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Music Media

Gabriel and Eno Start Digital Music Artist Union 219

Posted by CmdrTaco from the another-green-passion dept.
An anonymous reader writes "We have long heard stories about how the record companies cheat their own artists with audit techniques that would make Enron blush. They are already applying the same techniques to the revenues they draw from digital download sites like Apple iTunes, which is one reason many artists have refused to allow their music be sold through them (those who can control it at least). Looking to take a stand in the digital music arena before these practices become status quo Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno are starting a new union the "Magnificent Union of Digitally Downloading Artists" or MUDDA. Gabriel, co-founder of OD2 - an iTunes competitor - has that company as a first source to negotiate terms with the new union."
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Gabriel and Eno Start Digital Music Artist Union More

Gabriel and Eno Start Digital Music Artist Union

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  • Peter Gabriel has a conscience (Score:5, Informative)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @01:08PM (#8081674) Journal
    He's done a lot of work for charity, and lots of his songs point out inequality/bigotry/social issues. I have a lot of respect for a bloke who can make good music with such activism inherent in the whole thing. It'll take a guy with this level of credibility to really hit the music industry where it hurts. ... cos basically we want to reform it, so we can start actually buying CD's and so on again, right ? Or download (and pay for) them from the internet... Oh happy day...

    Simon

    • Re:Peter Gabriel has a conscience (Score:5, Interesting)

      by blowdart ( 31458 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @01:31PM (#8081801) Homepage

      Credibility?

      Lets look at OD2 od2 [od2.com]. Aside from the well documented "Damn, we ran out of bandwidth again" incidents every time they try to sign up another brand (msn, coke etc.), its survival has been due to selling shares in the company to the labels in order to gain rights. This has enabled the labels to dictate the DRM rules used, so EMI has different rules to BMG, and so some tracks allow burning and portable play, some don't. You have to carefully examine what you're buying. Then there's the cost, which is not much lower than a CD. So much for cheaper distribution.

      Lets not forget it's all Windows Media, I've yet to see one of their branded stores allow MP3.

      The BBC quotes him as saying (most musicians) "good at making music and not necessarily good at marketing". I'd suggest these days he's marketing and nothing else.

      • As one of the founders of OD2, which stands for On Demand Distribution, Gabriel is offering 300,000 songs in MP3 and WMA format

        Wouldn't ODD be a simpler acronym?

        Boo, no OGG support. We welcome the MUDDA initiative though.

    • Re:Peter Gabriel has a conscience (Score:5, Informative)

      by worm eater ( 697149 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @02:18PM (#8082045) Homepage
      cos basically we want to reform it, so we can start actually buying CD's and so on again, right ?

      Look... there are thousands of independant labels out there putting out music that's just as good as (and often better than) the major labels. Not only that, but there are plenty of sites where you can learn about this independent music. The All Music Guide [allmusic.com] covers quite a few non-RIAA bands with tiny distributions. If you're not sure which bands are part of the RIAA, there's the RIAA Radar [riaaradar.com], which will tell you which bands/albums send money to the RIAA. As far as distribution, Forced Exposure [forcedexposure.com], In Sound [insound.com], and several other outlets (including the music download services) offer tons of RIAA-free music.

      Personally, I'm very taken with these labels:
      IDEA Records [idearecords.com]
      Beta-Lactam Ring [blrrecords.com]
      MEGO Records [mego.at]
      Drag City Records [dragcity.com]

      Here's my issue. The RIAA will die a slow, painful death. This is inevitable. Don't worry about it. Small labels are just as capable of recording, producing, packaging and (to a lesser extent) distributing music as the RIAA. If you, as a consumer, will do a little research, you can find a whole world of underground music -- sure it isn't on the commercial radio stations or MTV, but it will play in the same CD player that all your RIAA CDs play in. Nobody's really being locked out. It is very different in the software industry, but you all know abou that...
      • Don't forget Magnatune [magnatune.com].
      • The RIAA will die a slow, painful death. This is inevitable.

        I wishs I was so optimistic. It does take some work to find the non-RIAA music. We live in a "give me convenience or give me death" culture. The vast majority will follow the path of least resistance. They will listen to ClearChannel radio to find music. Most people will not take the effort to find alternatives.

      • Re: Correct, but.... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by King_TJ ( 85913 )
        It really bothers me that we're supposed to have to cross-check the music we like to make sure it's not on some RIAA member list before deciding if we should purchase it and enjoy it.

        This runs counter to what music's all about in the first place. It should simply be heard and enjoyed.

        There is lots of great "underground" music out there, and always will be - but it takes a certain amount of effort to dig through it to find what you like. Some people really enjoy the digging part itself. (Many people take
        • "There is lots of great "underground" music out there, and always will be - but it takes a certain amount of effort to dig through it to find what you like."

          I know! It's so much easier with the RIAA, because you already know it's all going to be absolute crap!
      • Small labels are just as capable of recording, producing, packaging and (to a lesser extent) distributing music as the RIAA.

        Yes, but unfortunately success doesn't just depend on those things. The important thing, and as far as I can see the RIAA's main function, is promotion. Marketing. Advertising. Letting people know about the music, and making them want it.

