Ask a Music Producer/Publicist About Filesharing and the RIAA 371
Bill Evans is one of those people in the music business who doesn't get a lot of public exposure, but keeps the wheels cranking behind the scenes. He's not just a musician and techie, but a publicist whose clients include Numavox Records artists Kerry Livgren and Michael Gleason as well as progressive rocker Neal Morse; he's produced (among many others) songs for the Burning Annie soundtrack and the Kansas Tribute Project. Naturally, since he makes his living in the music business, Bill is not 100% in favor of unrestricted filesharing. But what might work? And what might not? Let's find out what this music biz insider thinks -- one question per post, of course. Answers to the "Top 10" questions will be published soon after he gets them back to us.
What options are out there? (Score:5, Interesting)
marketing (Score:5, Interesting)
how much (Score:3, Interesting)
do you think there's a future in online self-publishing?
Erroneous Assumption? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it really the case that making a living in the music business rules out unrestricted filesharing? Might not there exist alternate business models that are fair to the artist and the consumer? What about producing music makes it necessary that selling the music needs to be the primary money-maker?
Well.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Filesharing services from Apple, MS (Score:5, Interesting)
Should we change copyright? (Score:5, Interesting)
But, copyright is still a control of making a copy, which is getting to be almost farcical in a world where most creative output can be easily and near-freely copied.
Do you think that it would be a good idea to alter copyright so that, instead of selling pubslihers a right to copy works, artists sell consumers the right to have a copy of a work, however that they want to get it and however many redundant copies they want?
(Let's just ignore the privacy and feasability problems for the moment; statistics and security can probably fix them to be "good enough.")
Suing listeners? (Score:5, Interesting)
The RIAA's claims (Score:3, Interesting)
According to the RIAA, CD sales dropped by 10% in 2001 and a further 6.8% last year, largely because of file sharing.
The IFPI's Commercial Music Piracy 2003 report, produced in early July, reveals pirate CD sales rose 14% in 2002 and exceeded one billion units for the first time.
My maths therefore concludes that if you deducted the 14% piracy, then CD sales have actually RISEN by around 7% over the last year! Do the RIAA actually know why their figures are falling (pirate cds/crap music...) - or do they choose to blame it all on peer to peer networks?
How about... (Score:5, Interesting)
Subscription models (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Who would you subscribe to? Would you have to subscribe to EMI/BMG/Sony one-by-one, or would there be a number (or one?) blanket subscription for varying genres or labels?
2) How would money be disitributed? By the number of times tracks have been listened to/downloaded?
Opinion of the RIAA and its Tactics? (Score:5, Interesting)
RIAA logic (Score:5, Interesting)
old vs new (Score:5, Interesting)
We (consumer and industry) obviously need each other.
So my question is:
Can you think of (a) profitable business model(s) that would *not* use DRM?
Reform (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it really all about control? (Score:5, Interesting)
Online distribution undermines this model and forces the record companies to spend more marketing dollars as a percentage of revenue. The success of iTunes seems to support this. While it is successful in terms of the # of songs sold, no handful of artists dominates its sales as with traditional channels.
So my question comes in a couple of parts. First, is all of this stuttering towards an online distribution system really more about control? If so, given that the iTunes experiment seems to bear out the thesis that online distribution costs them in control, how will we ever get to online music distribution that is equitable for everyone involved instead of one weighted towards big record companies or towards music pirates?
Cure cancer by killing the patient (Score:5, Interesting)
Umm... lower price point? (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course pirate CDs increase the total *volume* of music around - do you really think people could afford the kazillions of dollars of "free" mp3s (or at a fraction of the cost at a pirate shop) at retail price? Their argument is that pirate sales (which earn neither them nor the artist anything) are replacing normal CD sales, thus lowering their profits.
Kjella
Ultimate game plan? (Score:3, Interesting)
P2P vs. Radio (Score:5, Interesting)
the future (Score:5, Interesting)
Financial Impact? (Score:5, Interesting)
In your opinion, what do you feel has caused the greatest financial impact to the music industry? If the answer is not "file sharing," then what is the industry doing to combat the problem?
Options (Score:3, Interesting)
Old music of lower commercial value? (Score:5, Interesting)
I decided to see how many of these files were available legally from the Apple store, out of at least two motives: curiosity about the effectiveness of corporate-driven, rather than fan-driven music distribution, and a genuine intention of replacing my unpaid-for files with paid-for versions.
