Mike Richards
TRIBE Member
Agreed. I really really really hate the RIAA!! SOCAN would have to rape my mother for me to hate them more than the RIAA!
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The Music Business...
- Thread starter JayBrain
- Start date
Agreed. I really really really hate the RIAA!! SOCAN would have to rape my mother for me to hate them more than the RIAA!
deep
TRIBE Member
I can go on for hours on this subject, it's been the prime focus of a lot of work I've done. Rather than repost redundant comments I made in the SOCAN thread, I'll just say here that what is happening right now is not a downturn in the industry, it's an overhauling.
Outdated business practices are being forced out for new ones better in line with changes in the marketplace. This is a good thing, despite it seeming as though everything is going to shit.
It's competition and evolution at work, exactly what should happen in business : ineffective solutions becoming extinct for ones more deserving of survival.
The way you're supposed to make money in business is by providing something of value to someone. Ask yourself whether actions taken by various pro-industry groups have done this. When the RIAA sued 12 year old girls and grandparents, were they giving anything of value to anyone by getting money this way? When record labels demand a levy on CD blanks, are they providing value to anyone for the money they ask? When SOCAN asks for ISPs to be taxed, are they doing anything for their money?
These practices should highlight to you what the standard strategy has been for much of the music industry : take without earning, take more than you deserve, make money any way you can without actually doing something tangible. If this is being punished by consumers, this is exactly the way things should work. It would be unacceptable in any other industry , but has gone on in music because (up until now) there have not been viable alternatives.
Outdated business practices are being forced out for new ones better in line with changes in the marketplace. This is a good thing, despite it seeming as though everything is going to shit.
It's competition and evolution at work, exactly what should happen in business : ineffective solutions becoming extinct for ones more deserving of survival.
The way you're supposed to make money in business is by providing something of value to someone. Ask yourself whether actions taken by various pro-industry groups have done this. When the RIAA sued 12 year old girls and grandparents, were they giving anything of value to anyone by getting money this way? When record labels demand a levy on CD blanks, are they providing value to anyone for the money they ask? When SOCAN asks for ISPs to be taxed, are they doing anything for their money?
These practices should highlight to you what the standard strategy has been for much of the music industry : take without earning, take more than you deserve, make money any way you can without actually doing something tangible. If this is being punished by consumers, this is exactly the way things should work. It would be unacceptable in any other industry , but has gone on in music because (up until now) there have not been viable alternatives.
In a few years, you'll download a song for 2.5 cents, and the music industry as seen today will be gone, replaced.
I've been saying this for years, but do they listen at Time-Warner (or whatever the fuck it is now)?
Nooooooo... I will wait outside the offices when they are shutting in a few years, and I will crush some heads.
I've been saying this for years, but do they listen at Time-Warner (or whatever the fuck it is now)?
Nooooooo... I will wait outside the offices when they are shutting in a few years, and I will crush some heads.
Mike Richards
TRIBE Member
Originally posted by PosTMOd
Nooooooo... I will wait outside the offices when they are shutting in a few years, and I will crush some heads.
NICE!!
deep
TRIBE Member
It won't happen that fast. The latest crop of new school music retail solutions still get their content from the record labels.
You're probably kidding about the 2.5 cents thing, but you can't cover operational costs for distributing work at that low a price.
There's still a good amount of bloat that can be still cut out from the way prices are determined, however.
Mike Richards
TRIBE Member
Yeah you take a $19.99 album and chop out HMV, then BMG, then Whatever Major it's on and you got (retail) $5-$7. Manufacturing-$.50 max. and the rest should be the artist's. Each Artist should just sell off their own websites. A fraction of the cost for the consumer and lower piracy at least temporarily. The only overhead you'll have initially would be a good promoter!!
deep
TRIBE Member
When did this happen?
Lots of people are already paying $1 per song.
Again, operational considerations are pertinent. Micropayment (digital pocket change) is
an idea that's been around for a while, but there has yet to be a way to implement it that doesn't make it just as expensive to utilize as a credit card.
If people have to use credit cards to purchase things online, then factored into that is what credit card companies charge for use. Which in turn affects price.
Last edited:
outofcontrol
TRIBE Member
Great points Deep
Artists make the most money on their music by performing it live. The fact that most artist only get 10 cents per album sold, to me is insanely wrong. Recording, distibution, and promotion are the key costs that you are looking at to cut down.
The idea about downloading music from the artists websight is a great idea, however I think there are ALOT of people, including myself that highly enjoy shopping for, buying, opening, and absorbing album music and artwork.
Money is the source of all evil in my opinion and this is a perfect example. I think if record companies would just cut the prices of albums which in turn would encourage more people to buy the albums.