        Many (most?) people don't buy music for the music. They think they do, but they really buy it for the image, for the coolness value, for the

  • Good news.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Stween ( 322349 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @01:09PM (#8081675)
    This sounds all well and good from what's in the article. But what are it's chances for success??

    I'm not bashing it at all, I'd really love to see it succeed.

    • Re:Good news.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BrynM ( 217883 ) * on Sunday January 25, 2004 @01:27PM (#8081781) Homepage Journal
      I don't think these guys are as worried about the success of the venture as much as creating some "tools" for artists to use in the music business. Not tools in the software sense, but ideas and techniques for artists to act more intelligently within the business and force the labes to be more up front and honest. They will prompt some interesting, revealing and important questions and through this have a method for getting some answers. Remember that these two have been innovators for a very long time (Gabriel did multimedia in 1993 with xplora 1, was an innovator of CG and Eno had used "sampling" via tape loops in the early 70s and scratched records creatively long before Hip Hop ever existed). The success is not as important as the waves they make to get some of these issues dealt with. Something will change.
    • This sounds all well and good from what's in the article. But what are it's chances for success??

      It doesn't need to "crush the RIAA" to succeed. It only needs to be profitable, or at least find a way to cover its own expenses.

      Everything else follows after that.

      -Ben

  • Seems artist are waking (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well, all the shit moving around music and copyright I think only is leaving a poor image of the artists. I mean, there must be a large bunch of them who like their word, want to earn their living, but are not benefiting of all the DMCA noise around them. Selling by themselves their music in the Internet are good news. The money for those who work, the artists, not for intermediates.

  • Good (Score:5, Interesting)

    by heironymouscoward ( 683461 ) <heironymouscoward@yah3.14oo.com minus pi> on Sunday January 25, 2004 @01:10PM (#8081687) Journal
    We need something that did what the old mp3.com did, create a direct link between the artists and the public. The record industry as it is today is so totally redundant.

    Give me quality music that is digitally available, rated through a balanced criticism system like Slashdot, that I can copy onto my systems and play as I like, and I will subscribe tomorrow.

    Anyhow, I always liked Gabriel and Eno. Go, guys!

    • Re:Good (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ... mp3.com ... quality music ...

      I ain't the only one laughing.

      • Re:Good (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        ... balanced criticism ... like Slashdot ...
      • As with any free hosting service with no minimum quality, mp3.com hosted a lot of talentless bands. However, there was a lot of good stuff there too: Neptune Crush, Misnomer (misnomer.co.uk), Cry, The Cynic Project, Soma, Swiv are some of the (former) mp3.com artists I liked.

        • Too Many No-Talent Recordings (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Simonetta ( 207550 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @02:33PM (#8082134)
          The fact that on an open you-upload-your-music website there's going to be a lot talentless bands and noise tracks is a serious problem.

          It is the reason that the music industry and record business exists as it does in its present form. Primarily as a filter for junk music. As long as it costs real money to put commit music to an unalterable disk format and distribute these disks to the world, the music business will be needed as a junk filter.

          For U-upload music websites, allow me to suggest a game of 'musical chairs'. This refers to a children's game in the USA (possibly other places also) where there are a row of chairs and a number of children who walk or run around the chairs while a piece of music is being played. There is one less chair than the number of children. When the music stops unexpectedly, the children try to sit on one of the empty chairs as quickly as possible. One child is left with chair and the contest begins again. The last child (the fastest child or biggest child) is the winner.

          A website would accept only 100 recordings a day as a set. Each day ten would be removed from the set until only ten tracks remain. Those remaining tracks would be added to the permanent downloadable tracks of the website. People would vote as to which tracks would be allowed to remain listed. The junk and vanity noise tracks would quickly disappear.

          People visiting the site could download an MP3 'sampler' of ten-second segments sampled from the middle of the hundred tracks.

          It's an idea to deal with the problem of the vast amounts of junk music that would be uploaded to an open MP3 website.

          • Re:Too Many No-Talent Recordings (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Jah-Wren Ryel ( 80510 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @03:15PM (#8082351)
            One man's trash is another man's treasure.

            Any filtering based on simple voting will be subject to the problem known as the tyranny of the majority. In fact, we are suffering that exact problem under the RIAA system today where $1 == 1 vote. All the mtv-brainwashed masses have a lot more dollars put together than the rest, which is why the market is dominated by pretty-boy-bands and tits-with-mouths soloists.

            The marginal cost of disk space is so small as to make it effectively free. Bandwidth is almost as cheap as disk. So trying to use physical constraints (aka economics of scarcity) as a way to deal with the complexity of the content isn't a very good approach.

            First, although you didn't directly comment on funding, let me get that out of the way: Charge the customers an "infrastructure fee" that covers maintaining the company, the basic facility. Then charge a per song fee that accurate reflects the marginal cost of disk space and bandwidth (i.e. really tiny) and then tack on top direct revenue to the band again per song as decided by the band itself. That should cover your costs and scale as large as could ever be needed.

            Filtering or how to seperate the wheat from the chaff without throwing the baby out with the bathwater: The solution is collaborative or community filtering. Through player plugins or worst case, manual registration, you can set up a feedback system that makes recommendations by comparing each person's likes and dislikes with all other customers. Kind of like a way more sophisticated version of what Amazon does when you look at product X and at the bottom of the page it says, "People who bought X also looked at or bought A, B and C." There would be a couple of knobs to tweak about how tightly or loosely you want to track other people with similar listening preferences to avoid getting too insular. The more people contributing their playing habits back to the system, the wider ranging and more accurate it will get.

