gives exposure, but on Napster you don't get exposure from being there (i.e. people have to find it first). I, therefore, find your claim wildly absurd.
In fact, is there a difference between recording songs off the radio and downloading an mp3 from the napster network?
For starters, radio stations pay publisher's fee for playing music live, and Napster doesn't. If Napster starts doing that (if it doesn't die), then perhaps it will be similar. However, making an analog copy of something transmitted over the airwaves is a world apart from making an exact duplicate of a didgital master.
I have never seen a 95 year copyright. From what I understand, it is 75 years after the work or 50 years after the artists death. I think this is reasonable: it insures that the artist and his immediate children are able to profit from the work. And patents are only 17 years!
Horseshit. No guarantee of intellectual property rights is made by the Constitution. Congress is empowered - but not required - to create such rights for the original author or inventor and for a limited time
... which is exactly what I said. Note that the current situation, where Congress does indeed grant that power, is a manifestation of that clause.
which bears almost no resemblance to today's copyright and patent system.
Sure it does. In fact, it is precisely what the current copyright and patent system is, where both only hold for a very short time. What's the problem?
First, corporations have no rights
Of course they do. If you really believe corporations shouldn't have rights, you need to move away from the US, to a communist country. Do you really think you have the right to go down to the GM plant, blow up the building, and drive a few cars from there away? Of course not because corporations have rights. They have property rights. Intellectual property rights, which are granted by the US Constitution, are a corollary of that.
second, property rights - especially intellectual property rights - are second to freedom of speech and expression
First of all, freedom of speech (and capitalism, and...) is predicated on property rights; if you do not have the right to any medium of expression, you have no freedom of speech. Note that property rights are so fundamental that are not even a Constitutional amendment, but freedom of speech is.
Second, trade secrets, which is what is under issue here, are widely understood to not be freedom of speech. There are many cases of people going to jail and/or being sued in a civil matter for illegally using trade secerets to make money. Which part of this don't you understand?
The Britney Spears get all of the attention and investment and the other 90% is pretty much ignored. These are record companies. Are you seriously trying to get us to believe that they function as welfare agencies?
It is a documented fact that they do. Before you make one more comment on slashdot, you need to read _Who Killed Classical Music_, (c) 1997 by Norman LeBrecht.
Bands don't need to indulge in the studio excesses of the like of a Def Leppard to get an album made. Infact, home recording equipment now is as sophisticated as what was used to generate many of the older studio works.
It is precisely this sentiment which is going to destroy the recording industry. It is amazing how many people actually believe this. For starters, there is a HUGE world of music which has nothing to do with "bands", but I'm sure you're not familiar with it. Will the WHOLE Chicago Symphony Orchestra fit in your computer room, and will the little microphone on your $400 Compaq capture ALL of the subtleties in an orchestral piece?
Slashdot Mirror
The RIAA is a non-profit organization, and makes no money, and therefore does not appear on the Fortune 500.
The only major American record company, Warner Bros., is a tiny portion of Time-Warner, which itself is #45 on the Fortune 500, and which itself is dwarfed by such Big, Bad, Evil Corporations(tm) as Albertson's and Target.
Time-Warner's revenue is $27 billion per year. The record sales are a tiny fraction of that.
Likewise, here is a link to RIAA's motion for the injunction, which is also extremely interesting reading.
28% of Napster users bought fewer CD's or no CD's since starting to use Napster.
No, you're the one who misunderstands the law. It is blatantly commercial use when people use it as a substitue for buying the CD. Which part of this don't you understand?
Proof please? You need to provide proof that without a physical commodity that the price of music could retain its current price schedule. You need to prepare a list of the components of the price of a CD and show that 75% of that is the physical packaging & distribution. Please provide this proof here, and give a source for all of your figures. You need to retract your statement and admit that you pulled that number out of nowhere if you cannot supply this proof.
It doesn't cost the RIAA anything to make an MP3 available on the web, so $1 IS reasonable; they have no production costs, you aren't getting any physical media for your buck. More would be a rip-off.
You are so clueless. It costs between $100,000-$500,000 to record a classical album. This is a FACT which you cannot dsipute. (proof: Who Killed Classical Music copyright 1997 by Norman LeBrecht). Do you think $100,00-$500,000 is "no production costs"? Can you afford to blow that much money on something and give it away to the world for free?
