Record Labels Unveil Greed 2.0 571
theodp writes "Unsatisfied with $2.49 ringtones and as much as 70 cents of each 99 cent iTunes download, Newsweek reports that record labels want a bigger cut of digital music profits. One example: If you type in 'Madonna' - a Warner act - at the Google Video site, and the results are accompanied by ads, Warner wants a share of those ad dollars." Even more ridiculous demands than those put forth in previous stories.
no suprise (Score:4, Insightful)
That's why all new music acts are nothing more than a 'formula'. everything's over-produced and is total crap.
The RIAA is irrelevant. (Score:5, Insightful)
Artists don't even need labels anymore. It's now feasible for composers to do business directly with online music providers... it doesn't cost much to upload a few megabytes of info. After it's been on iTunes, Napster, or whatever; and has made some money, then produce the CD, using profit money from distributing online.
The only reason the RIAA is useful to new artists is for advertising purposes, which is IMO isn't that great anyways. They are increasingly advertising the the artists they think can make the most money, not necessarily the artists that make the best music.
The only thing they're really doing now is desperately holding on for their survival. If they persuade congress to pass enough laws in their favor maybe they'll stick around for a while...
The RIAA today, is like the horse and buggy businesses when the automobile hit mainstream. They're obsolete.
Go away RIAA, nobody likes you.
Thats good news (Score:3, Insightful)
Stop listening? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow... (Score:3, Insightful)
Whats even worse is that some dumbass company is going to capitulate and then they'll all be forced to cave.
Why not? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the record labels need to get a grip. Their product is music. If someone BUYS music, they should get some profit. If a commerical company uses the music in something (Ad, radio), they should get some profit. If someone uses the music in a remix, they should get some profits. If someone puts it on a Blog or Webpage, and makes money off it, they should get some of the profits.
But to say that if someone types in Madonna, or Backdoor Boys, and they get some of the ad revenue is insane. I suppose FORD motor company would want the same thing. Or Nike, or Coke, or....everyone.
Re:The RIAA is irrelevant. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The RIAA is irrelevant. (Score:5, Insightful)
They need to clean up the interface a bit, and get it stable, but the potential for MySpace to become a big player in promotion of music is huge.
Desperation (Score:5, Insightful)
Soft of like the definition of a fanatic: they're redoubling their efforts as they lose sight of their purpose.
Wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm disgusted once more.
Re:Stop listening? (Score:5, Insightful)
People rely too much on TV for information (Score:5, Insightful)
The people in charge of TV are not about to describe accurately what the new copyright laws are doing to the American people, or the extent of greed that the media conglomerates have. When people are spoon fed information on TV, they get information from a biased source.
My suggestion: Get rid of your TV. Get your friends to get rid of their TVs. Go outside or go on the internet to get information.
It's Simple, They Want Everything They Can Get (Score:3, Insightful)
If you sold your car, you'd probably choose to sell it to whoever would pay you the most money. Same with your house.
But at the end of the day, consumers have a choice. Music is a product that you really do not need, and it is a luxury. The way to get the music companies to charge less is to buy less, and let the marketplace force them to charge a price that consumers find more reasonable. That's also part of the equation of 'what the marketplace will bear.'
absurd (Score:5, Insightful)
By Warner's logic, publishers should be paid everytime one of their books comes up in a search on Google, or Amazon.com, or even in a library catalog. That's ridiculous. The publishers aren't providing the service here. In fact, they're the ones who benefit - they're getting free advertising. This is more than trying to get the most profit from what you own - now they're demanding handouts from their benefactors and customers.
Re:Stop listening? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just go ahead and try to get people to boycott anything, I dare you. All a corporation has to do is to pay some TV or radio personality to call you a communist, cancer, zealot, hippie or a radical and boom they have taken care of the situation.
Look at slashdot, look at how often the shills call people who use linux or program in open source zealots and hippies? It happens every day. Your average joe does not want to go through life being called a zealot or a communist, he has been tought to reflexivey hate zealots and communists even though he probably could not define communist if his life depended on it.
The other way around? (Score:4, Insightful)
SO, if the labels wanted money from the adds, then Google could just drop the adverts that were music related.
Some wierd logic there.