            There is already one such system in existence today, for free. I did a quick search of feshmeat and couldn't find it, but if anyone else knows the links to projects like this, please follow-up with them.
          • It is the reason that the music industry and record business exists as it does in its present form. Primarily as a filter for junk music.

            This is irony, right?
          • Yes, but hasn't shows like "American Idol" shown that we can be just as entertained by the "junk" ?
          • Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're working from Sturgeons law - "90% of everything is crap". (Short form).
            Why auto purge 10-90% each day though? If the site just deletes the worst 2 or 3% each time the storage gets close to full, whether it ends up purging three times an hour some days, or waiting a week other times, the end result will be almost the same, except you're not penalizing the musician who uploaded what would be a 90%+ on most days, but happened to come in on a day with excep
    • The trouble is any business that:

      a) Gives away lots of free music

      and b) Treats bands fairly

      isn't going to be as profitable as the crooks who run the RIAA (subject to the RIAA members controlling distribution like they do now of couse).

      America's an all or nothing country. Record sales that would be considered a smashing success in Europe are considered a flop here. I blame the stock market system. Regardless of who gets the blame, it means stuff like mp3.com tends to break down over time. They
    • "balanced criticism system like Slashdot"

      Just like Fox News... balanced and fair!

      *dons flame-proof suit and ducks*

  • Just for the records (Score:5, Informative)

    by Pope Raymond Lama ( 57277 ) <gwidionNO@SPAMmpc.com.br> on Sunday January 25, 2004 @01:12PM (#8081698) Homepage
    "MUDA" is a portuguese word to mean "DUMB".

    <smallprint>
    female form. double "d"'s do not change the pronounce
    </smallprint>

  • Buck the norm... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BrynM ( 217883 ) * on Sunday January 25, 2004 @01:12PM (#8081701) Homepage Journal
    These two have always been known for embracing tech and bucking the norm with it. They personally are against completely free downloads via the common piracy methods (P2P), but feel that should be left up to the artist and not the RIAA. They are going to wrestle some of the power away from the labels and the "machine" of the business I hope.

    So where are Prince and Bowie? The four of them are the big names that are getting into this in a very constructive way and I think that they would be a powerhouse of influence.

    • Re:Buck the norm... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jafac ( 1449 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @02:17PM (#8082042) Homepage
      Prince is washed up.

      He went Christian-Fundamentalist, so he can't make any more money, because he made all his money off of selling sexuality in the first place.

      (he's reportedly VERY strongly against women's rights now - too bad, Nation of Islam missed out on another potential convert.)
    • In late 1998 Public Enemy got into a big to-do over releasing demo tracks as MP3s on their web site for a then-upcoming remix album.

      Chuck D was angry over the label telling him he could not post his own music and Polygram even threatened to sue if the tracks were not removed. This was before Mp3s and filesharing were in the press much. Here is a quote from Chuck D on the matter:

      "If you make something for 90 cents, how can you justify to sell it for $9?" he said. "I believe that the fan is the most impo

  • itunes at fault? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by freshfromthevat ( 135461 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @01:12PM (#8081702) Homepage

    They are already applying the same techniques to the revenues they draw from digital download sites like Apple iTunes

    Do I undertand that the problem is that the record companies are NOT passing the low manufacturing costs on to the musician? Or is it that Apple is doing something bad?

    • Re:itunes at fault? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Abjifyicious ( 696433 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @01:40PM (#8081844)
      I'm pretty sure that in every iTunes sale, Apple keeps something around thirty cents and passes the rest to the label. The thing that can vary is the amount of money that's passed through the label and on to the artist.

      With the major labels for instance, the artist might get something like ten cents per song sold. On the other end of the spectrum, an artist selling their music through CDBaby [cdbaby.net] gets something around 60 cents per song sold.

      • Apple does not make ANY money on ITunes:

        http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/33850.html

        ITunes is really a big adveritisement for their IPod.

        • Re:itunes at fault? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Graff ( 532189 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @04:30PM (#8082702)
          Apple does not make ANY money on ITunes

          No, Apple doesn't make any PROFIT [bartleby.com] on the iTunes Music Store. However, they do take some money out of each sale to cover stuff like bandwidth costs, equipment costs, personnel, etc. These charges amount to approximately 30 to 35 cents of a 99 cent song.

          Those charges are basically keeping Apple's costs for iTMS at near zero, really neither making them a profit or causing them a loss on the venture. Apple justifies this as a loss-leader (free advertising) for iPod sales. It's a good, solid strategy and one which seems to be working well for Apple.

