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Some Bands Still Refuse Music Downloads
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Sun Aug 20, 2006 10:35 PM
from the equal-opportunity-shaft dept.
from the equal-opportunity-shaft dept.
Zelbinian writes "Wired News reports there are a number of artists, ranging from The Beatles to Radiohead, that are still holding out on iTunes. Some feel that per-track downloads hurt the artistic integrity of albums as a whole; for others it's simply a matter of negotiation troubles. From the article: 'Since record companies have realized the popularity of iTunes and other sites, many reworked contracts to give artists less money per download. Andrews said while record companies once offered artists about 30 cents for each song sold, now musicians are earning less than a dime.'"
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I can see both sides of this (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I can see both sides of this (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, I think people should be able to buy what they want. How is it a travesty if somebody only wants 2 or 3 songs off of Dark Side of the Moon? They are only hurting themselves. Give people what they want.
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Re:I can see both sides of this (Score:4, Insightful)
So give them a break, because they might be holding out for the right reason: I know I would.
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Re:I can see both sides of this (Score:5, Interesting)
And due to what members of the band have often said, I am willing to believe that they really do care about something other than the money.
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Re:I can see both sides of this (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think you can listen to Magical Mystery Tour on random play, then you're missing half the point of the work.
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Re:Missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
And who is anyone to tell me how I should interpret art? Being able to not have to buy filler, or just stuff I don't want in general, is a huge advantage of iTMS and other shops like it. Shovel more stuff on me that I don't want (and force me to pay for it) and I buy nothing. You (the hypothetical artist/label/store) just lost a potential sale that way.
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Re:Missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Fine, but some artists do view an album as more than just a series of tracks. Can you be sure, in advance, which tracks are "filler" and which aren't? Why, when I was a lad, it was my pleasure to unearth an "unsung" album track with special meaning to me.
Radiohead is mentioned in the article: any thoughts about the overarching story told in the order of the songs on OK Computer? It's there, almost a hidden message that rewards careful listening, and it would be destroyed if the songs were Shuffled. My "unsung" song on that album is Let Down, one that got no attention and would be left out if I had bought the "singles" on iTunes.
You should try this with a book - after all, who the heck is the author to decide that Chapter 7 comes immediately before Chapter 8?
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Re:Missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
And mediocre albums have great songs on them.
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Re:Missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I can see both sides of this (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I can see both sides of this (Score:5, Funny)
After all, two seconds of Michael Bolton is just about enough.
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Re:I can see both sides of this (Score:5, Interesting)
As an aside, Mars Volta is one of the few examples of music that is much better as a cd than as an individual track. You might like Inertiatic on its own, but until you've heard the full cd as a whole you havn't experienced the band.
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Re:I can see both sides of this (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:I can see both sides of this (Score:5, Informative)
The album is "Simon Says".
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Ohh the irony (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Ohh the irony (Score:5, Funny)
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That's fine. (Score:5, Insightful)
Man that's a bad summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Man that's a bad summary (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Man that's a bad summary (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Man that's a bad summary (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Man that's a bad summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft is a company, and its employees are there to do their job, for the company. They get paid to serve the company.
(In theory), The recording labels are there for the artists. They get a cut of sales to do things for the artist like promote their work, and press & distribute CDs. They get paid to serve the artist.
The way you describe things, is as if the whole music world consists of a single entity, the collective recording labels, that employ artists to promote & be a face for their music. It almost sounds as if you're implying the music is being written centrally by the labels, instead of by the artists!
Oh wait, that's pretty much a functional description of the popular music industry.
In other creative fields, like books, the author of the content retains the copyright. The current state of the music industry, with so much central ownership and control, is a terrible setup. What you describe is actually closer to the truth than you imply. But that's not a good thing.
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Re:Man that's a bad summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that internet distribution is picked up completely by Apple, and professional recording equipment and production is so common as to be available at relatively low cost to artists who record at home, it is simply absurd that record companies have somehow reduced the share of money given to their artists and are delivering the savings on distribution apparently to themselves all on the basis of inflated prices for "record studio time" and artifically high-valued distribution channels. As far as I can tell, the means by which record companies exploit their artists are corrupt. The artists are the people who are responsible for all of their revenue, after all, and should be proportionately compensated.
Hollywood at least recognizes that star power primarily drives the consumption of a film. It often pays stars $20 million just to be in a movie, on top of a share of the box office ticket sales. That is, a huge portion of a film's budget is devoted to paying the stars. While labels don't bring in as much money as Hollywood studios, major record companies don't seem to pay the same debt of gratitude to their talent. Executives and label owners whose only real talent is to broker unfair deals end up walking home with the lion's share of the cash.
It's kind of like how the oil companies could afford to reduce the price of oil artificially, but they know that we are dependent on their oil(purposefully) so that we give them tons and tons of money at unfair prices to get our fix and as a result they become immensely, excessively, profitable. Sounds like a collusion in an oligopoly to me.