But then again you never know. I buy music whenever I can, and download it when it is easy to.. so..meh..
Artists make the most money on their music by performing it live. The fact that most artist only get 10 cents per album sold, to me is insanely wrong. Recording, distibution, and promotion are the key costs that you are looking at to cut down.
The idea about downloading music from the artists websight is a great idea, however I think there are ALOT of people, including myself that highly enjoy shopping for, buying, opening, and absorbing album music and artwork.
Money is the source of all evil in my opinion and this is a perfect example. I think if record companies would just cut the prices of albums which in turn would encourage more people to buy the albums.
But then again you never know. I buy music whenever I can, and download it when it is easy to.. so..meh..
deep
TRIBE Member
In practice, it's best to let people do what they do best. Artists are best for creative work, they're not necessarily similarly endowed with technical know how, as would be necessary to distribute content digitally. This is the reason why services exist in society, it's often cheaper and more effective to go through someone who is offering expert service than it is to figure it out yourself just so you can do what you really want to do (which is sell music).
Mike Richards
TRIBE Member
Too many middle men is also a cause for the high price. Labels should just figure out a way to go direct to the retailer or sell direct off a corporate website. Believe me Virgin or Sony or Universal or any of them are big enough that people will check their websites if they can get the music cheaper there.
You speak of the present and the past, I'll speak of the future.
I don't provide solutions-- I merely point out what WILL happen. The digital pocket change idea will take off, just not in the form you see it now.
Fact is, not enough people are hooked up right now... we are considerably biased toward thinking that people actually USE the internet for more than just work email and porn (and some of us are biased toward not seeing things from a low income perspective), but when a large percentage of the population actually does, and a computer costs $100 (we've reached a point of diminishing returns already), and high speed access $5/month, then you'll see really frikkin' cheap songs.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Co...362&call_pageid=968350072197&col=969048863851
Unlawful file sharing targeted
New ad campaign costs $2 million
Illegal music sites can spread viruses
RICK WESTHEAD
BUSINESS REPORTER
What dangers lurk in the unregulated and often illegal world of Internet file sharing?
That's the question posed in a new $2 million advertising campaign launched this week by a trade group representing Canada's recording industry.
The campaign's first 30-second television ad, produced by Toronto-based agency Cyclops Communications Inc., is directed at adults whose children use the Internet to swap files — often unsupervised in their bedrooms.
"It's aimed at parents because many of them don't have any idea what their kids are doing or can find on these sites," said Brian Robertson, president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, or CRIA. "There's a lot more than music that can be accessed on these sites."
CRIA's commercial depicts a young boy using his computer to download a file when he's suddenly swarmed by what appears to be a SWAT team — outfitted in white biohazard suits and gas masks — that uses a set of oversized tongs to transfer both the boy and computer to a truck waiting outside.
"Illegal music sites have viruses that can do a lot of damage," the commercial's voice-over says. A message on the screen reminds consumers that legal downloading sites, such as Puretracks.com, are free of viruses, pornography and spyware.
The ads begin airing this week on channels such as Bravo, the History channel and Sportsnet.
Like U.S. firms including Apple Computer Inc., RealNetworks Inc. and Roxio Inc.'s Napster, CRIA and the syndicate that owns Puretracks.com are trying to find ways to persuade music fans that they should pay for material that many are already getting for free through programs such as KaZaA.
Apple, for instance, will be the focus of a promotion airing during the telecast of the National Football League's Super Bowl on Feb. 1, when an ad produced with PepsiCo Inc. will tout their plans to give away 100 million songs from iTunes.
While Canadian figures aren't available, U.S. sales of legally downloaded music are expected to reach $1.4 billion (U.S.), or 11 per cent of the entire industry's $12.8 billion in sales before 2006, according to Forrester Research. That percentage could reach one-third by 2008.
CRIA is funded by 32 members, including Universal Music Canada, Sony Music Entertainment Inc. and EMI Group PLC.
Unlawful file sharing targeted
New ad campaign costs $2 million
Illegal music sites can spread viruses
RICK WESTHEAD
BUSINESS REPORTER
What dangers lurk in the unregulated and often illegal world of Internet file sharing?
That's the question posed in a new $2 million advertising campaign launched this week by a trade group representing Canada's recording industry.
The campaign's first 30-second television ad, produced by Toronto-based agency Cyclops Communications Inc., is directed at adults whose children use the Internet to swap files — often unsupervised in their bedrooms.
"It's aimed at parents because many of them don't have any idea what their kids are doing or can find on these sites," said Brian Robertson, president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, or CRIA. "There's a lot more than music that can be accessed on these sites."
