New Online Music Push by EMI

akadruid writes "EMI has signed deals with 20 top European websites to sell its music online. According to Reuters, 'Consumers will be able to make permanent copies of songs and transfer them to recordable CDs, portable music players and their computer hard drives'. This represents a major shift in policy by EMI, who previously went to great lengths to protect their music from copying. Does this mark the beginning of a major change in the music industry?"

Adapt...

[brunson]

or Die

Objectivity is journalism makes me happy

[reverendG]

Illegal online services, kick-started by the original maverick Napster, have brought the music industry to its knees in the past few years, forcing global music sales sharply lower.

I wonder where they're getting their statistics about "global music sales sharply lower". Most of the statistics that I've seen say that the music industry is still an unbeatable juggernaut.

I suppose that the RIAA pushing new "Super-DMCA" laws through state legislatures is just a symptom of them being on their knees.

Um...

[elixx]

Does this mark the beginning of a major change in the music industry?

No.

What I don't understand

[phorm]

Is how they're going to sort out whom has a legal copy of a song, and whom has an illegal copy of a song. I suppose that even if you "buy" a song online you still can't put it on kazaa, as that would be considered distribution?

But what about if you're accused of piracy when you have a vast library of legal songs? Are they going to properly cross-reference their user-list, or just continue to send nastygrams to anyone whom they suspect of having Mp3's?

IMHO, it seems terrible ironic and two-faced to be blatantly accusing mp3's etc of being piracy and profit-stealers, asking for (in Canada) huge taxation on mp3-capable storage devices, and then selling off music to run on those same devices

Re:Adapt...

[Brandon Sharitt]

Hopefully this is the year that online music really takes off.

Re:Apple?

[inertia187]

Or maybe it's the other way around.

Re:First step... next...

[chrisseaton]

I often see people complaining about the use of compression, but I generally encode at 196Kbs, and that is almost always fine - even on a professional sound system where you would expect to be able to pick out any imperfections.

Sure, sometimes it fails. I did a 196 encoding of a Dvorak piece and when the singer hit the really high notes the vibrato sounded like a fire alarm. But that was only once.

They have no choice...

[Dr. Bent]

They've been backed into a corner. It's this, or go out of business in 10 years. Of course, that's the only way you get any company to do anything; Make it the only viable financial option.

Re:They have no choice...

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

Go out of business? Listen, the record companies aren't as poor as they want to make themselves out to be. Record sales are supposedly down but that can't be blamed entirely on internet piracy. CD prices are up and quality is down as well. Yet the RIAA is so sure that music piracy is why they're not selling as much of their shit as they used to. I don't believe it. I'd download music and violate copyright law, if there were any being produced that was worth the bandwidth.

What is a lot more important than EMI selling their product online is lone artists selling theirs. With the widespread acceptance of the internet as a means of commerce, there will, hopefully, come a time when there's no need for the middleman. I'd much rather pay ten bucks to an artist and have that artist get all the money than make some fat cat asshole a little bit richer.

Of course, I'm still waiting on something worth buying but that's another problem altogether - and one the RIAA doesn't care about - they'll market the shit out of the shit they've got and bribe politicians into making laws that lead to suits which will finance their lifestyles since the music isn't good enough to sell anymore.

Grateful Dead

[LamerX]

I don't know how many of you here have ever heard of this band called the Grateful Dead, but they didn't sell hardly any albums. Thier biggest hit was in the 80's, which was "Touch of Grey". During this time, they made thier money by working. That's right, they did work. They went out and toured, and performed for people, and managed to be the highest grossing band for years. They encouraged people to record thier music, and distribute is.

CDs are nothing more than advertisements for bands. Bands should make thier money working (i.e. touring, concerts, etc), and not sitting down at one recording session and cranking out 10 bajillion CDs.

People that want the cover art are going to be willing to pay for it anyways. But the rest of us who like to go to concerts and support the band by going to concerts should be able to do so, and even leave with a recording of the concert as a fond memory.

Death of the industry...

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

..but not before we all get sued and laws mark us all as criminals.
Here is the main reason why I think the Music Biz is scared of technology, especailly when downloading is the "normal" way to purchase music:

*Large labels get web site and have music for download.
*Indipendant artist also makes website, has music for download.