          The rest of the money goes to the record label who then gives some money to the artist according to how the contract was written. Some labels, such as CD Baby, give most of the money to the artist. Some labels only give a small percentage to their artists. Apple has nothing to do with how this portion of the money is handled.
      • the 'creative audit tehniques' however would be the techniques used to keep the money in the label/record company instead of passing it to the artist like they should("sorry but you're not just making it, you're not getting sales made. - wtf, i'm on top of the charts!! - well according to this contract paragraph 45 b you owe us money so take it or leave it if you want to tour."). Can't remember the one online reseller of songs that actually had several bands songs for sale without the bands even knowing it(

  • Global reach (Score:4, Informative)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) * on Sunday January 25, 2004 @01:14PM (#8081710) Homepage Journal
    The real issue is going to be "How to make these Unions work within the larger global music arena". Peter Gabriel has made strides in bringing global music to western ears, (among much other musical work, I first heard the Qawwali of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan [nusrat.com] thanks to Real World Records [realworld.co.uk]) but how to incorporate all that talent into an architecture that can help promote and disseminate funds to those artists around the world is daunting. I guess, like the model held forth with the small independent music stores, a healthy music industry (like the computer industry and most biological systems) needs diversity and the fewer huge corporations in music demanding defined profit margins the better.

  • Open auditability (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Etruscan ( 105528 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @01:14PM (#8081712) Journal
    All of those "hidden" promoting/distributing/in-my-pocket costs that have long been a part of the music model need to be exposed. It's the only way anyone is going to get a handle on how much money is really being spent and/or given to the artists. Nice in principle but hell to actually implement - existing status quo has too much money (or lawyers) behind it to sit idly by and watch their outdated business model die.

  • Sounds Reasonable (Score:2, Interesting)

    by boudie ( 704942 )
    If you are responsible for a product and find out the
    people who are selling it for you are crooks, you would find
    someone else or do it yourself. The same as if you had
    been ripped by a bad accountant or lawyer.
    The mafia went straight, maybe there is hope for the RIAA.
    And as an aside, I wouldn't pay a dollar for a song with
    no physical medium when the artist is only getting a few
    pennies of it. No way.

    • Re:Sounds Reasonable (Score:3, Interesting)

      by e-gold ( 36755 )
      How about if the artist got a substantial percentage of it, like at www.magnatune.com ? I think (and yes, I'm biased and financially-interested and greedy, etc.) that musicians need to take control of the money/contractual aspects of music, and INSIST on owning their own music -- like they can at Magnatune (which really rocks, IMO). I think online tipjars can also make a big difference for musicians, and I'd love to help make them work worldwide like they should.

      I hope these particular mainstream artists m

  • Need more "current" and "pop" artists involved (Score:5, Insightful)

    by swb ( 14022 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @01:24PM (#8081766)
    No offense to Eno (whose music I like) and Gabriel (whose music I'm indifferent to) fans, but in order for something like this to be a success, for better or for worse, you need loud participation from musicians who haven't plateaued caereer-wise and are bigger-name "pop" musicians.

    The former provides more financial clout and the latter more name recognition and clout. Of course it stands to reason that wildly popular pop musicians are likely to think that the current system works since they're benefitting from it (despite the longer-term consequences) or lack the business savvy or "political" interest to do so.

    But I don't think a poorly named initiative by two musicians whose careers, however successful, are largely over and done, is going to do much, since these artists aren't as much of a PR or business influence on the industry. But I do applaud the idea behind it, and think that they'd probably be better off funding a PR campaign hilighting the RIAAs bullshit accounting and police-state tacticts towards old ladies with iMacs.

  • economics (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pleasetryanotherchoi ( 702466 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @01:27PM (#8081779)
    When performers no longer need the distribution and advertising services they provide, RIAA and the big labels will go away, or at least shrink to manageable size. Until that time, they will continue to prosper and pursue their agenda. As long as they effectively control distribution the situation will continue more or less as it is, a stalemate between producers and consumers of media. Who better to hasten their demise than the artists themselves?

    • When performers no longer need the distribution and advertising services they provide, RIAA and the big labels will go away, or at least shrink to manageable size.

      I think we are getting pretty close to the distribution channels they provide no longer being necessary. The internet has done a lot to help solve that problem. It's a lot easier to do with music, than many other things, say books for example. There is no (practicle) iPod for book.

      Advertising, on the other hand, will always require a lot o

  • I suspect calls to MUDDA will be quite popular... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25, 2004 @01:28PM (#8081785)
    ...at camp Grenada.

  • Artist Control vs. Consumer Control (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cleetus ( 123553 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @01:36PM (#8081833) Homepage
    This phenomenon strikes at the heart of the issue underlying all of copyright: who controls? Copyright has always been an attempt at striking the balance between artist and consumer. It is artificially constructed because copyrightable works are easily copyable; it is an acknowledgement of the problem that rampant copying will bankrupt the artist.

    This MUDDA is an attempt to shift some control back to artists, particularly in the album vs. single arena. I understand the motivation, but I question the implementation. If artists really want that kind of control, let them either produce albums that are good enough induce consumers to purchase and consume them as whole ablums, or let them distribute a whole ablum as a single mp3 file, and let me decide whether or not to purchase it as such.

    CDs (and LPs) have track segmentation and track listing to facilitate track-based consumption. A shift away from that consumer empowerment is nothing more than ceding power to artists. I am agnostic on whether this is overall good or bad, as certain albums are much better when consumed as such and not as discrete singles. I am reluctant however, to allow the artist to make that determination ex-ante. I'd rather do it myself.
    • "...between artist and consumer"

      actually, artist and the good of the country.

      the issues at hand is the the artisit loses control of hs/her work when they sign an agreement with label.

      so the current issue is between the copyright holder, and the good of the country.

      the original copyright was a good and fair deal.
      I think only living entities should be able to own copyrights. Not representitves of something else.