It turns out that almost none of the files I'd downloaded were available through the Music Store.
The reason is simple. I am interested in all sorts of old stuff (20's, 30's, 40's, 50's) and weird stuff (novelty records, things like Bernard Cribbins 'Ole in the Ground, etc.)
When fans share files, it makes available almost the entire history of recorded music.
When music companies sell files, the range of what's available is much, much smaller. For example, when it comes to popular music of the fifties, most of what's available on the Apple site comes from one companies single series of CD's entitled "so-and-so's 16 most requested songs."
How do you set up a fair system that pays artists but still allows for the continued preservation and availability of items that are so old or unpopular that their commercial value is very, very small?
How can you avoid the "dog-in-the-manger" phenomenon of companies that will neither make material available nor give permission to others to make them available?
iTunes vs. BuyMusic (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The RIAA's claims (Score:3, Interesting)
Record sales for 'cheap' albums
A record number of albums were sold in the UK in the last year because they are now cheaper than ever, industry figures have revealed.
More than 228 million albums were sold in the 12 months from June 2002 - up 3% on the previous year - according to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).
Declining record sales huh, where?
More business for you? (Score:5, Interesting)
1. The music industry is impacted negatively by file sharing, at least at some level.
2. That his studio is most certainly not harmed by filesharing, but in fact is seeing a rather large increase in business as more bands try to get a decent polish on their work so they can get their MP3s out there.
Do you think this is just annecdotal, or true for most music studios?
Record CD sales? (Score:5, Interesting)
Here in the UK that CD album sales are at an all time high with a 12% rise in sales this year.
Would you like to comment on that, given that
i) there are no similar RIAA anti-piracy actions being taken here,
ii) average prices have fallen to below the psychologically important 10 barrier?
Transfer of rights? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wouldn't it be better for all music creators if an artist got 100% of the song rights, and split the recording rights with the label, 50/50; and this was mandated by law, and couldn't be signed away? Am I missing something? I would think that artists would be banding together in droves for this cause.
Re:RIAA logic (Score:3, Interesting)
This seems to support the view that declining sales may be due more to the high costs of CDs than to file sharing... ie. lower the price and sales go up.
Filesize/Quality per price (Score:2, Interesting)
Your new roles (Score:3, Interesting)
...AND...
I am currently in the process of removing my music from buymusic.com [slashdot.org], who acquired it and is selling it illegally. What resources do independent artists have when fighting against the very industry that professes to protect musicians? Is copyright infrigement a one way street leading straight to the bank for large companies?
As a publicist, do you see distribution via p2p as a growing trend for your more/less established artists? I notice that the link to Neil's site only provides small samples of music. Do you encourage making entire songs available at low bitrate samples? Does p2p make this a moot point?
Why won't artists support thte alternatives (Score:4, Interesting)
He shouldn't (Score:5, Interesting)
Then, after the CD is finished, you can try to use technology to bypass traditional marketing, but right now, it's a joke. Selling your music directly isn't a problem for anyone. Marketing your music, that's the rub. Fancy as the internet is, the most effective way to sell music is to force-feed it to the people directly, through radio and MTV. That's not gonna change for a long time.
'Fair use' rights (Score:3, Interesting)
This hypothetical situation has always bugged me: Say I purchase a CD, rip it to my hard drive, and then put it on my MP3 player. I take the MP3 player with me and listen to that music in the car, while (unbeknownst to me) my brother listens to the copy of the music on the computer. Are we breaking the law?
DVD's are priced correclty, CD's are not (Score:4, Interesting)
CD Sales are up in Britain. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that this disproves the allegation that swapping is killing music and that the real culprit is a CD price that has stayed high while production costs have gone through the floor. Do you agree? If not, why not?
Justin.
twist on this question... (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you think that it is likely that we will see a major artist go this route in the near future? And if this became a viable model what could record companies do to continue to add value to music?
Re:Erroneous Assumption? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Financial Impact? (Score:2, Interesting)
The best answer I have heard is that the big "boom" of everyone converting their music collections to CD (from cassette, vinyl and 8 track) is done and logically speaking it will never happen again, as that boom was a one time good deal.