The value of a brand (Score:5, Insightful)
The RIAA's business is making people famous. Anybody can make,produce, and distribute music, but it takes a major corporation to sell a gold record's worth of music. Even after carefully selecting the artists that they think will be worth the investment they fail much more often than they succeed, so they feel compelled to milk those artists who do succeed. Not for their music per se, but for the fame of their brand, which is the one thing that they've added to the mix.
It sounds like the RIAA is trying to buy themselves a Supreme Court fight on the subject of fair use. Not about the usual question of whether you can make backups or play it in on your Linux box, but at what point a tiny fragment of a brand (like a name in a search engine) becomes usable by the public without charge. That decision will end up affecting a lot more than the music industry. There are other people-as-brands, as well as more classic product brands. I'm sure other industries will be watching this closely.
Incidentally, that's why they're so zealous in trying to eliminate music sharing. They feel that the reason you want that music is precisely because they created you wanting it. That is, there's lots and lots and lots of music available, but you want the RIAA's music because they spent a buttload of money coaxing you into wanting it: getting it onto radio stations, putting posters in music stores, TV ads, etc.
There are plenty of people who don't like the blandness of the lowest-common denominator music that the RIAA promotes, and in theory the RIAA has no argument with those people sharing the non-label music, except they get caught up in the general sweep of things. I suspect (but don't have any numbers) that most of the P2P-shared music is RIAA-produced music precisely because the RIAA labels have put so much effort into promoting it. Tiny local bands would be thrilled to think that you knew enough about their music to go to the effort of downloading it.
Re:stunned (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Newsflash: company seeks to make money (Score:3, Insightful)
And if you don't agree, then you need to take down the daily dose of Kool-Aid.
Madonna a Warner act? (Score:5, Insightful)
And what if I'm searching for paintings of the Madonna? [euroweb.hu] How are they going to differentiate?
This greed is fucking rediculous... If I am searching for their Madonna, well, they will probably make a cut of whatever I find that I might buy from that search. Hell - if I'm searching for that Madonna, I am probably already interested enough in her to own a CD or two, so they already have some of my money in their pockets. Am I going to have to pay them if I mention Madonna in my blog? Isn't that fair use? Why should I pay for any mismatches that might come up? Whats next? Should I pay for the privilege of looking at billboards when I drive along the interstate?
Re:The RIAA is irrelevant. (Score:3, Insightful)
However, what you may lost is the ability to play at your local AmphiClearChannelBudweiserSonyTheatre.
Re:no suprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Wake me up when someone comes up with a good idea which is also practical and likely to occur.
A musician's perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Stop listening? (Score:3, Insightful)
Particularly in this case; the people who need to join the boycott (jane and joe six pack, the artists) either don't give half a rats' ass or have damned good reasons not to.
Re:The RIAA is irrelevant. (Score:5, Insightful)
The RIAA, once they have your creative fruits in their grasp, will then dole out money to the band as advances (not as gifts) and start advertising campaigns and tours and what have you to make sure people find this band, hear their music, and buy lots and lots of merchandise. Of course, the cost of promotion is all put on the band's tab so that they are more or less eternally indebted to the RIAA label while the RIAA sucks up the vast majority of any income.
It used to be tour money was out of the RIAA's reach, but last I heard they were trying to get a (large) cut of that as well. As a fan, you cannot even send them a check because it will be confiscated by the label and put towards their ever-mounting debt (or maybe just into the label's pocket).
Using the RIAA for IP protection is like asking the Mob for help with your business. Sure they'll help you, but you'll be indebted to them for the rest of your life and will be at their mercy. It's much better to hire your own lawyer to protect your rights than to get involved with the RIAA.
Re:The RIAA is irrelevant. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The RIAA is irrelevant. (Score:5, Insightful)
Paint and brushes are also cheap. Anybody can go out to the local art supply store and purchase some rather high quality brushes and paints and not break the bank. Despite the low cost, it is rare to see any works of art coming out of the local high school that I would want to hang on my wall.
On the flip side, one of my favorite groups [cowboyjunkies.com] actually recorded one of their first albums with a single mic and a two track system. What they lacked in tech they were more than able to make up for in talent.
So while the cost of the technology is going down, the talent to do something with the tech it is still hard to find, and those folks charge a lot. After all, if this was easy to do, folks would not pay big bucks to go and see folks do it.
Re:Stop listening? (Score:3, Insightful)
[1]Number I pulled out of my ass.