Most music is not "songs". Only top 40 teeny bopper pop music is. Everybody else listens to concertoes, sonatas, preludes, symphonies, operas, and other, more interesting genres. So you're going to ban music, and only market "songs"? You're going to destroy western civilization's greatest artistic achievement?
You better care if you like music, because if more than a couple of those do not have satisfactory answers, there will be no music. Prarticularly important is the "who will be for the costs fo recording", which NOBODY has been able to adequately answer (save for selling t-shirts ... yeah right). It's not a matter of the recording industry dying, it's a matter of recorded music dying.
Julie & Buddy Miller
Lucy Kaplansky
Kate Campbell
Iris DeMent
John Prine
Del McCoury
Steve Earle
Rebecca Pearcy
Carrie Newcomer
Rhonda Vincent
Lucinda Williams
Blue Highway
Doyle Lawson
Where did you come with the figure of $0.50?
Who is going to pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars which it costs to record the album?
How is the artistic quailty of music going to suffer when we move from full length thematic albums to merely five minute long jewels of pop?
How are song writers going to be compensated?
How are producers going to be compensated?
Who is going to weed out the good and bad music? How is it going to be reviewed?
What kind of untalented artists are you listening to if you can only find albums which have two good songs on them?
How are artists who cannot support themselves but thrive under the current system going to be compensated?
That's true, but at least it was possible to find indie or minor label stuff. If I go to my local mall, what are my odds of finding ANY of that much less sampling it?
If you think your only choices are the mall, and Napster, your experience with the world is SEVERELY LIMITED. Three other resources you need to tap are local independependent record stores, mail order sources, and internet retailers.
Sampling before listening is overrated. It is only useful for top 40 music. For serious music, you need to listen to the whole album 15-20 times before you can even think about formulating an opinion on it. Most record stores are not going to allow you to stay in for 20 hours! Reviews are a much better resource for finding music than sampling, which is inherently based on first impressions. When music choosing is replaced by sampling, music will suffer because everybody will try to impress in the first few minutes instead of coming up with somehting quality. Say no to pre-purchase sampling!
Sterolab and LDP are not obscure AT ALL. I couldn't think of anything much more mainstream that isn't Britney Spears and such. Napster only lists these types of artists with massive followings. Show me a listing for Lemzo Diamono and I'll be impressed. And even THAT I can get at the neighborhood CD store.
If 10 million Napster users got seriously active and organized, there's actually a real possibility of pressuring congress into 'clarifying' the current Copyright rules to make it clear that things like napster are OK.
Yes, but practically every Napster user is a high school or junior high student, and they can't vote anyways!
This is considerably less than half a million USD.
Hyperion is a tiny label and records mostly chamber music. The half million dollar figure is from the majors, who record operas and large orchestras, and have major stars, are much more expensive and difficult to record!
Anyway, the RIAA site does give that 90% non-profitable figure, but what does that mean? How much does the average "non-profitable" recording actually lose? $1? $1,000? $100,000? How does that balance against the huge amounts that something like a Brittney Spears CD rakes in?
Ah! You're asking the right questions!
The widely quote break-even point is 500,000 units. We do not know the cost of producing that record. I use the figure of $100,000-$500,000 for a classical record as a jumping off point; pop music records usually take much longer to record, have to pay more royalties, and have bigger name (more expensive) producers. It must cost AT LEAST the high end of that to make a pop record.
Britney Spears is VERY profitable. The fixed cost of producing it is (for practical purposes) zero, and the fixed cost is small. Suppose her record company makes $8 @ 12,000,000 copies, that's a hundred million dollars!
HOWEVER, Britney Spears is a 1 in 10,000 ocurrence (literally). It is not correct to say the record company made $100 million from her, because in order to do that, it had to make similar investments in 9,000 other artists who LOST money, and 999 other artists who made less money.
The fallacy of assuming that Britney Spear's record company makes $100 million is the 'Britney Spears Accounting Myth'. It is one of the most pervasive myths about the industry in wide circulation. A massive chunk of that profit is offset by the huge number of unprofitable acts who were also invested in.