      I also think the should be extinguished After 14 year.

      No man is an island.
    • Copyright has always been an attempt at striking the balance between artist and consumer.

      And that balance has been broken for quite a while now in the "IP Owners'" favor, which is why so few people respect it.

      It's not all doom and gloom, though - I'm running across more and more websites that proudly proclaim that their stuff is licensed more fairly under CreativeCommons [creativecommons.org] (GPL-ish) licenses.

      For someone to reject the status quo mindset of "All Rights Reserved! Perpetually MineMineMine!" in favor of the

  • Where's the OSS project? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by iabervon ( 1971 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @01:39PM (#8081841) Homepage Journal
    The thing I think is missing from the whole power-to-the-artists movement is an open source project for a good site. There are now a number of sites offering music online which have a more direct connection between the artist and the fans, but they all work differently, and most of them are terribly unusable. It would be really neat to have a bunch of sites with a solid back-end, matching interfaces, and site-specific skins. From there, you could have cross-site searches and accounts.

    The ideal for a music label should be that someone with well-defined taste in music finds artists they like and tells consumers with similar tastes about them. Being a good person to run a label doesn't have anything to do with being good at programming or interface design.

  • Paying for the missing middle... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Onan The Librarian ( 126666 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @01:40PM (#8081850)
    Okay, let me get this straight: iTunes is charging what, something like $ 0.90 per tune, so that the numerical equivalent of a 13-song CD is going to cost you approximately $13, i.e., the same you'd pay for it at my local discount CD store or Wal Mart ? And you get to pay that same amount for a product with no liner notes, no art work, no jewel case, and in an inferior audio format ? Now, I realize that you have the ability to download whatever and whenever, but does that really make up for losing those amenities while continuing to assist the expansion of the industry's already enormous profit margins ? Remember, when you buy this stuff you're still supporting the RIAA and the MPAA, both of which are aggresively anti-privacy and anti-choice. In the RIAA's instance they are also very aggresively anti-music, being primarily interested in the continued careers of their singing cash cows (Rod Stewart, Elton John, Celine Dion, Carlos Santana, Britney, Madonna, and the rest of that crapazola crew).

    (rant-on)
    I'm reminded of my chain-smoking friend who insists he's a Democrat, yet with every pack he smokes he's contributing to the success of the Republicans he so despises. Say what you will, but in a corporate plutocracy (i.e., the new USA) you vote with your purchases, not your ballot. Organizations such as the RIAA are also behind the continuing assault on the public domain and the further restriction of your rights of ownership. The only way to stop such people from acquiring more power over your life is for you to *stop giving it to them* !
    (rant-off)

    Btw, I'm obviously not very savvy re: iTunes so I welcome any and all civil corrections to my assumptions.

    • iTune is 99 cents per song, 9.99 per album(few exceptions)
      I larger piece of the proceded goes to the artist when you buy through iTunes.

      The format is very good. You can't tell the difference without special equipment.

      I used it to get a hard to find album that would have cost me 18 bucks. so I saved 8 bucks, and this particular album didn't have mch in the way of 'extras'

      I do wish I could download the cover of the CD, but that is certianly not worth 8 bucks. to me.

      "...you vote with your purchases, not yo
    • The tracks I've bought via iTunes so far have been exclusive tracks, not available at any record store. (For example, I downloaded a live, "unplugged" type performance by the band "Live" not long ago.)

      But this aside, as people move to using digital music players more and more, purchasing music on CD becomes more inconvenient than useful. (You have to "rip" it to another format like MP3 before you can even use it.) I'm already to the point whrere my music CD collection exists merely as backup archives.

  • RIAA Making Their own Coffin (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BuckaBooBob ( 635108 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @01:43PM (#8081864)
    The Practices they use and their Business model will be their own demise. We are starting to see fewer and fewer new "Hit" Artists evey year.. How long will it be before these arists come togther when thier Recording Contracts Expire and Form their own Internet Related Distribution system That doesn't bend them over and Comepletely Circrumvent the RIAA... The RIAA is shouting at the top of their lungs Its not about the music.. Its about money... Which for the most part alot of artists do not see it that way.. Money is secondary to the music.

  • A musicians union (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hmm, a musicians union - you'd think someone [musiciansunion.org.uk] would have though of that before now.

  • Time for Factory Again (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mr_lithic ( 563105 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @01:54PM (#8081915) Homepage Journal
    For modern music publishing, it is time to look towards the model set out by Tony Wilson and Factory Records.

    - Allow people to music music and make a buck.

    - Don't tie artists into involuntary servititude contracts

    In the end it killed Factory and the Hacienda, but at least they made some very good, and important, music before it died.

  • Who is the union... (Score:4, Funny)

    by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Sunday January 25, 2004 @01:55PM (#8081920) Homepage
    ... They're one bad MUDDA...
    Shut yo' mouth!
    They just don't want the shaft.
    Then we can dig it.

    With appologies to everyone. Bye bye Karma.