And there you go... indi-artist and Brittney spears on the same equal footing. Suddenly the labels loose control of what gets distribution (downloads), what gets airtime (net radio), and that is where the money generation is reborn. The big money is not the few million off of an artist, but in the multiplication of said millions over MANY artists they can make "big" and push onto TRL and control. Oh, and if anyone actually thinks TRL (Total Request Live, a v-e-r-y popular MTV show here in the States) plays what you actualy vote for, you're an idiot. TRL is a marketing tool that plays mostly what you want, but is used to push no-names like P. Diddy's little boy-band on top very quickly. "Look everyone, B2K is #1 on TRL! You all love them!" And then little boys and girls run to the store because "everyone" who is "kewl" must be listenting to those dancing crackheads.

Yes, you do detect some envy. Brilliant minds created TRL and I'm sure every artist that wants to push a CD pays payola to TRL in huge ways. Brilliant business. Wish I thought of it.

Re:Adapt...

[Bonker]

Mod parent up Insightful.

EMI looks like it's the smart little rat running in and out between the toes of rapidly-starving dinosaurs.

The old dinosaur food-chain will dry up. It will look like it's getting more powerful, but it will be because all you can see are the major predators at the top who've eaten all the rest of the food-chain out of desperation.

Eventually, they too will starve and those who have evolved will eat their corpses.

Huh? Limited?

[phorm]

Under the EMI deal, consumers will be able to make permanent copies of songs and transfer them to recordable CDs, portable music players and their computer hard drives. Consumers can also purchase singles online once they hit radio airwaves.

You can burn it, you can put it on a portable (assumes this means you can get it as mp3 or a player-compatible format), and you can put it on your drive.

I'm fairly sure the secure part means the billing/transaction system.

possible reason

[tandr]

Does this mark the beginning of a major change in the music industry?

Could be. As pure speculation for the possible reason: assuming that Apple will buy Universal, they are afraid of "next big move" -- Univapple (Appleversal?) will be selling music online just like that -- no protection, unlimited copy etc. So, my WAG is that we are witneses of the beginning of the new pricewar.

same old BS...

[Connie_Lingus]

Illegal online services, kick-started by the original maverick Napster, have brought the music industry to its knees in the past few years, forcing global music sales sharply lower...

How many more time is the RIAA gonna try to stuff this crap down our throats and have us burp up sympathy?? Here are just a few of the reasons why a drop of sales in not at all necessarily due to downloaded music...

1. The most obvious of these is the drop in economy, with similar sales slumps in the last econo-drop of the early '90s.

2. Secondly, the increase in games and DVD sales is a contributing factor. With DVD's being, in many cases, cheaper than a music CD, their is much more value in a DVD than a typical CD.

3. Last, but not least, radio is highlighted as a problem due to its short play lists and the difficulty in getting playtime for new artists. Has anyone else noticed not that ClearChannel owns about everything, only about 20-30 bands ever get airplay??

I suppose EMI is stepping in the right direction, but IMHO its too little, too late. The future of music will probably have something to do with corporate sponserships, where hit songs are considered a form of advertising and bands are reduced to touring ad billboards where huge multinationals will "own" popular acts.

The already can!

[use_compress]

'Consumers will be able to make permanent copies of songs and transfer them to recordable CDs, portable music players and their computer hard drives'

We already can-- it's called an analouge loop-back. Unless analouge sound cards are suddenly outlawed I don't see you ever won't be able to make copies of music on your computer.

Only for show, perhaps?

[iabervon]

It's a number of European websites. One might think that they would do this in the US, since there are some people here who might want to get music online, but no. My guess is that they're trying to soften their stance in order to make DMCA-equivalents seem less bad in places that are considering them. Their position in backing copyright laws in the EU is currently sort of, "We have some music, which we don't bother to try to sell, and we try to make money by suing people. We need new laws to make this model viable." Actually selling something might make them look better.