But here's the rub ... this welfare system which exists in the industry is GOOD. The system takes away money from the richest artists, and uses it to fund the poorest artists. Herbert von Karajan recorded over 900 records in his lifetime and is one of the most prolific musicians of the 20th century, but almost nothing he did make money; his records were funded by disco, rock, punk, and the other money-makers. These pop genres fund the others genres.
Can you imagine if this welfare system was not implemented, and artists sold direct (a system which many clueless slashdotters advocate)? For starters, Britney Spears would be a lot richer than she is now - she should have $100 million, from recording, alone. Furthermore, no 'unprofitable' artists could still record, because they need to pay the bills (which are currently paid by Britney Spears, routed through the record industry). The industry would be a free-for-all and only the most watered down, most mass appealing, most beautiful artists would survive. The current system allows for 90% of artists who are not successful to pay their bills, and a direct sales system would reduce the pool of recorded musicians to 10% of what it is currently.
Proof please? The average cost of producing a classical CD is $500,000 (this is "insignificant"?), and sells between 2,000 and 3,000 copies in its lifetime. Do the math. There is no profit for 90% of CD's produced. The only CD's which profit is stuff like Britney Spears, but most of that profit goes to pay for the unprofitable music (90% of titles). That is where the money is going; contrary to the myth on slashdot, it is not lining record exec's pockets.
OK, this may be a bit recursive, but do you have any kind of proof for those statistics you just quoted?
Sure. The figures on classical music are from Norman LeBrecht's Who Killed Classical Music copyright 1997, which is an in depth view on classical music business. There is also an article on Hyperion's web site (I forget the URL ...) which comes to similar conclusions. The 90% non-profitable is widely quoted in the industry; the RIAA web site on the cost of the CD uses that figure, and that number is widely, widely quoted in others parts of the industry also.
But, it has already been said numerous times on Slashdot that the RIAA takes such a large percentage, the artists don't get any significant amount of money off of CD sales.
Because it's "been said" on slashdot doesn't make it true! In fact, the RIAA is a non-profit company and doesn't make any money.
Assuming you misspelled "record companies", do you care to give proof of this statistic? You need to give a breakdown of the income of several musical acts in order to prove this. One data point I can give is Michael Jackson, who pocketed $6 per copy of Thriller, and sold 20 million copies. He had a three year world tour afterwards, which grossed $30 million. The album took six months to record, and the tour took three years, but the album was still four times more profitable. This doesn't mean the case holds true for all artists, but it is one data point.
They make all their money on concerts instead.
Proof please? And if this is true, why for every single concert I have ever been to, does the artist say, "Please support us and buy our CD"?
Considering the insignificant cost of producing a CD and the percentage which goes to the artist, your profit margin on CDs makes up nearly all of the cost.
Proof please? The average cost of producing a classical CD is $500,000 (this is "insignificant"?), and sells between 2,000 and 3,000 copies in its lifetime. Do the math. There is no profit for 90% of CD's produced. The only CD's which profit is stuff like Britney Spears, but most of that profit goes to pay for the unprofitable music (90% of titles). That is where the money is going; contrary to the myth on slashdot, it is not lining record exec's pockets.
Obviously, this story is a troll, a page-view-whoring attempt by Hemos who wants even more millions in his massive, multi-million dollar estate in Michigan, but we need a test of how sincere Hemos and the rest of the slashdot people are about being anti-IP. Obviously, Commander Taco and Hemos have become multi-million dollar media moguls and their income is derived almost entirely from IP. Somebody needs to copy all of the content in real time on slashdot, put on a faster server, but get rid of all of the ads, and put their own ads in, and collect revenue from that. Then see how quickly Commander Taco and Hemos sue. I give them two hours.
So once films are distributed digitally to theaters, and RipoffTheaters can download the terabyte or so from Moviester and display it in digital perfection at no cost to them, filmmakers should just scare up $50,000,000 they'll never see again just so they can do what they love? That's ridiculous. The only movies we'd see would be crappy Blair Witch knockoffs or 2-hour commercials for Pepsi.