  • Good to see that Peter Gabriel isn't just lying down like some lamb on Broadway. He's not just saying "Excuse me" and waiting for the big one. Early on he saw the potential of digital downloading to change the industry and said "here comes the flood." Rather than getting humdrum or doing a slowburn over others controlling the medium, he got some perspective and decided to DIY and get on the air himself. Now he's having a wonderful day in what was a one way world sending out music through the wire. I don't remember any musical artist getting such a start on changing the industry. I'm sure record companies will consider him an intruder, say "you're not one of us" and claim he has no self control. I'm sure they'd prefer he remain a wallflower instead of saying "I have the touch" and bestowing the kiss of life to independent artists. This will shock the monkeys at the RIAA, who have gone gaga over downloading, and would much rather draw the curtains and see artists remain quiet and alone, or under their lock and key. But Gabriel was disturbed, troubled and in doubt about where the industry was going, and with an open mind and a passion for music, he decided to march to a different drum. Now he's telling artists "Don't give up, you can make it big time. Come talk to me," and initiating them into the secret world of rights contracts and digital licensing agreements. He saw that this was the time of the turning, and he's giving artists a sense of home and putting them on the map. He refused to believe there was no way out of the dilemma. He drew back the darkness, cut through the signal to noise ratio, said "there has to be more than this," saw it was high time for artists to start growing up about the business and technical sides of the industry, and then lead the way. So, thanks to his passion, things are on the way up for all of us!
  • Is there a decent computer professionals union in Bay Area yet? I know about outsourcing, but it's already happening anyway without any unions and perhaps jobs that have to stay local can be used as a leverage.

  • UDDA (Score:3, Funny)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @02:19PM (#8082056) Homepage Journal
    I'd prefer to join their org if it were just the "Union of Digital Distributed Artists". It's more to the point, drops the hype, and is a better pun.

  • cdBaby gets major digital distro 4 indie artists (Score:5, Informative)

    by Speequinox ( 662721 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @02:21PM (#8082065)
    I do Web design for a Middle-Eastern Jewish band [divahn.com], and, like 54,360 other independant artists, they sell their CD at CDBaby.com [cdbaby.com]. Unlike traditional distribution schemes that leave signed bands with, say, 25 cents for every CD (which they have to split among the band members), CDBaby takes only $4 from every sale and gives the rest to the artist. [cdbaby.net] They have already paid out over $6 million to independant artists [cdbaby.org], and they are univerally loved by those artists.

    If the artist so requests, CDBaby will also shop the CD to download services [cdbaby.net] like Rhapsody, BuyMusic, Emusic, the new Napster, AOL's MusicNet, and MusicMatch (no iTunes yet). The cool part is that CDBaby only takes 5% of what the download services pay them, passing on the rest, which is about 60 cents per track, to the artist, and when they do that [cdbaby.net] they forward the detailed accounting report to the artist.

    This is great, CDBaby has an impeccable track record of honesty and fair dealing with the artists, and 60 cents is more per track than what the vast majority of signed artists get per entire CD. But the potential for accounting shenanigans perpetrated by the download services themselves is high. They could simply lie, or fail to correct some error in their accounting software, and the artist would be none the wiser. CDBaby already helps independant artists by harnessing the collective bargaining power of all its members, but the additional pressure and oversight of a union like Mudda could help keep the pressure on.

  • Artist Management Associations (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cdrguru ( 88047 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @02:35PM (#8082142) Homepage
    What I keep seeing here and on other sites is a fundamental lack of understanding of what the RIAA and "record labels" do, why they exist and why they will continue to exist. I keep seeing things about how the RIAA has a flawed business model, that it is tied to distributing physical media and since this is no longer necessary, they will eventually disappear.

    Well, there are two important things that need to be considered first. The main point - which addresses MUDDA is the idea of "artist management".

    For the most part, in this country we have seen examples over and over again of artists "making it big" and either through their own mismanagement or being taken by others end up with nothing. The artists that can both perform and manage their business effectively are few and far between. I believe there are fundamentally different skills required, so a good business manager may not make a very good singer/songwriter/performer/etc.

    The primary thing that the "record label" does isn't so much personal finance management for the artist, but manages the "business" of being a performer. This involves promotion, booking venues, sponsors and so on. One of the main reasons the "label" takes so much is that a lot of this activity is done before the first "big hit". If it never comes, then a lot was spent without anything in return.

    Eliminating the "label" is certainly possible - you end up with lots of greedy business managers instead of having them all under one roof. Also, the promotional model changes a bit. Instead of signing on a number of artists with the hope that 1 in 5 or 1 in 10 makes it big, a manager basically says to come back when you have some money to pay. Today, this is how a lot of authors end up. Steven King doesn't have a lot of trouble finding a manager, but if you aren't known you aren't going to get someone to take your book to a publisher. You try yourself and maybe it gets published, maybe not.

    Of course, this means that artists that have wads of money to start with can promote their stuff. We have all seen this in other areas, where some rich guy buys a magazine and can publish whatever he wants to. Usually goes bust in a while, but not always. It transforms it into an elitist club that only the wealthy can play at. I'm sure you know of at least one magazine like this.

    Now MUDDA could provide promotional services for "their" artists. How does this make them any different from a record label? The big different 50 years ago was the ability to produce and ship records. Now, I am not sure I see the difference at all. Both fulfill the same function.