I think that is far and away the #1 reason for the "drop" in sales...
Laws and tariffs (Score:5, Interesting)
My question is that why does the RIAA need more legislation to go after filesharers or pirates to stop losses that no independent auditing company has been able to find, and with all the income they're getting from DAT and CD-R Music blanks, and lawsuits against filesharers, pirates and bootleggers, how much of this goes back to the artists, producers, engineers, etc? instead of simply in the RIAA and its labels' pockets?
And on a side note, why should the US or any other country continue listening to the RIAA talk about its losses, when no independent label or artist or distribution channel are getting any of these taxes or tariffs? Shouldn't we also be giving money to these labels, or should we start repealing these one-sided decisions?
What about treating file-sharing like radio? (Score:5, Interesting)
When a radio station plays a song, it pays one of the agencies like ASCAP (forgive me if I've got it wrong; it's been a while since I was a musician), and at least in theory the writer of the song (usually the musician) gets a small royalty assuming they've set up a publishing company to collect those royalties. From what I've heard, this can end up being a significant part of a musician's income. As I understand it, there are problems with tracking radio play -- you can't listen to everything at once, so you depend on random sampling and reports from radio stations -- but the idea is good.
So how about treating filesharing the same way? Track which files go where; every time a Metallica song, say, is copied, Metallica gets a nickel. It might not be as practical now that there's not One Big Place (Napster) where everyone goes, but there are still lots of centralized file-trading services (I think Kazaa and the like apply...I haven't been into this for a long time) where copying could be tracked. The services get charged based on volume, presumably like radio stations are, and they can pass those charges on to subscribers or advertisers. Musicians get paid, people get music, and a new millenium of peace and happiness dawns upon the earth. :-)
Is this a good idea, or have I taken some massive, secret dose of crack somewhere along the way?
Digital perfromance vs. digital distribution... (Score:4, Interesting)
Free Music as Advertising? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:marketing (Score:3, Interesting)
Assuming the worst (Score:5, Interesting)
Many of the items I have downloaded are old or obscure and do not fit in their libraries. There are many like me. Will they try to force us to only select the items they control, or have they addressed the issue of out of print/free stuff another way. A beer band in Cleveland may be the best thing going, but if they silence this band's offerings because they are not "signed with the label" they really are only forcing their control over what the listener can hear. They are offering a less robust product but charging more for it.
Will there be any free venues available if RIAA wins?
Sharing unavailable music (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you see a reason why the record industry has not created such a system for older recordings from which they are no longer making money? Are there legal hurdles you are aware of, or is it simply that the record industry has not realized this potential is there?
Where does it all go? (Score:2, Interesting)
What do the artists think? (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you find that indie artists are more likely to embrace file trading for marketing/name-recognition purposes than well-known artists?
Re:Erroneous Assumption? (Score:3, Interesting)
A more common example is an artist who uses full orchestration on their albums but can't afford to take a full orchestra on the road with them. Or how about musicians that perform multiple instruments on their albums? These recordings aren't imitations of live performances, they are permanent records of an art form specifically designed to be recorded. You wouldn't say that Salvador Dali's paintings are shallow imitations of dreams, would you? Or that the Mona Lisa is a shallow imitation of a live model? Why apply that generalization to music, then?
Digital Tape Trading (Score:2, Interesting)
Unlicensed Software in Recording Industry (Score:2, Interesting)
Singles vs Albums (Score:3, Interesting)
What is your take on this situation? Should people be forced to buy a full album just to get one song (or ocasionally two) they like, or should they be buying the album with the theory that they liked the single, they'll like the rest?
Has "the album" been ruined by the filler that so many of the top40 one-hit-wonder bands put on their albums? What needs to be done to make people willing to try entire albums (ratings, reccomendations, better music..)?
Worst case scenario (Score:4, Interesting)
Suppose the government declared that it would no longer protect copyrights on music. People begin using the internet to share music on a massive scale, all done legally.
What you think are the negative consequences of this scenario? What would happen and what are all the ways in which it would be harmful?
From a musician, a boycotter, and a non-filesharer (Score:4, Interesting)
I have not purchased one single CD in over two years. Why? Because I am tired of spending $18 on a CD with only one good song and the rest disposable rubbish. I am tired of reading that the cost of CDs has fallen below $0.50 in the last twenty years while the retail price has not. I am not happy that the industry has been convicted of price-fixing by the federal government. I see no reason to support RIAA labels until the retail price of a CD is more realistic.