Re:no suprise (Score:5, Insightful)
The collapse of the music industry you anticipate would either
a. cause people to look online for free, indie music, which I doubt would happen, because most people are quite content being told what they like, or
b. cause a smaller record company to rise in ranks, which would then take the place of the larger companies.
It's like government. If you knock one bully down, another pops up just as fast.
Inevitably, he'll want his piece of the pie.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The RIAA is irrelevant. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:no suprise (Score:5, Insightful)
If quality were the yardstick for whether or not most people watched something, Star Trek would not have been moved to the 10:00 timeslot (but, after season 3 it would have been dropped), and shows like "The Paper Chase" would never have been axed because everyone was watching shows that had degenerated into inane crap like "Happy Days" and "Laverne and Shirley". If crap were always unpopular and people preferred something of quality instead, Shakespeare would still be outselling most bestsellers and Harlequin romances wouldn't exist.
there isn't one shareholder of google (Score:5, Insightful)
There are many institutional and private investors that now consider ethics and politics in their investment decisions and it's completely legal and normal and they contend it's a long range logical view to take. If you as a potential investor read that google had such a "do no evil" policy and it lead to your decision to invest cash when they went public, then you could make a case where they violated that if they started "doing evil", and perhaps file a complaint.
Funny story, friend of mine inherited a really nice portfolio. He divested all (to buy rental properties instead) except for enough shares in this or that company to go to the shareholder meetings and rail on issues about how the companies were run.
Re:no suprise (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that once a new type of musician becomes popular, the big labels all try to get a peice of the action which leaves us with a lot of very mediochre music.
Re:no suprise (Score:3, Insightful)
Such "churn" is still a good thing, because it keeps the companies on their toes and forces them to adapt or die. It also weakens them for a time, meaning that things get better temporarily.
Same thing with government. You could argue it doesn't matter if we have elections or revolutions, because whoever we elect will just be as abusive as the previous government. That's true, but it's still a good thing to force some turnover every now and then just to knock them back a few steps and force an end to some of the worst absuses.
Re:The RIAA is irrelevant. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Welcome to US Capitalism 101 (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, but what you have really is capitalism. What you don't have is the government doing its job. One of the most important jobs of the government is protecting the interests of the ones that are unable to look out for themselves, because they don't have the power or simply lack the knowledge to stand up to the capitalists on their own.
You see, capitalists are somewhat useful to society because they may generate wealth, but on no account should they be trusted. So, if they propose new laws, the task of the government of a country is to look at the proposal long and hard and with prejudice. Because capitalists don't have the same interests as the people, or the 'publick', depending on the where and when.
That's basically "wealth of nations" stuff (the unread chapters, that is)
Re:The RIAA is irrelevant. (Score:1, Insightful)
how is this even remotely sane? (Score:3, Insightful)
How about this (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a suggestion... what about artists each set up their own website (yes yes I know many have, bear with me), and offer simple MP3 downloads for a buck apiece, similar to itunes except they keep all save the bandwidth. Not going to work? If you think about it though, is a person who is going to pay for the music in the first place going to share the music on edonkey or klite? Probably not. But then you run into problems with people who swap their MP3 collections with their friends, friends who have no compunction about putting their entire collection on the file sharing networks, or kids who used their parents' credit cards to buy the song or songs, and share them for the kudos.
So basically you have one or two months before your song downloads start dropping, and of course then you will still have the fans that are willing to pay the dollar. And don't forget, many people patronise itunes, even though they could almost certainly get the songs on p2p networks.
Therefore to maintain this kind of business, bands would need to release a new song every month or so. The rest is just marketing (very cheap online, if you pick your keywords right), maybe a bit of touring... nothing to it really. This would mean the really good artists would gain the fame they deserve, not the bought and paid for fame of the record companies. And those with dreams of vast riches would be well advised to steer clear of the RIAA et al anyway.
Re:no suprise (Score:5, Insightful)
-matthew
That's good? (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you sure about that? I'd like to start by mentioning the industry collapsing won't be good for any artists, established or not. High prices and piracy or not, if there's no one to quickly turn performances into CDs in stores and songs on the radio, I don't think anyone's going to be happy.
