State of Online Music: RIAA's Efforts Paying Off 311
melquiades writes "The NYT (regreq) has a new article about online music, suggesting that the recording industry's war against P2P is paying off: pay-to-download services are rising in popularity. "Largely because of tough actions by the record companies to combat free music sites through the courts, legislation and even through techno-guerrilla tactics, there is a noticeable change of sentiment in a small segment of the downloading cognoscenti. Though their numbers are low, many are the early adapters who spot a trend first." Though the article falls into the common fallacy of equating P2P with illegal copying -- I'm one of the numerous artists who wants people to download my music for free -- it sums up the state of affairs well, particularly in this quote from online music consultant Michael Haile: "Record labels know what consumers want. We all do. They want a Napster you pay for. We all know that. But why would the labels want that at all? Making CD's is like printing money.""
I want to pay for music? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, right. (Score:2, Insightful)
No they don't. People want a Napster that you don't pay for.
Now this is truly moronic. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, no, it's because they killed napster. Idiots.
Sad state of the affairs... (Score:5, Insightful)
OMFG!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
The answer has not been to stomp out the P2P networks. They will always be a fact of life, especially as consumer bandwidth gets faster. The answer is to look at this new technology and figure out how to embrace it as a business model.
P2P networks have flaws. Most kiddes can't label their MP3s correctly. Inevitably, The 1 person who has the song you're really looking for is on dialup. It goes on and on, but with P2P, you get what you pay for. Having a centralized pay for download service overcomes these issues. By paying a hosting company to host your MP3s, you're almost guaranteed good download speeds and properly labeled MP3s.
Now, if they RIAA had listened back in 1998 when people were telling them this, maybe they wouldn't be so hated.
Re:Sad state of the affairs... (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh? (Score:5, Insightful)
pay-to-download services are rising in popularity
That's kind of like saying this new car model we introduced last year is selling better than it was 2 years ago.
Personally... (Score:3, Insightful)
I Don't want a napster I pay for (Score:5, Insightful)
However, I would like a place where I could download very high quality, RAW .wav or Ogg Vorbis or MP3 files for, say, $0.50-$1.00 each. Maybe $5.00 for a whole album. From a fast server. That are not in some sort of DRM vault.
This way, I own the music. I can do whatever I like with it: burn it to a CD, put it in my portable player, whatever I want to do within my fair use rights. And I also don't have to (effectively) pay additional money by trying to hunt someone down with the file I want at the quality I want, with a good connection that won't stop halfway through the download.
Merely having the record industry collect money for "allowing" other people to share music peer-to-peer is not sufficient.
You know, maybe the RIAA pulled one on us... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just as long as the service that does it is theirs.
What if the long term RIAA vision isn't that you can't get your DRM music off your CD, but you can only get it off and send it with software and hardware from the record companies (or their affiliates?) Maybe this is all just a play by the record companies - they only print their music in a format certain devices can read and transfer, and they only allow themselves or their affiliates (Sony records - sony cd players?) manufacture the equipment that can read the CD's.
Now not only do they get to charge you for the CD, but they'll charge you $1 to send a song to your friend, and charge him $30/month for a license to the software that lets him play it....
Actually.... (Score:3, Insightful)
So is providing pay-for-use downloads, except you save on the cost of CD manufacturing.
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:4, Insightful)
Read it again. "They" seems to imply the record labels, not people, the way its quoted.
But as an aside, I find it interesting how there are alot of people who want a pay-for Napster (mysql included), but nearly anybody that wants a free napster remains fairly voiceless, outed by a handful of people intent on reducing everybody but themselves as a freeloader.
When you can choose from RIAA Media (CDs), Naspter, Pay-Napster, most people seem to comprehend that the "Pay Napster" is what is going to keep the music being made.
But when you can choose from RIAA Media or just Naspter, people are going to use Naspter because they know that the Pay For Napster could exist
Thats what the RIAA doesn't get. People will take what they want, but will only repay for it if its actually feasible to do so (ie, price is fair and method of payment exists). Its not that everybody wants something for nothing, its simply that they won't deny themselves something if the supplier is too lazy, reluctant, or scared to figure out where to put the tip jar.