    Then there is the second point. Why do artists need promotion at all? Isn't all this advertising just a waste of time because people will eventually find out about new artists on the Internet?

    Yeah. Sure. At some point in the future where the words "digital divide" have passed into history. Important clue - not everybody that buys music is online. More importantly, not everyone is able to be online. For one reason or another, lots of folks don't have a full-time broadband connection at home or office. How do you reach these people? Offline promotion.

    A lot of music is bought "on impulse", maybe after hearing it on the radio or playing in a mall. How did that happen? Promotion. Radio stations play what they are paid to play.

    So, somebody has to continue to do the promotion of music. If an artist doesn't, their market penetration will be that of Gentoo vs. Windows. Will it be the artist doing that promotion directly? I doubt it very much.

  • Interesting start (Score:5, Interesting)

    by HangingChad ( 677530 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @02:38PM (#8082160) Homepage
    First he says they're not trying to cut anyone out of the process, but that's exactly what needs to happen. The middle-man is redundant. In this case the middle-man is beyond redundant, it's greedy and obstructive. Squeezing people at both ends of the transaction.

    He also talks about artists giving away their product not making any sense and DRM almost in the same breath.

    Not a promising start imho.

  • Labels Do Provide Important Services To Artists (Score:5, Interesting)

    by danaan ( 728990 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @02:38PM (#8082165)
    One thing to keep in mind before getting too excited about anything replacing the major label system as it stands, is that the labels are capable of providing artists with exposure and press far beyond what any independant union, CDBaby, etc. can do. And it's that marketing and promotion money that the most valuable to an aspiring band, not the money to make the actual music.

    If you're talking about being a truly successful act, making the music is the easy part. It's getting people to buy it that's hard. It's great to have alternative methods to get your music out to people, but really, if there are ~54,000 bands on CDBaby, what are your chances of significantly increasing your sales simply by having your music there. It helps, but nothing like signing with a label.

    Maybe, with critical mass online distribution will be able to have the exposure and clout the labels currently possess, but be careful, that's just putting the power of king-makers into different hands, that hopefully are more benevolent to the artist, but there is no guarantee they will be.

  • Stop giving up all right to your music ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by qoquaq ( 657652 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @02:38PM (#8082167)
    The reason the RIAA is so strong is that the vast majority of artists give up all their rights to sign a record deal. Its wrong.

    Check out what Robert Fripp has to say and the DiciplineGlobalMobile label.

    Chekc out http://www.disciplineglobalmobile.com/diary/

    an excerpt:

    Business imposes limitations and restrictions upon music and musicians. This is inevitable. But the mainstream music industry often, even mostly, determines and directs the music which is available to the public. Business may legitimately recognise areas of public interest which are not being addressed, but should not make musical choices for musicians. Neither should business apply pressure to make musicians conform to industry "common practices" and concerns. Industry agencies do this in a number of ways, some of which are honest and some of which involve lying, misrepresentation and threats, even corruption of the musician's better nature. Some are subtle and invidious. Some are blatant. Some are the result of an inexorable and ongoing embrace. They are rarely innocent.

    We as a community have many freedoms because we are all willing to fight for them. Love him or not Richard Stallman has done a lot for this community and others like it. Someone needs to champion the music community in the same way

  • "a saviour coming out of the mud" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @02:43PM (#8082190) Homepage Journal
    " He said musicians needed the record industry, because they were 'good at making music and not necessarily good at marketing'.

    [...]

    "Gabriel said he could not understand big music stars that advocated free music downloads while accepting big cheques from record companies at the same time.

    "After all, most artists depended on record sales for up to 60% of their income, he said.

    "Only superstars could afford to give away their music for free, because they had other opportunities for making money."


    MUDDA is doing their members a disservice by entrenching them in the 20th Century model. DRM and paid-only downloads just simulate the bottlenecks of distrubtion on physical media, with somewhat lower costs. The artists with "other opportunities for making money" need to be superstars to succeed in that model. But with free ($ & liberty) downloads, artists can achieve that status by aggregating widely distributed niches around the Net, at any time after the release (not just in the first few weeks). And the same infrastructure offers a level playing field for selling into those "other opportunities", to fairly compete with the superstars. The music consumer culture is changing with P2P and Net community/distribution - wearing the same T-shirt as every other metalhead is out, and obscure references to flashes in the video pan are in. MUDDA is better positioned than the old record weasels to ride that zeitgeist - if they squander it, they'll drag down their member artists while they fiddle on the deck with the rest of their Titanic industry, as their fans race for the lifeboats.


    "The time I like is the rush hour, cos I like the rush
    The pushing of the people - I like it all so much
    Such a mass of motion - do not know where it goes
    I move with the movement and ... I have the touch"
    - Peter Gabriel: "I Have the Touch" [lyricsspot.com], _Security_

  • Gabriel mistaken? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dashing Leech ( 688077 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @02:59PM (#8082279)
    The article reportedly quotes Peter Gabriel as saying, "...most artists depended on record sales for up to 60% of their income... Only superstars could afford to give away their music for free, because they had other opportunities for making money."