I also do not participate in filesharing. Why? Because I am a working musician who believes that artists should be reimbursed for their hard work. My ethics don't agree with filesharing and they don't agree with the heavy handed tactics that the RIAA is raining down on filesharers.
Do I have your attention? That means I do not fit the argument that the RIAA has attributed fallen CD sales to piracy. I am the exception and I am not alone.
As a working musician, here is the root of the problem as I see it: musicians are being exploited and are being cheated out of their earnings through endentured slavery and corrupt accounting methods.
As a business man, the other root of the problem is that the RIAA wants to perpetuate a business model that doomed to oblivion and refuses to embrace the internet as a distribution channel.
Why? Bill, the major labels OWN the brick-and-mortar distribution channels, but they CAN'T own the internet distribution channel. It's not possible. They want a mafia-style death grip on their distribution and they would rather litigate and legislate away the "illegal" distribution channels on the internet.
My question is: when are the members of the RIAA going to drop their self-defeating barratry and focus on offering quality product?
Exposure (Score:5, Interesting)
What are the major differences between radio and file sharing?
If musical artists dream of getting played on the radio (because of the wonderful effects exposure has on an artist), why would an artist not also dream of having his/her songs being shared by millions of people around the world? Isn't the Internet just a vastly improved distribution and exposure mechanism?
Would the same concerns arise if radio was able to achieve the same quality as MP3?
To many of us, file sharing is more ethical than many traditional aspects of the music industry.
Cost to Benefit (Score:2, Interesting)
Sell me! (Score:1, Interesting)
But I can't seem to buy what I want. I want to spend 15-20 bucks on something I'll enjoy for a while. Last time I did, there was two songs that were worth listening to a couple of times, the rest was junk. I tried to purchase an older album I knew I would enjoy, but couldn't find it at the retailer.
I listen to music at my computer and in my truck. I now have to check whether the cd will work in those places. If I have to return a cd, I'll never buy again. I don't have time to screw around.
I download music rarely. I'm not in P2P networks. But it's easier for me to find what I want, sample it, and burn to cd if I like it than try to purchase through the sales channel.
Aren't you in the music distribution industry? Why aren't you distributing music so I can buy it and enjoy it?
I don't care what some lawyer says. If I don't get what I want, you won't get my money. It's very simple. Come on. Sell me.
Derek
False DMCA complaints. (Score:3, Interesting)
What about the innocent people? Do you feel it is acceptable for the RIAA to spam the internet with tonnes of DMCA complaints, knowing full well a significant amount of these are false and may lead to the loss of internet access and business of innocent people?
Their bots cast a wide net. Any file which has a word containing the same word as a RIAA member's song or artist name has a significant risk of getting a DMCA complaint. How is this fair? How can this be considered acceptable? You don't see retail store owners walking around to apartment complexes and telling the landlord "I think the people in apartment X shoplifted in my store, kick them out" and by law the landlord would have comply. That would be nonsense, yet the RIAA is doing the exact same sort of thing on the internet.
What about free speech? What about costs and profit loss of these innocent victims of the DMCA? What about those people who are now stalked by whackos because the DMCA force their ISP to give out their home address? Sending a false legal complaint is just as bad, if not worse, than infringing copyright.
It's true (Score:3, Interesting)
That being the case, here is my question:
"Do you think that there is any creedence to the argument that today's multi-billion dollar entertainment industry is an un-natural and perhaps un-maintainable state for the world of art? It seems that the "theft" and "piracy" everyone keeps talking about is only diverting potential revenue away from entertainers who get paid orders of magnitude more than what their skills could reasonably be said to be worth to society and away from those who make their living packaging and selling these over-paid individuals. Is it not possible that what filesharing and internet media is bringing about is not "theft", but rather the natural and expected deflation and re-distribution of an unnaturally inflated and concentrated industry?"
Licensing Fees and Lesser Known Artists (Score:3, Interesting)
This is relevant to recorded music as well; we know, for example, that we're already paying blank media taxes, whose proceeds are distributed in this way, and I think it's likely that schemes will be proposed for online distribution and peer-to-peer apps that mirror it.