CRIA's commercial depicts a young boy using his computer to download a file when he's suddenly swarmed by what appears to be a SWAT team — outfitted in white biohazard suits and gas masks — that uses a set of oversized tongs to transfer both the boy and computer to a truck waiting outside.
"Illegal music sites have viruses that can do a lot of damage," the commercial's voice-over says. A message on the screen reminds consumers that legal downloading sites, such as Puretracks.com, are free of viruses, pornography and spyware.
The ads begin airing this week on channels such as Bravo, the History channel and Sportsnet.
Like U.S. firms including Apple Computer Inc., RealNetworks Inc. and Roxio Inc.'s Napster, CRIA and the syndicate that owns Puretracks.com are trying to find ways to persuade music fans that they should pay for material that many are already getting for free through programs such as KaZaA.
Apple, for instance, will be the focus of a promotion airing during the telecast of the National Football League's Super Bowl on Feb. 1, when an ad produced with PepsiCo Inc. will tout their plans to give away 100 million songs from iTunes.
While Canadian figures aren't available, U.S. sales of legally downloaded music are expected to reach $1.4 billion (U.S.), or 11 per cent of the entire industry's $12.8 billion in sales before 2006, according to Forrester Research. That percentage could reach one-third by 2008.
CRIA is funded by 32 members, including Universal Music Canada, Sony Music Entertainment Inc. and EMI Group PLC.
http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20031204/TWKAPI04/TPTechnology/
Internal theft is toughest piracy issue facing record companies
By JACK KAPICA
Thursday, December 4, 2003 - Page B10
The music recording industry may have a legitimate beef with copyright pirates, but there's one kind of pirate it doesn't like to mention very often: itself.
The toughest piracy issue facing record companies actually happens before a track or an album is released, and that can happen only when industry insiders get their hands on a copy before the record company is ready to launch it.
In fact, industry theft was not mentioned much in polite circles until a small Canadian startup company called Musicrypt, based in Richmond Hill, Ont., developed a system that can cure the malady, often worse than the kind we normally mean when we talk about Napster or Kazaa.
With pop music, timing is everything. It takes large amounts of money to develop artists, record them, crank up the publicity mechanisms and get them on the radio. Record labels can spend half a million dollars just launching a new rock band -- which is why the Recording Industry Association of America is so eager to drag a welfare preteen and a doting grandfather into court for downloading MP3 versions of various songs.
But most of the damage is not done by kids and their grandparents, but by the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people who have access to the music before even before a single track or entire CD is ready for the stores.
A band must go into a recording studio, and may make several recordings of a single song before it's ready for burning onto a CD. Before they're finished, the tracks may have to be mixed at another studio, and they have to be shipped to head office and back, as the producers and marketers approve the right mix and select the track they will promote as the "single." Many copies are made of the album.
Traditionally, the music has been recorded on tape, and shuttling tapes from place to place been a physical process. Along the line, secretaries, marketers or shipping clerks might make a private copy.
Several hundred unauthorized copies never really hurt the industry seriously; the business considered getting a prerelease copy as something of a perk. Until Napster. Then one unauthorized copy of an unreleased track or even an entire CD could end up on all over the world before being officially unreleased.
Then the industry can say goodbye to its investment in launching, marketing and promoting a pop act, because it's already old news to Kazaa downloaders.
The industry even has a name for it: It's called a "leak." Three notable leaks occurred last year: singles by Britney Spears (I'm a Slave 4U) and Lenny Kravitz (Dig In) and a whole CD by Radiohead called Hail to the Thief -- a deliciously ironic title, considering its role in this story.
To appreciate the problem you'd have to be in the business, as were two 25-year music-industry veterans, Peter Diemer (from EMI and MCA Records) and Clifford Hunt (a producer for various labels). Together they worked out a high-tech answer to a high-tech problem.
They figured the best way to fight digital piracy is to use the system against itself. All it needed was a secure system of transfer and that would cut down -- if not eliminate -- illegal copies floating around.
Others had tried various systems, most based on password-protected encryption, which failed because passwords can be passed around so easily. Their plan was to wrap the music up in a biometric encryption program. They settled on an algorithm developed by SRI International of Menlo Park, Calif., called BioPassword, which uses usernames and passwords only as texts so it can analyze typing style. The system requires users to log in eight times before they're approved.
Radio stations can download a song the day it becomes available, and not before, and then only certain people can do it, explained Musicrypt president John Heaven the other day. The system was developed originally for the U.S. military, he said, but at 98-per-cent reliability it wasn't good enough for the Pentagon, but it would serve the music industry very well.
So far, he said, record company EMI Group has signed on to deliver its records with Musicrypt, and the system is being tested by BMG Music Service, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group.