Missed boats by RIAA and Video makers

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Reasonable prices (remember $60 for a new movie back in 1983?)
2. Adopting new technology instead of fighting it (e.g., DAT audio decks, DVD+R vs DVD-R bs, mp3, etc)
3. Selling old content at low low costs to drive sales of new hardware/playback mechanisms
4. Enhancing the content/quality (e.g., an audio CD is unchanged since 1983 when it was introduced). At least DVD is much better than VHS
5. Selling different quality level versions of the same product at different prices (192k mp3 should cost more than a 64k mp3, A recent movie DVD should cost $12, SVCD $9 and a VCD $6).
6. Allowing flat rate pricing for content (e.g., $20 a month for all of the mp3 and all the VCD's you can download)
7. Actually apreciating the customers by including extras in the product (e.g., including 1 or 2 extra tracks on an audio CD or including a mini-cd with a few mp3's of other bands).
8. Packaging older material into collections at a reasonable price (e.g., a box set of all of the albums by a 1960's band should cost about $20 to $25). Same goes for TV shows (e.g., A complete collection of six million dollar man episodes should cost $50 max or no more than $1 an episode). Consider shows like Gunsmoke with 500+ episodes - would you pay $1000.00 for a complete collection?
9. Selling new audio CD's and DVD's by online auction to actually see what people are willing to pay for the content and then pricing content accordingly.

Another format

[simong]

Another way of exploiting repertoire and minimising new product. The excitement of having the Beatles on CD in the mid 80s lead to a generation refreshing their record collection and a hagiography based on the new sounds discovered with the new fidelity. Here in the UK the White Album sold for £19.99 when all other double LPs sold for £14-16 max. The Beatles in your pocket will probably sell at a pound a track and will not sell at the same rate as the CDs but will make more money, but the only money that will be seen by the Beatles will be the publishing (or whoever it's owned by now) as their deal didn't cover new formats, as will most of EMI's older repertoire. In other words it's pure profit. What's not to like?

Re:not MP3's..

[mblase]

This is not MP3's nor is it Ogg, and I am not going to buy anything that limits me in any way.

I hope your DVD collection is standing at zero, then?

Re:Missed boats by RIAA and Video makers

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgot to add:

10. Burn audio CD's, print books, burn DVD;s on demand at the retail store (much lower distribution costs == lower retail prices).

Re:Grateful Dead

[TMB]

The problem with this line is that it fails miserably for some musical styles.

For a good rock band, hell yeah they should be best when seen live. An orchestra might be good live, but is just as well enjoyed at home with a good stereo. Rhythmic ambient noise would awful live, but great at home late at night on an excellent stereo.

And the thing is... I like all those. I want to support all those. And in some cases that means going to see them live, but in others it necessarily means buying the CD because that's the best way to enjoy it.

[TMB]

hah

[asv108]

I love how Apple fans attempt to give credit to the company for just about anything. This shift towards services has been years in the making. The initiative to license 20 distributors would have taken place long before anyone caught wind of the proposed Apple deal.

Re:Missed boats by RIAA and Video makers

[palutke]

9. Selling new audio CD's and DVD's by online auction to actually see what people are willing to pay for the content and then pricing content accordingly.

Wouldn't that determine the MOST that people would be willing to pay?

Re:This makes little difference

[Mikey-San]

of course, then what's to stop somoene from uploading it to kazaa.

This is going to sound dumb and naive, but listen for a second, my fellow Slashdotters:

Honesty.

Dishonest people will download the MP3s with/from their favourite p2p service and never buy the album. Honest people will either download the MP3s and buy the CD, or just buy the CD outright.

The world is how it's always been, and the record companies don't understand that. An honest person will be honest; a dishonest person will be dishonest.

No DRM or tricky license agreements--not even the DMCA--will ever change that. It takes only one person to rip a CD before it's available to every dishonest person out there.

Perhaps one day, this will be realized by the content providers, and they'll stop screwing the people who were going to be honest in the first fucking place. If you're gonna steal it, you're gonna steal it. Simple. You will find a way around the restrictions.

-/-

Mikey-San

Re:Missed boats by RIAA and Video makers

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't that determine the MOST that people would be willing to pay?

No, it would determine the most that the richest people are willing to pay. It's a bad idea. The others were pretty good. Auctions are too competitive, when the material being sold can be easily duplicated for a fraction of a dollar.

Re:First step... next...

[nathanh]

Quite often, you can hear the difference between a CD and vinyl as well.

Yeah, the CD frequencies don't wobble all over the place as the deck changes speed, and the CD audio isn't ruined by pops and squeaks caused by dust on the platter, and after playing one CD a few times you can still hear the high frequencies unlike vinyl where it gets muted over time.

Yes, there's certainly a difference. No wonder my entire collection is CD.