On another note, I don't think having their 'greed show' is going to stop them. It's been really clear for a long time that they've been greedy as shit ($13.86 mean anything to you?), but since then, there hasn't been a single crippling lawsuit against the RIAA. They're still getting rediculous royalties (70 cents per iTunes song), they're still cranking out lawsuits left and right, and no one's doing anything about it.
The recording industry is making no secret of being greedy (special thanks Steve Jobs), but it hasn't gotten, or appeared, more or less greedy in the last 5 years or so. If they haven't been stopped already, I don't think that's going to do it.
Unfortunately, it's going to take more than being perceived as a greedy bad guy to take them down (cough, Microsoft). I'm sort of hoping for a 'new generation' of lawmakers. As of now, I'm going to say that most people in positions to pass these laws are in the age range of 35-60, but people that grew up with Napster and successors probably aren't more than 20-25 years old. Maybe when this all cycles through and people that grew up downloading music start to pass these laws, they might be a bit more sympathetic toward the money-starved, music-hungry end user downloader.
I just don't see any real end to all of this. As long as the RIAA (and MPAA) continues to have endless dollars to throw lawyers around, they're probably not going to lose big time. And I have a feeling they'll have plenty of those dollars for a LONG time.
P2P seems to be the light in all of this. Despite flurries of lawsuits and garbage propaganda, efforts thus far to curb piracy have not been extremely effective. Napster lead way to Kazzaa and iMesh, and even the shutting down of the giant Suprnova only lead to sites like IsoHunt that are bigger than SN ever was. As long as music, movies, and music videos are readily available online for free, I don't think the record companies will ever have too much of an edge up. As long as I can put my mp3s (that I didn't pay a dime for) onto my iPod, and watch DivX movies on my modded Xbox, I think I'll be happy.
Re:no suprise (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:insightful? (Score:4, Insightful)
1)Have a hell of a lot more money.
2)Have a power setup where its more likely those in charge are amoral asshats.
Re:Stop listening? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, maybe things will change, but not in the way you intended.
When album sales decline, what does the RIAA say? You know the drill: "Illegal filesharing has severely impacted our Nth quarter sales. We must take action against these pirates!"
If you stop buying albums, the RIAA will use that as another reason to sue some more file sharers. "Voting with our dollars" as it were, will only make the problem worse.
I'm sorry, but the only way to stand up to the RIAA now is the same way they're trying to walk all over us: the courts.
Re:no suprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Ironic. Shakespear wasn't exactly known for being "highbrow" in his day. Some have speculated that if he were alive today, he'd be writing for professional wrestling.
What's wrong with that? (Score:3, Insightful)
then when they are on mtv/radio, the people who just buy into whatever they hear love them, and so does the underground (or at least those who'd like to theink they are) crowd. "
If a group of people only like a band because it's on an indie label, it says they're a bunch of posers anyway. So if the the music industry has to trick these people to like music, what's the harm?
Re:insightful? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps because the "record labels" referred to in this article are, ummm, "corporations"? Just a guess.
Straight to iTunes? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's Simple, They Want Everything They Can Get (Score:5, Insightful)
People have found music prices unbearable. They bought less music. Much less music. So much less music that the recording industry has spent millions to reinforce their own delusions. (Perhaps you've heard of a few?)
The music industry chose to believe that the quality and price of current music isn't the problem, rather choosing the belief that the fault lie not with the prices and product the industry produced.
The music industry chose to believe that the problem lie with the consumers, and with 'piracy'.
Apple computer comes along, and begins selling music online -- in an easy to use, relatively fair system. The music industry sings Apple's praises, temporarily dropping their obsession with 'subscription' based online music. Then they start their own music services; Napster, for example, is owned by the recording industry; Sony/BMG IIRC, but that was a while ago.
And the recording industry starts to try to hike up the prices and force a 'subscription' service on its customers. People leave Napster and join the Apple camp, and the Apple store dominates the industry. In spite of the massive amount of profits that iTunes generates for the recording industry (which is pure profit -- it costs them nothing to let Apple do all the work for them), they attack their 'savior', deciding that Apple's current prices are 'too low.'
All the while ignoring these simple facts:
iTunes sells music:
* For a substantially lower cost than the recording industry.
* Music is $5-8 less per album.
* Customers aren't forced to buy an entire album for one song.