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, from the article:
Maybe it's a nitpick, but they seem to be painting the situation as if we have two monolithic, unified forces here -- the RIAA and Evil Internet Pirates (tm) (or Righteous Anti-RIAA Guerilla Freedom Fighters (tm)). The use of the term "apostasy [dictionary.com]" implies that there is some kind of central body or authority to the P2P movement, which isn't true. I'm pointing this out because it's indicative of the mindset the "mainstream" is in -- they don't really know what the situation is, even those who are paid to write about it.It certainly could just be poor word choice, and the writer actually does know the difference, but since it's the New York Times, I'm inclined to think it's ignorance rather than poor editing.
Re:You know, maybe the RIAA pulled one on us... (Score:1, Insightful)
people are not going to spend a higher percentage of their money on music.
entertainment budget is set for people. (roughly)
im not going to spend $100's more a month on music because i cant enjoy it for free.
i will find something else that i can enjoy and is worthwhile
Now if they can just do this right ... (Score:3, Insightful)
I want to be able to have a solid client, where I can set up my payment method, and manipulate account details.
I want to have a searchable database of available titles.
I want to be able to download the songs at different bit rates. I don't mind if the higher bit rates are a touch (and that means under 10% more!) more expensive - that's reasonable. Most people are satisfied at 128. Give the audiophiles what they want as well.
I want to be able to download in different formats. MP3? Support it. Ogg? Support it. MP3 Pro? Support it. Get the idea - be flexible!
I want to be able to get the difficult to find songs. I like electronic music. One of my favorite program from college was EM Soundscape on KBIA [kbia.org]. I hearrd stuff that you cannot find. I'd like a way to get that.
I want to see the consumers and the artists benefit. Take care of them, record companies, and your bottom line will take care of itself.
I'm not asking for too much, am I?
-- Ravensfire
Not because of tough actions... (Score:3, Insightful)
Paying a reasonable fee for good quality music is a lot more attractive to me than hunting for mp3s on Kazaa that are poor quality, incomplete crap. You need to download a few different versions of the same song to find the best one because someone out there doesn't know how to use MusicMatch very well.
The true pirates aren't going to pay anyway but they are a minority. The majority of us who could give a crap either way are just looking for the best bang for our buck. $20 for a CD with one or two good songs on it is an incentive for us to use Kazaa. A decent price and a guarantee of good quality music we want... of course we'll switch!
Duh.
Re:RIAA is not thinking ahead (Score:5, Insightful)
Sigh, you should be right about this, but if you were the majority of people would already be using broadband. The very few powers that be have a vested interest in keeping their product(media, software,information) scarce, so although possible, your vision of the future is not likely to take place for a very long time.
RIAA would just love everybody to believe them (Score:5, Insightful)
Fact of the matter is I, like many people I know, download music off services like kazaa because who wants to pay $20 for a cd to get one song just to find out the entire rest of the CD sucks... And most of us will never sign up for pay download services because if you actually use the service much it easily approaches the cost of buying cd's.
Mod me down... (Score:3, Insightful)
Then it occured to me that if I buy it, the label gets the cash. I just mailed The Vines a buck instead.
That's what we should do when we download music we really like.
Contradictions (Score:5, Insightful)
I find a lot of the rest of the article wrong as well. "Just six months ago, this sort of talk [about actually paying for music] would have been unthinkable, downright apostasy." No... actually, a lot of reasonable people were complaining that music was simply too expensive. You know, we've all been buying music for YEARS. We didn't all just forget about paying for things, we just realized that the music cartel has an unhealthy amount of control.
I have no sympathy for you if you get a virus from an MP3. You should have noticed the extension wasReally, they're advocating some kind of huge website where you can find lots of varied bands in some kind of unrestricted format that you can download to your computer. Boy, this is starting to sound a whole lot like the service we've all been asking for! And it's sounding more and more like what Napster used to be, and what Kazaa is now. Strange how that works.
sheephead
Re:RIAA, you're right (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sad state of the affairs... (Score:5, Insightful)
Obscure european bands from the 70s and 80s do not produce revenues for the colluding recording industry oligopoly.