I think that a paradigm shift is happening with music because of the labels' obviously backwards dealings and the democratization that the internet and digital recording bring. The oil problem, on the other hand, is going to be around for a long time.
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Hollywood is probably worse (Score:5, Informative)
It's a very rare actor that can demand millions up-front. Most have to settle for a percentage of the profits. However, due to accounting practices "considered odd by any normal business standards", 95% of movies, even box-office hits, somehow fail to make a profit - as defined by the studio [wikipedia.org], anyway. This article [hollywoodnetwork.com] lists many of the ways in which this is managed, including spreading of gross receipts amongst poorer-performing pictures, "distribution fees" far in excess of reality, a 10% "overhead" fee to be applied to all marketing expenses, tax breaks that are kept by the studios & not counted for the picture, and many others.
Stan Lee got nothing [bbc.co.uk] from the Spider-Man movie, because the studio claimed it did not make a profit, at least as defined by his contract. My Big Fat Greek Wedding was produced cheaply and was a huge success, yet somehow "lost $20 million". Even Babylon 5, which took in $500 million in DVD sales alone, is apparently "$80 million in debt". As the creator, J Michael Straczynski said, "Basically, by the terms of my contract, if a set on a WB movie burns down in Botswana, they can charge it against B5's profits."
Steve Vai says very similar things [vai.com] about the record labels' own standard contracts, not least their various bogus deductions for digital download sales. As the saying goes, the really creative people are the accountants.
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Of Course! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Of Course! (Score:5, Informative)
Again, due the the nature of the contracts involved it's nearly impossible to cite sources for this, the same reason it is easy for a wired reporter to make up facts in their article. But consider this logical argument: It is well known that ITMS takes thirty five cents on every dollar on sales (3rd hand citation [tidbits.com] but other sources are common). That leaves about sixty five cents to the content providers. Even if you have limited knowledge of the music industry it should be easy for you to realize that no major label contracts passed on nearly 45% of gross income from their products to the artists. Whether you like that fact or not, wired is plain wrong in saying that "it used to be so much better" - and I'd bet that probably both the reporter and the editor involved knew that was an intentional distortion. From what I know, majors typically pass on between eight and sixteen cents per track to the artists, and that number hasn't changed much since the ITMS launch.
If anything I believe artist's gross revenue per unbundled song has had slight upward pressure though nothing very dramatic. As I understand this owes the the fact that artists gross revenue per customer with unbundled tracks is understandably down versus typical sales that are bundled (even singles shipped with at least one or two extra songs). Though for all the same reasons I can't cite that so you might as well ignore it.
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iTunes already supports albums... (Score:5, Informative)
I've seen a bunch of tracks that weren't available unless you purchase the entire album. The albums usually have 1 or 2 tracks for sale individually but the rest require you to buy the album. I understand the artistic concerns, but if you would release some of the songs as singles for play on the radio, why not make them available as downloads? Or do artistic concerns end when you want a hit single so the album sells well?
this is more about the money (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a big surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
If the RIAA really wanted to go after music thieves, they would be sueing the record labels.
Well... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you just answered your own question. The problem here is that too many artists are lured into thinking that the only way to make a living in music is to sign away your soul to record label, for pennies on the dollar.
Now I'll grant you that I don't really know much about the intricacies of the music business, but based on conversations I've had with quite a few people lately, it seems like an artist would perhaps be better served staying unsigned -- if they have any management skills at all, or know where to find someone who does -- than to get on board with a label. What does the label give you? A chance at a very, very small slice of a larger "pie," but really what's the advantage of that over having a much larger slice of a smaller pie?
If you get 91% back from your music sales, it doesn't take nearly as many sales for you to make a living than it does for a signed band. I'd bet that properly done, the margins on CD sales are similarly large. Sure, you probably won't see an unsigned band's stuff in WalMart, but again: if you can make the same amount of money being a regional band, and have total creative control
The one thing that the labels still seem to have is a pretty tight grip on the music flowing into radio stations, particularly the corporate controlled (*cough*ClearChannel*cough*) ones; but the relevance of that mode of distribution is fading daily. Particularly if your audience is in a younger demographic, it doesn't seem like radio play is necessarily the requirement for sales that it once was.
I guess maybe I'm not a musician and I don't understand the desire for fame that might lead someone to believe that being nationally recognized is a good thing per se, versus making the same amount of money as a regional band, and not feeling like they're taking it up the ass every day. If someone can explain what the value proposition of the record labels is, in today's economy, where it's widely known that they compensate artists poorly and essentially do nothing but take your music as payment for questionable PR campaigns, I'd be interested.
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Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
One place to find people with management skills is at a label. They'll take care of calling radio stations for airplay, sending promotional versions out, arrange tour dates, and getting your name known in the business. All you have to do is be creative.
Of course, they'll also take the lions share of the money. But, hey, where else will someone pay you to just sit around and strum on your guitar and come up with songs?
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How are they performed live? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or selling singles/releasing singles to radio?
Seems they are defeating their own argument.