Essentially what the music industry wants to do is raise the price of buying music on iTunes to the price point that a CD has: $15-18 per album.
iTunes success isn't about the iPod. Most of the iTunes users I know of don't even have an iPod. They bought their music from iTunes because they got the music at a fair price, and could even burn the music to a CD (and re-rip it to another format) should they choose to. (Interestingly enough, the iPod did just fine before the iTunes Music Store; I'm convinced it would still dominate the industry even if the iTunes store never existed).
iTunes success stems from the fact that Apple offered the product for a price and condition consumers deemed was acceptable; something that is not true of buying CD's from a music store, or from the non-industry owned music services. (ie. Napster)
The music industry just wants to raise prices, and then blame everybody but themselves when consumers (literally) don't buy it. They persist in blaming everybody but themselves, their prices, their policies.
For its faults, the Motion Picture industry has at least admitted ticket sales have been sluggish recently because their product wasn't worth what they were charging for it. (Not that they think they were charging too much -- rather than their product sucked).
So no, the music industry does want more than they can get; when they don't get what they want, they come up with scapegoats and call their lawyers. They try to shut down everybody who disagrees with them. Which is silly, considering the entire American music industry is smaller than some of the companies they are offending (ie. Microsoft, Apple)
Re:How about this (Score:2, Insightful)
The RIAA screws artists a lot too, and consumers who are constantly terrorized with their (IMAO criminal) behaviour forget that the lables are generally hated by everyone, including the artists. (Ever hear a performer thank their label when winning an award? No, only people. The corperate part is a leech, and they all know it.)
Back to the main point, artists cannot sell anything they record with a label themselves, so unfortunately, the site idea (which I would love) can't work.
Re:A devil's advocate says... (Score:2, Insightful)
Bob may owe his increased business to Alice, but he doesn't owe her anything for her advertising. In the same way, the RIAA may have created a demand for 50 Cent but the people selling 50 Cent's music owe nothing to the RIAA aside from the royalties on the actual copies sold (and licensing fees for using his trademarks in ways not covered by fair use of those trademarks). If they make money selling soda and candy in the store to all the people who came in to buy 50 Cent's CDs, the RIAA has no claim on it.
Re:no suprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Two comments about that.
First, it's obvious that people have NEVER paid for music - except when the only way to get it was via phonograph records and tape recorders hadn't been invented - and therefore every music buyer is basically paying for CONVENIENCE in obtaining music when they buy a CD. Also, it should be obvious that people are not paying for the MUSIC, but in fact are paying for the advertising and marketing. Certainly that's the way the labels see it, which is why we get crap music - they assume that the music doesn't matter, it's all about advertising and promotion. Which, to a large degree, as any indie artist will tell you, is true.
Second, it should be obvious - but apparently isn't - to artists that, aside from the sports and entertainment industries - where agents are the norm - most industries don't hire themselves out to somebody else for advertising and marketing, and accept a fifteen percent cut of what's left after it's done. Instead, they produce their own content and then hire experts internally or externally to do the advertising and marketing. Just because artists don't know how to do it doesn't mean it can't be done by other people for a specified rate on contract.
Artists need to stop selling their asses out as peons and take responsibility for their own success. They may make less money - but they will be more able to live with themselves by not realizing that they're basically whores working for pimps.
Re:no suprise (Score:4, Insightful)
My point exactly - recorded music should be a LOSS LEADER for live performance.
Music has throughout human history been live performance. When technology enabled the phonograph record, record labels appeared, appropriated the music of live performers and began monetizing it. When they realized they needed more product than currently existed, they set about hiring the artists in peon contracts to produce more. Seduced by the celebrity notion, artists signed up, and benefited to some degree by taking a cut of the recorded music - when they weren't screwed out of the royalties entirely by the record labels - as many of the early artists were. But their cut was miniscule compared to the record labels.
Over the ensuing decades, people bought phonograph records because that was the only way to get the music, aside from the radio which didn't allow control over when you could listen to the music.
But once tape recorders (reel-tp-reel and then cassette) came in, people started taping and exchanging music from the phonograph records and using the technology to control their access to the music.
Then came the CD and the personal computer, which made it easier to record and control and exchange the music.
In other words, the technology now allows the consumer to do to the record labels what they once did to the artist - appropriate the music without compensation.
And the record labels don't like it.