Neither do innovative niche forms, like ebm, trance, gothic/industrial, etc. Such forms require music industry executives to actually have a clue about the music and has less need for slick MTV marketing formulas.
While we've all been worrying about RIAA, the death of shoutcast, pay-per-play licensed media, etc., many of us have missed the other side of the game being nailed by RIAA - their quiet partnership with the broadcast industry.
Emerging dominant broadcasters like ClearChannel (who were given the go ahead to roll up more than the previous FCC limit of stations per market, slaughtering local staffing, and running most of the programming remote from a central location) have become a favorite partner for RIAA firms - got a new Britney tune? Write ClearChannel a check and you're guaranteed airplay and CD sales.
ClearChannel's station rollup, the death of independent broadcasters, effective Congressional lobbying (my congress critters in both parties are strong supporters of RIAA and the National Association of Broadcasters/NAB), and Copyright Office hijinks might just put an end to creative music in the US.
Then again, someone's got to buy all of these awful things [foxnews.com] piling up in the warehouses...
*scoove*
Want vs. Legal (Score:2, Insightful)
However, most of us do accept the fact that we have laws that require we pay for things. With a choice between illegal and low-cost, many of us will choose low-cost. (Doesn't mean that's what we really want, just that some of us are willing to pay rather than pirate.)
Music wants to be free, just like food. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
You want people to download your music for free, I can only assume, because you have either what is called a "TRUST FUND" or a "DAY JOB." Once you have had some success, and rely (even in small part) on record sales to pay for supplies, like say, food, then you become not against free music, but a little more conservative on the subject.
I and most of the musicians I know really do want people to be able to download tracks, spread the gospel, etc., but start getting nervous when a paid cd can actually seem *more* inconvenient than Kazaa Lite.
What do I want in a label? I want them to get their heads out of their asses and be creative about finding new and better ways to market my music -- finding a good blend between locking up people who would rip us off, letting people share music they love, but most of all making the *purchase* of music the most convenient and satisfying way of obtaining it.
The general perception among the working stiff musicians I know is that the one area that free P2P services has killed us is in "buy the hit" sales. It used to be that if someone heard your tune on the radio and liked it enough to want it, a certain proportion would tape it off the radio, netting you nothing. Another proportion would buy the single, and then another proportion would buy the entire cd for that tune and to hear what else was on it. My current possesion of an entire Kittie CD proves that I can fall into that category. The concern now is that Kazaa is the new radio-taping, but the ranks of people who fall into the net-you-nothing category have swollen exponentially. Keep in mind that for smaller-time musicians (lets take a lot of jazz musician as an example) solid airplay doesn't really net you much until it *translates* into something - better gigs, tours, or record sales.
You can quote statistics all you want about the growth of the industry, but there's a very large contingent of musicians who are not super famous, but are known and making a living, for whom the sale of 100 cd's is meaningful in making the rent. If even a few download a single radio song off Kazaa and are satisfied enough to not bother with the cd, then that performer may have just lost someone who could have become a lifelong cd-buying fan if they'd committed to the whole thing.
Soooo. . .I am not pretending to write a treatise on industry economics here, just trying to sum up some of the concerns (biases, myths, whatever) that I've heard from real people trying to make a living in music. People not beholden to record companies, but even more nervous about seeing 30 tracks and entire albums of their music show up on a service where they are free for the taking.
Let the anti-cabalist orange-pelting resume. . .
Re:More like "early suckers" (Score:4, Insightful)
>idle rich"
>
>If I had lots o cash to waste, SURE, I'd buy from
>e-music.
>
>Instead I took my 100 free songs and bolted.
Ummm... since when did $9.99/mo become something only "the idle rich" could afford? That's one bargain bin CD or DVD. Or about the cost of a dial-up account. Or lunch for two at a fast food joint.
I don't pretend that e-music is to everyone's taste, since they don't carry a lot of "mainstream" music. For those of us with more eclectic tastes, though, it's a godsend.