Change of Heart for the Bands (Score:5, Interesting)
Radiohead made Kid A top the charts, both here (UK) and America, through online publicity.
Perhaps it is since the culture of iPods is to create playlists and to "shuffle" that they wish to avoid it, and their release on the internet was in the idea that people still listened to music, downloaded or not, as a whole work, as if on CD.
Often called pretentious, the desire to have your work viewed and heard as a whole appeals to an older perception of music, one that I personally still subscribe to. It holds the idea of an album as a progression, as something that has a beginning and a conclusion, such as one might expect from a traditional symphony.
It can be very discouraging to an artist when an entire medium is practically devoted to destroying that construction. And if they care more about their artistic integrity than making further sales, I can only applaud them.
Re:Change of Heart for the Bands (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing iTunes adds is the ability to partially pay for parts of the music. Before iTunes, you had to pay for the whole thing even if you didn't listen to it all.
So this obviously has nothing to do with "integrity". It has to do with getting paid for stuff people don't want to buy.
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Re:Change of Heart for the Bands (Score:5, Insightful)
(I'll let that sink in for a while.)
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Is this really a big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Online music stores (especially the subscription ones) are great for discovering new or obscure music, and they're ideal for buying a single on an album that's otherwise lousy, but the Beatles and Radiohead -- the most common holdout examples used -- don't fit any of those descriptions.
Sweet, sweet irony (Score:5, Insightful)
The irony is that with online distribution, artists don't need to go through their record company middlemen anymore. They can sell their music directly through services like iTunes and claim their profits for themselves. All that's needed is for a few musicians with some guts to stand up to the people holding their leashes.
I get 64 cents per song... (Score:5, Informative)
I chalk this one up to major labels just being bloated and greedy.
Radiohead (Score:5, Informative)
Whoever said iTunes needed to get all the goods.
Ripoff and Not Artist Driven. (Score:5, Insightful)
For musicians, it's another way to resell their entire catalogs to fans who want the songs in multiple formats, he said.
Musicians my ass, this is being driven by the media companies. They are dying for a change of formats like album to CD. Album to tape did not do it for them and CD to lossy format outside of DRM and device maker collusion won't either. Yeah, I'd like the artist to get their fair share too. Reselling DRM'd versions of the exact same thing every 10 years is not my idea of a fair share. Only a few RIAA poster boys think iTunes is really a fair deal.
The device collusion is not happening, so it's all a dead issue.
Magnatune (Score:4, Interesting)
Whole albums? Are you kidding me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Give me a fucking break. Most top 40 artists already prescribe to a 3-6 minute song model, segment their album for radio play, and don't maintain any overwhelming unity between tracks. Moreover, they've been doing this for DECADES.
People have grown accustom to picking and pulling individual songs. We been promoting this model long before iTunes came around. If respecting the whole GD album was so damn important everyone would be producing albums like The Wall and releasing them on 8 Tracks.
Easy Solution. (Score:5, Interesting)
You should get it (Score:5, Funny)
You deserve one; you post here all the time!
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Re:These idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
If you listen to albums that are simply a collection of songs made in a certain time span for a certain end date, then those artist will likely not care if it is sold in bits and peices on the internet. However, the bands that will take exception are the more progressive ones that see music as more than easy money. Frank Zappa devoted a large portion of his songs to making fun of people like you.
I doubt very much that Radiohead really cares about the extra money they lose because a handfull of people like you will not give them your extra 10 cents to listen to Creep. There is a reason for that too. It is because they are the artists, and the really good ones who deliver consistantly good music don't really care about marginal increases in profits, they care about making something that they feel is worth producing. They actually had an idea, and if you only listen to a small portion of their idea, they would rather you not listen at all. May seem like strange reasoning, but I guarantee a large portion of the greatist creative minds throughout history would echo Radioheads sentiments.
They created the work for us to enjoy, not for themselves to tell us how to enjoy.
Actually, many good artist are pretty damn narcisistic. They probably would rather someone like you die than enjoy one of their songs, just due to the principle of someone who "doesn't understand art" shouldn't be dancing to their backbeat.
Basically, what it comes down to, is while I agree that it may be their loss in some ways, they probably don't care about it very much. And that is what makes them different, it doesn't make them idiots.
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Re:So.. umm... (Score:4, Funny)
So I see you're asking a rhetorical question.
What type of smartass reply would you like to your rhetorical question?
* Semi-appropriate mainstream movie quote - "More than you can afford, pal!"
* Ignorant American - "ur so dum! we invented munny!"
* Witty American - "How much is a dime?! More like "How much is a liter? Am I rite?! rofl"
* Straight cut geek response - "10 Cents."
* Family Guy quote - "Swing and a miss, Peter."
Just fucking with you. With the answer being "The value of your average Slashdot post", the correct response we were looking for was "How much is a rat's ass?" We'll be back with more Jeopardy after the break.
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Re:So.. umm... (Score:5, Funny)
Ten to fifty bucks, depending upon the quality of the grass, man.
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