Indeed. How much did the Star Wars Episode I cost to make? The Matrix? X-Men? All of these costs millions of dollars to produce. Every slashdotter goes ga ga and drools at the mouth over these, and wants them free. That doesn't make sense.
The logical extension - when people won't pay for content - is to commercialize it. Enjoy movies which don't have ads, and music which isn't jingles, while they last, because their days are numbered. If people won't pay for these things, advertisiers will. Would you like Shostakovich or Mahler with your Cheez Whiz ads? The Vienna Philharmonic will play the AT&T jingle between movements of Sibelius's Second, and the singers in La Boheme will be dressed in Tommy Hilfiger. And this is supposed to be better than just paying for the content?
Complain all you want about the latest pop crap on the radio or good-only-as-kindling bestseller books, but if there is no real incentive for artists to create, they won't. And yes, by that I mean money. Warm fuzzy feelings are nice, but they don't put food in your stomach or let you buy that new car you want. Of course, somehow, magically, you think "they'll pay for it one way or another" when the very reason this is a problem is that people who demand free music/movies/books are unwilling to pay what the artist asks.
It should be in the self-interest of any fan of any art to fund the artist as much as possible, and to give him as much time as possible. If the musicians have to go to selling t-shirts (what the fuck is that supposed to be all about?) as their day job, they will have less time to produce music, and their quality will suffer. How will this produce better music? Oh, it'll all be free, but there will be less of it, and the fewer recordings won't be as good as before.
Music should be free. Yes, of course the artists have a right to make a living off their music, that's what they do. So go to their concerts, buy a fscking t-shirt.
Musicians, who are professionally competent in composing music, performing music, and producing music, should ditch their real skills, and go into the t-shirt business? That just doesn't make sense. Please explain your logic behind this one. You want a musician turned into brand with his logo splattered across your chest? You want music even more commodified and commercialized? Most fans of John Eliot Gardiner or Sir Colin Davis do not wear t-shirts, how should they be funded? Should they go into the neck-tie business?
Concerts? Glenn Gould did not perform live for the last several years of his career, because he understood that the record was a much more powerful mode of communication and had the ability to reach a wider audience. The Beatles did the same thing. African pop music has a loyal following in the US, but seeing the musicians live is not an option. How do I support them? Should I fly to Africa every time one of my favorite musicians is performing in the local pub? Or should I buy the t-shirt? Do Africans even wear t-shirts?
How are older musicians supposed to make money? Rudolf Serkin is in his 80's, probably doesn't have the energy to tour, but still puts out great records. Dead musicians? Enrico Caruso died in 1920, but his complete works are available on a 12 CD set - painstakingly remastered from 78 RPM acetates. Who would have funded this project if they wouldn't be paid? The Beatles can't tour any more since Lennon is dead, but surely the other three deserve money for the recordings? How will these be funded?
Name an artistically significant concert which has happened in the last fifty years (hint: Woodstock wasn't). Records have completely replaced concerts as the medium for artistic expression. No longer do we have events such as the premiere's of Le Sacre du Printemps or Pierrot Lunaire, but ritualistic, predictable, ultra-produced, arena rock.
The artists get something on the order of 12 cents for every album that's sold, the rest goes to the label, the A&R guys, and the promoters.
Proof please?
Where does the cost of making the record figure into that? You did know that the average classical record costs $500,000 to record, didn't you? Where does that fit into your little scheme? I do not see any of the following on your little price schedule: studio time, professional musicians salaries, production, royalties. All of these are extremely significant portions of the cost, and aren't figured into your cost. Who's going to pay this? My closet will get too full if a buy a t-shirt for every recorded symphony I like. Maybe the musicians should branch into socks also?
%80 of all napster users go out and BUY CD's of the bands they download
Proof please?
Where there are no more CD's to buy (as you assert that music should be free), how do I support the artist if I want to? Remember, my closet is too full of t-shirts, and almost all of the musicians I like do not tour, or live overseas, or at least on the east coast.
You are right, radio has better market penetration. What about those bands that aren't on major labels or are not on heavy rotation on all those Top 40 stations? Isn't that part of the initial success of www.mp3/com?