I download at least 20 or 30 albums a month. I don't have to worry about whether the person on the other end is going to disconnect. I don't have to worry about crappy encoding. I don't have to worry that the song I'm downloading isn't a 5 minute loop of someone taking a shit.
And I regularly pull down *entire albums* in less than three minutes. Yeah, I really feel like a sucker.
Matt
Re:Better subscription services (Score:2, Insightful)
10 cents each? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:More like "early suckers" (Score:4, Insightful)
Really, the $10/mo. for unlimited downloads *IS* simply that. You download all you want for $10/mo. Period. End of story. If that's too much for you, perhaps you should listen to the Clear Channel controlled radio systems?
Re:People are downloading less pirated music.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sticking it to the inherently evil big guy? (Score:2, Insightful)
Knowing how horribly broken copyright law is, I don't feel so bad pirating. I should be able to download Elvis for free. It's been long enough. It should be in the public domain by now. But it's not. Copyright used to last 30 years. Now it's been lobbied all the way to 90 years past the artist's death.
I bet you break laws all the time without worry because you know the laws are morally wrong anyway. Seat belt laws anybody? The DMCA reverse engineering clause? People break that one all the time. Jay-walking?
I'm also a software developer. I used to think my livelyhood depended on copyright law and IP in general. With the internet, IP has almost no value due to piracy. That includes software. Why buy that $9000 graphics program when I can warez it for free?
Software isn't really my livelyhood. It's actually my software development skills that are my livelyhood. Even if software is worthless, people still need new software written, and they get charged for the service of software development.
Dvorak's Right: Fuss is About Money, Not Copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, those who insist that this is a fuss about copyright, rather than money, by simply asserting their right to copy and distribute commercial recordings when and where they choose, copyright be damned, are playing into the hands of the recording industry. The recording industry wants this to be seen as a a life-or-death battle for the survival of copyright itself. It isn't. It's a fuss about getting the U.S. legal system to adjust the language and interpretation of copyright law in order to come to terms with new technological capabilities. Eventually, this will happen. But, if the recording industry is able to portray the other side as opponents of copyright and proponents of "stealing" digital media, then the adjustment will likely be expensive and draconian, affecting everyone's ability to use the net freely and openly.
Paying for MP3s (Score:2, Insightful)
However, I will give them this...$9.95 a month (The one year upfront is kinda lame) is a very reasonable price, if they had everything.
Don't know if I consider this a war against P2P... (Score:2, Insightful)
Having been a saxophonist for many, many years, I listen almost exclusively to a *lot* of jazz. However, on the standard P2P model (or at least WinMX, which is what I've used in the past), I'm pretty much at the mercy of random people to even have specific artists that I'm looking for, working under the hopes that I'll get what I want providing I have something of equivalent value to trade.
This is probably one the things that I like about e-music is that they have a decent jazz selection that I can listen to previews of and have unlimited downloads at my leisure at a good bandwidth. A lot of the retail market doesn't usually have what I want, probably because most of what I listen to isn't mainstream..
I personally see them eventually building this into some kind of centralized repository that maybe someday we can even have all of our out-of-print albums available in this kind of distribution model.
Though I really hate a lot of what the RIAA and the MPAA is pushing in trying to get DRM into every electronic device we own (ESPECIALLY since I'm pretty sure most consumers DON'T WANT IT), I'm personally okay with paying for this kind of distribution model as long as I get to move my downloads over to whatever computer and/or device that I want without ever getting hassled.
NOTE: I am in no way affiliated with e-music or its partners. I just subscribe to the thing.
This is obviously a propaganda piece (Score:2, Insightful)
This is not true more people download their music now than they did with napster. This is because Kazaa is actually superior to napster. It is easier to download songs because one gets files from multiple sources. I find all popular stuff on Kazaa with great ease, and I find obscure stuff, too. The RIAA admits all of this in this brief [riaa.org]. (It's 67 pages, a long download.)
Feel good, we're winning. The RIAA doesn't know what to do. They need to appear to be fighting piracy to their shareholders, but any move they make is a bad one. Each time they shut down a network it allows one based on superior technology to flourish. Going after individuals demonizes them way too much.