    He seems to be talking about some "mid-level" artists or something. Most "unknowns" make almost nothing off record sales -- they make far more on live shows. Many of them can give the music away for free because it increases their listening audience, who go to their concerts and/or buy their merchandise (including paying for a better quality CD than downloaded mp3s). There's also the "older artist" category like Janis Ian [janisian.com] who also get the same increase in audience & sales by giving music away. So it's not just big stars.

    • Only the top .1% make money playing live (Score:4, Interesting)

      by MushMouth ( 5650 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @03:15PM (#8082353) Homepage
      Most unknowns don't make money playing music at all they make music by having another job, sometimes it is in the music industry, but usually it's doing something like tending bar, or writing software. Playing live makes them almost nothing. Most venues will only pay about $100 for an opening band, which rarely covers expenses if they had to travel at all. However if they wrote their own songs they make at least 10 cents a song sold (for a 12 song album, thats a $1.20 an album). Most unknowns also have very good contracts, because; they don't spend that much on production, they generally pay their own production costs, and their label just does distribution. If you want to know more about the costs of playing live see this article about playing Irving Plaza in NYC [tygerstudios.com] and Playing All Ages Shows and the econmics of venues [tygerstudios.com] by Man or Astroman?.
      • It's true that most unknowns make their money at a day job. (I never said they made a living from live shows.) But even with your numbers, a group that only sells 100 CDs over a year will only make $120 from CD sales. I've never known a band that didn't make (net) at least $120 total even on a short tour of a few weeks. It's certainly not a living, but clearly live shows are more profitable than CD sales.

        Put another way, suppose you can even sell a thousand CDs a year, making $1200. Then you must be

  • The iTunes Quandry: 13% v. 50% (Score:5, Informative)

    by ClickTheVote ( 741949 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @03:10PM (#8082331)
    The Anonymous Coward submitting this story knows a little inside baseball that has yet to really hit the press. Standard recording artist contracts before 1998 treated revenue generated by licenses differently than revenue generated by CD sales.

    For a CD sale the label pays the artist about 13% of wholesale, minus various charges like packaging deductions, to recoup against all advances. In a licensing scenario where, for example, a recording is synchronized in a movie or TV show, the labels pays 50% of revenue without any deductions.

    The labels licensed some of their catalogs to Apple but want to treat that revenue like a CD sale at 13% and not as licensing revenue at 50%. That is why in large part some of the more popular artists with more leverage have been holding back on granting permission. It is also probably the major obstacle to record labels licensing for P2P sharing.

    The whole thing will come to a head later this year when the record labels must issue royalty statements to the artists showing how they treated the iTunes revenue. Gabriel and Eno are organizing artists for that battle.

    Music fans should be organzing too [clickthevote.org] .

  • it's semi open source, semi slashdot, semi daryl mcbride..
    I forsee an explosion on the phrase "how can you compete with free"

    23 listings on google right now for that EXACT quoted phrase.. I wager by years end it'll be on t-shirts...

  • When bands do it themselves...RIAA dies (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Selecter ( 677480 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @04:11PM (#8082634)
    We already had the first example of the self produced "hit" from a regular guy: The Howard Dean YEARRGH Song, made using GarageBand about 8 days after it was introduced. Went national less than a day after release.

    This is going to be the actual salvation of bands from the RIAA. Eventually, all the tools they need will be place so that they wont need the RIAA's "help".....they will be able to write, produce, distribute, (and this is the only part not yet complete: get PAID ) for everything they do. Shit, you dont even need actual musicians anymore for some types of music.

    Think of enabling tech like GarageBand to be the beginning of the open source of music movement. Now, if Apple REALLY wanted to control the entire industry, he would invent a way for the indies to get paid going thru iTMS without the RIAA taxes. I'm sure that's going to get threatened in the next round of negotations between Apple and the RIAA as leverage for giving Apple more of a cut.

    Cut off all the new bands all over the world from the RIAA's grip, using tools like iTMS and GarageBand like apps in the future - thats the way to kill a beast. Go, Go, Gadget Apple.

  • Is Gabriel Schizo or What? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by serutan ( 259622 ) <snoopdoug@geekaz ... minus physicist> on Sunday January 25, 2004 @05:08PM (#8082878) Homepage
    Gabriel said he could not understand big music stars that advocated free music downloads while accepting big cheques from record companies at the same time.
    After all, most artists depended on record sales for up to 60% of their income, he said.

    On the other hand...

    Apart from being a successful musician, running his own record studio and the Real World record label, he is also active in the field of digital downloading.

    So Gabriel can't understand other musicians doing the same thing he does? Mmmm-okay. I also don't know where he gets the idea that most artists get 60% of their income from record sales. Maybe a business-savvy few like himself and Madonna have recording contracts that don't eat up their royalties with expenses.

    My issue is with this statement:

    In the age of digital downloads musicians and the music industry have had to find a way of giving consumers what they want while securing revenue streams.

    NO THEY DON'T have to secure their revenue streams. It would be perfectly fine if our culture changed so that musicians treated downloads as free advertising, rather than try to perpetuate the record company business model of getting money for each copy. We don't need the copy police and all the technical and legal restrictions being imposed on us for the benefit of a business model, no matter who is making the money.
  • ... when you saw this article, you thought, "What does Richard Gabriel [dreamsongs.org] have to do with music?

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