Success of mp3.com - not of Napster. mp3.com does indeed have a respectable business model. They foster new musical talent by investing money into artists. They behave exactly look the record companies except for that they distribute the music electronically instead of on wax. Napster is merely a conduit for distribution; it depends on record companies (including, potentially, mp3.com) for actually creating the music.
In terms of signal quality, yes. Not in terms of having in your hands a musical recording that you did not pay for. MP3s are by no means digital masters, "ripping" means compressing means loss of information. Maybe publisher's fees is the solution
MP3's are not currently digital masters, but it is also not the be-all and end-all of digital music formats. In the future the digital music format may be identical to the digital master (when bandwidth gets better), and in the nearer future it may be audibly indistinguishable. What's the record company to do then? Why should it invest millions of dollars into producing a record if some warez boy can put it on the internet for the world to download? In online distribution, are we sentenced to listen to music which is inexepensive to produce - lo fi punk rock?
Eh? That doesn't make sense. RIAA doesn't sell any products, and offers services only to a very limited groups of persons (professional musicians). A boycott against the RIAA would mean that the people represented by the RIAA would seek other representation.
Assuming that Commander Taco irresponsibly misspelled "record companies" as "RIAA", I love the implications: would it be moral for me to boycott Walmart if they have a long history of prosecuting shoplifters? Would anybody with a clue even consider that?
Napster probably provides more exposure to recording artists than radio play.
In the US, penetration of radio is damn near 100%. Penetration of PC's is less than 50%, and to the internet even less. Of those who have access to the internet a small portion actually use Napster. Radio is inherently better at promotion since it gives exposure, but on Napster you don't get exposure from being there (i.e. people have to find it first). I, therefore, find your claim wildly absurd.
In fact, is there a difference between recording songs off the radio and downloading an mp3 from the napster network?
For starters, radio stations pay publisher's fee for playing music live, and Napster doesn't. If Napster starts doing that (if it doesn't die), then perhaps it will be similar. However, making an analog copy of something transmitted over the airwaves is a world apart from making an exact duplicate of a didgital master.
I have never seen a 95 year copyright. From what I understand, it is 75 years after the work or 50 years after the artists death. I think this is reasonable: it insures that the artist and his immediate children are able to profit from the work. And patents are only 17 years!
Horseshit. No guarantee of intellectual property rights is made by the Constitution. Congress is empowered - but not required - to create such rights for the original author or inventor and for a limited time
which bears almost no resemblance to today's copyright and patent system.
Sure it does. In fact, it is precisely what the current copyright and patent system is, where both only hold for a very short time. What's the problem?
First, corporations have no rights
Of course they do. If you really believe corporations shouldn't have rights, you need to move away from the US, to a communist country. Do you really think you have the right to go down to the GM plant, blow up the building, and drive a few cars from there away? Of course not because corporations have rights. They have property rights. Intellectual property rights, which are granted by the US Constitution, are a corollary of that.
second, property rights - especially intellectual property rights - are second to freedom of speech and expression
First of all, freedom of speech (and capitalism, and ...) is predicated on property rights; if you do not have the right to any medium of expression, you have no freedom of speech. Note that property rights are so fundamental that are not even a Constitutional amendment, but freedom of speech is.
Second, trade secrets, which is what is under issue here, are widely understood to not be freedom of speech. There are many cases of people going to jail and/or being sued in a civil matter for illegally using trade secerets to make money. Which part of this don't you understand?
The Britney Spears get all of the attention and investment and the other 90% is pretty much ignored. These are record companies. Are you seriously trying to get us to believe that they function as welfare agencies?
It is a documented fact that they do. Before you make one more comment on slashdot, you need to read _Who Killed Classical Music_, (c) 1997 by Norman LeBrecht.
Bands don't need to indulge in the studio excesses of the like of a Def Leppard to get an album made. Infact, home recording equipment now is as sophisticated as what was used to generate many of the older studio works.
It is precisely this sentiment which is going to destroy the recording industry. It is amazing how many people actually believe this. For starters, there is a HUGE world of music which has nothing to do with "bands", but I'm sure you're not familiar with it. Will the WHOLE Chicago Symphony Orchestra fit in your computer room, and will the little microphone on your $400 Compaq capture ALL of the subtleties in an orchestral piece?