From the artist standpoint, they need to realize that the technology now allows them to produce and distribute music at low or no cost as a LOSS LEADER to entice people to attend their performances - which, depending on their skill at using the Internet to magnify their reach to their potential audience, can be much greater than just touring around to clubs.
And subscription-based access to live concert performances are the way to monetize the live performance beyond anything possible in the past.
Bands who don't follow this approach will either continue to be whores working for pimps or be left behind by bands that do follow this approach.
But most artists - especially those already signed with labels and especially those who are significant successes already under the current system, like my favorite band, The Corrs - don't seem to comprehend the economics and technology or even the history and dynamics of their profession.
In other words, they're afraid - afraid of losing their place in the pantheon, afraid of losing their toys, afraid of losing their pimps, basically.
Typical human reaction.
Re:no suprise (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually we get a lot of crap because the labels DO NOT CARE about the MUSIC. What they care about is advertising, promotion, marketing and distribution.
To them, music is a COMMODITY to be hawked. The quality of that commodity is irrelevant to them. The people who run the labels are not musicians or even music lovers - they're businessmen and financiers. They love money, not music. Half of them probably don't even own a CD player or a stereo system. The peons under them have to have some clue, but not the guys running the companies who set the policies and make the decisions.
I'm surprised we get as much good music as we do under the current system.
Under this system, it doesn't matter whether a band is crap or not. The only issue is whether the label thinks they can be SOLD.
Companies exist in all industries that sell crap products - the music industry is no different. Some people who get to run big companies think quality just doesn't matter compared to marketing and price. And there are enough consumers out there who either are forced to agree by not being able to afford quality, or who don't care about it either.
Label bands are basically whores working for pimps. And everybody knows you get lousy sex from whores.
Re:The RIAA is irrelevant. (Score:5, Insightful)
To the guy that replied to parent message saying something about it all coming down to EQs, there isn't a surer way to completely suck the life out of a recording than with over-equalization (besides over-compression that is). I think he was referring to Logic too. Digital EQ. ick.
Re:How about this (Score:3, Insightful)
artists cannot sell anything they record with a label themselves, so unfortunately, the site idea (which I would love) can't work.
Actually the site idea comes from the mess that various artists have landed themselves in with the record companies. What you'd have to do is get those new bands and artists that aren't yet signed up with a record company on board, and those artists that are well established that have managed to wrestle free of them, and get the ball rolling with them. Its not an overnight fix, but it would restore the balance of power somewhat, and eventually would spell the practical end for the mass music conglomerates. A lost cause that isn't?
We don't run a studio anymore (Score:3, Insightful)
I am involved with a community radio station that used to offer (analogue) studio services for local bands. We got out of that because there's a bunch of small studios in town who can churn out damn fine recordings for very little cash, one of the *best* mastering people I have ever encountered has a little cave of a studio, some good mikes and a Macintosh. The whole million dollar studio thing is BS for people who love the sort of mussic industry we see in This is Spinal Tap.
Xix.
keep it up, fuckers. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:no suprise (Score:2, Insightful)
Or maybe some bands can't be bothered with the stress, boredom, physicality of touring. Maybe they don't like having to perform live. Maybe they play music that doesn't translate well to a live environment. Maybe they don't want to take the risk of booking a large venue.
Maybe they should be able to earn a living from the work they put into recording, mixing and producing their albums.
Heck, Muse are the brightest new rock band around at the moment. They've released a live album. It's just not as good as their three studio albums. There's no way they can use studio recordings as a loss leader for the live performance, as they'll just end up making a loss.
That doesn't mean I wont go and see them live. There's a different dynamic when you _attend_ a live performance. But on the CD recording, that isn't there. And without it, the carefully produced and tuned sound of the studio albums wins out.
Re:What's wrong with that? (Score:3, Insightful)
Which happens to comprise a huge number of Slashdot posters. Every time an article on the RIAA comes up, these immature little assholes pop out of the woodwork to eagerly proclaim how much superior they are to the 'sheep' because they only listen to "indie" stuff. Pathetic, really, but they somehow think that making nasty comments about popular music while extolling the virtues of some shitty no-name garage band actually proves, in some bizarre teenage-pseudo-rebellious sort of way, that they're actually more intelligent than, say, the guy who collects their trash, or works construction, or flips their burgers.
I guess they never got over being the left-out loser in high school, and this is their own childish form of payback.
Max