But Musicrypt is still facing two major hurdles. It's hard to get the five major players to agree on a single system (Sony is working on its own algorithm, but radio stations demand one system for all). Next, it's hard to get the 700 radio stations in Canada and the 13,000 in the United States to recognize the severity of the problem -- "Radio stations have not yet learned how leaks can hurt them by undermining their audience," Mr. Heaven said.
But so far, Musicrypt has a good penetration here. The system is being used to send tracks and albums to about 200 key market stations, which are the ones used by Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems of New York, which tracks off-the-air music to create music charts. The latest to benefit is Canadian Idol winner Ryan Malcolm, whose debut CD was shipped across the country just last week by Musicrypt.
"We're like an electronic Brink's truck," Mr. Heaven said
Internal theft is toughest piracy issue facing record companies
By JACK KAPICA
Thursday, December 4, 2003 - Page B10
The music recording industry may have a legitimate beef with copyright pirates, but there's one kind of pirate it doesn't like to mention very often: itself.
The toughest piracy issue facing record companies actually happens before a track or an album is released, and that can happen only when industry insiders get their hands on a copy before the record company is ready to launch it.
In fact, industry theft was not mentioned much in polite circles until a small Canadian startup company called Musicrypt, based in Richmond Hill, Ont., developed a system that can cure the malady, often worse than the kind we normally mean when we talk about Napster or Kazaa.
With pop music, timing is everything. It takes large amounts of money to develop artists, record them, crank up the publicity mechanisms and get them on the radio. Record labels can spend half a million dollars just launching a new rock band -- which is why the Recording Industry Association of America is so eager to drag a welfare preteen and a doting grandfather into court for downloading MP3 versions of various songs.
But most of the damage is not done by kids and their grandparents, but by the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people who have access to the music before even before a single track or entire CD is ready for the stores.
A band must go into a recording studio, and may make several recordings of a single song before it's ready for burning onto a CD. Before they're finished, the tracks may have to be mixed at another studio, and they have to be shipped to head office and back, as the producers and marketers approve the right mix and select the track they will promote as the "single." Many copies are made of the album.
Traditionally, the music has been recorded on tape, and shuttling tapes from place to place been a physical process. Along the line, secretaries, marketers or shipping clerks might make a private copy.
Several hundred unauthorized copies never really hurt the industry seriously; the business considered getting a prerelease copy as something of a perk. Until Napster. Then one unauthorized copy of an unreleased track or even an entire CD could end up on all over the world before being officially unreleased.
Then the industry can say goodbye to its investment in launching, marketing and promoting a pop act, because it's already old news to Kazaa downloaders.
The industry even has a name for it: It's called a "leak." Three notable leaks occurred last year: singles by Britney Spears (I'm a Slave 4U) and Lenny Kravitz (Dig In) and a whole CD by Radiohead called Hail to the Thief -- a deliciously ironic title, considering its role in this story.
To appreciate the problem you'd have to be in the business, as were two 25-year music-industry veterans, Peter Diemer (from EMI and MCA Records) and Clifford Hunt (a producer for various labels). Together they worked out a high-tech answer to a high-tech problem.
They figured the best way to fight digital piracy is to use the system against itself. All it needed was a secure system of transfer and that would cut down -- if not eliminate -- illegal copies floating around.
Others had tried various systems, most based on password-protected encryption, which failed because passwords can be passed around so easily. Their plan was to wrap the music up in a biometric encryption program. They settled on an algorithm developed by SRI International of Menlo Park, Calif., called BioPassword, which uses usernames and passwords only as texts so it can analyze typing style. The system requires users to log in eight times before they're approved.
Radio stations can download a song the day it becomes available, and not before, and then only certain people can do it, explained Musicrypt president John Heaven the other day. The system was developed originally for the U.S. military, he said, but at 98-per-cent reliability it wasn't good enough for the Pentagon, but it would serve the music industry very well.
So far, he said, record company EMI Group has signed on to deliver its records with Musicrypt, and the system is being tested by BMG Music Service, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group.
But Musicrypt is still facing two major hurdles. It's hard to get the five major players to agree on a single system (Sony is working on its own algorithm, but radio stations demand one system for all). Next, it's hard to get the 700 radio stations in Canada and the 13,000 in the United States to recognize the severity of the problem -- "Radio stations have not yet learned how leaks can hurt them by undermining their audience," Mr. Heaven said.
But so far, Musicrypt has a good penetration here. The system is being used to send tracks and albums to about 200 key market stations, which are the ones used by Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems of New York, which tracks off-the-air music to create music charts. The latest to benefit is Canadian Idol winner Ryan Malcolm, whose debut CD was shipped across the country just last week by Musicrypt.
"We're like an electronic Brink's truck," Mr. Heaven said