Why the RIAA Really Hates Downloads 289
wtansill recommends the saga of Jeff Price, who traveled from successful small record label owner to successful Internet-era music distributor. His piece describes clearly what the major record labels used to be good for and why they are now good for nothing but getting in the way. "Allowing all music creators 'in' is both exciting and frightening. Some argue that we need subjective gatekeepers as filters. No matter which way you feel about it, there are a few indisputable facts -- control has been taken away from the 'four major labels' and the traditional media outlets. We, the 'masses,' now have access to create, distribute, discover, promote, share and listen to any music. Hopefully access to all of this new music will inspire us, make us think and open doors and minds to new experiences we choose, not what a corporation or media outlet decides we should want."
Uhhh.... Duhhh..... What???? (Score:1, Insightful)
If this were NOT what it has all been about, then I would be interested to hear any other intelligent suggestions.
once upon a time (Score:5, Insightful)
technological progress was not fair to the aztec and incan nobility. you wonder what they thought when they looked upon the gun, the horse, the metal armor, the smallpox. well, if you work for the riaa or a major label, you know more of what it is like to be on the losing side of technological progress like perhaps no other class of people in the western hemisphere right now
so here's to you, music label suit
heres to your vanishing jobs, to the jobs of blacksmiths, to the jobs of chimney sweeps, to the jobs of telegraph operators, to the jobs of steam ship engineer
to the dustbin of history with all of it
please no banging on your coffin while we nail it shut. thanks
Re:Uhhh.... Duhhh..... What???? (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh.. perhaps it's about them losing money from people downloading music for free instead of paying for it? The record companies only deal in music which'll make them money. There are many more unsigned bands/acts which sell their own music at shows or play for free. If the mindset in the article were to be believed, the large companies would be blindly signing literally everybody who made music so it could control them. This isn't true - it's hard work to get signed, and then a fair amount of pressure is put upon you to produce airplay friendly tunes etc.
Re:RIAA doesn't hate downloads! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:there not out yet... (Score:4, Insightful)
One already exists in the format of a moderation system. Take a look at slashdot for a reasonable approximation of how such a system might work. Applying it to music should be no big leap.
You know... (Score:4, Insightful)
But then I found out about Big Champagne, and that much more reasonable rationale for their fight against the Internet went right out the window.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
seems pretty simple to me (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Digital forms of storage mean that they can't recharge for the same product on a different media every fifteen years - the revolving door business model of vinyl to tape to CD etc.
2. People can create without them. The labels have cooked up a good racket making themselves a necessary part of the distribution process. Online, anyone can get their work out to an unlimited number of people.
The only thing that will bring the RIAA into the late 20th century, much less the 21st is for the current crop of CEOs, weaned on 1950s business practices, to get old an die, allowing the younger generation to take over (but they might just be dickheads too).
Re:It wasn't the cannons man! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:D'uh from these quarters too. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sweet. I can't wait until my car radio has 10,000 stations and I have to wade through them all to try to find something that doesn't suck.
You know, I think that the increase of accessibility of both creators and consumers of music is a Good Thing. That the internet is providing the medium for this free exchange is also a Good Thing. I also think that the efforts of the "dinosaurs" to prevent everyone from figuring out the baseline reality of the music industry in it's current state (i.e., completely free exchange) is Pretty Stupid.
But... Dammit. Let's not get too overzealous in our condemnation of the value the Music Industry provides. They historically provided, out of economic necessity, whatever music was (subjectively) "the best."
In order to do that, they had to try to figure out what artists would appeal to the largest number of people in order to maximize their profits. It wasn't an Evil Conspiracy to prevent your buddy's shitty band from "making it big."
Imagine a world without Evil Corporations providing that service - listening to the radio in your car suddenly becomes like a Google search for not-crap, every time you try to use it. You can say all the mean things about people who actually *enjoy* top-40 radio you want, but that doesn't change the simple fact that more people would rather listen to Britney Spears than ObscureCollegeBand.
Now, while I may or may not prefer Britney Spears to ToePhunkGrooveMaster 3000, I definitely do *not* have the time or inclination to wade through the previous 2,999 iterations of their crap to find something I like. I want someone else to do that for me.
I mean, I compose music, myself. I know what I like. I have an extremely eclectic taste in music, and I appreciate the ability to pursue that taste. But sometimes I just like being able to turn on the radio without having to hope that Zach Braff will swoop down from the heavens and "change my life" by making me listen to The Shins. Sometimes, Britney will do. And so I think there's a place for those Subjective Gatekeepers in the world. (just as soon as they can give up the financial reins, and figure out what value it is they *actually* provide).
Re:Uhhh.... Duhhh..... What???? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no controlling of tastes, merely a promotion of fashion.
Now that there exists a means of subverting the business model of said scheissters, they are upset, and will tickle the tummies of their tame congresscritters with green until the law prevents the distribution of independent music.
It's the Jaffia, stupid!
Re:D'uh from these quarters too. (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of my favorite bands have never been on the radio. I've heard about them through friends or through reading online. This new promotion style will more closely mirror this "organic" model of promotion.
Broadcasters are not publishers (Score:4, Insightful)
That's why I prefer internet "radio" when at home, listening to streams that friends make for friends. I don't want a gatekeeper to keep me from being flooded, I prefer a guide to help me to navigate on my own. Making it all about gatekeepers twists the argument, hides the fact that the self-appointed gatekeepers want to control all traffic, and aspire to be not merely bouncers but also jailers.
But hey, if you want to defend your employers, go right ahead. Just don't denigrate the fact that I prefer to listen outside of the prison they have prepared for me.
Re:D'uh from these quarters too. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Uhhh.... Duhhh..... What???? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It wasn't the cannons man! (Score:5, Insightful)
The way I see it, there is an answer to music distribution. Say that somebody created a private torrent tracker site where the members paid a monthly access fee. Artists could seed their music on this torrent site and be paid a percentage of the gross according to how much their stuff is downloaded. No middlemen. No record companies. Just the artists and the torrent site. Potentially, artists could make a lot more money than they are now. However, there are problems. Perhaps the stickiest is that little issue of critical mass. If a handful of independents got together and did this, they'd fail miserably. Such a site would need a *massive* catalog to get off the ground. It would have to include a very large number of artists from day 1. Still, it is a beautiful dream.
First of all, let me tell you that I agree with you in almost all points regarding the recording industries and found your explanations about the indigenous people of America really interesting - however, there's a slight problem in your last paragraph, I highlighted it.
It's not that easy. I'm an artist myself - I'd love to create content just like that, seed it on The Pirate Bay, announce it on last.fm and thus get people to listen to my music (since I'm major in a CS-related subject, I don't even care that much about the money - I'll have job some day... hopefully). But boy is it hard.
When you have a deal with record company it's not just the money you - as an artist - get out of them. Friends of mine have a really successful band - one of their singles peeked the German charts at 4 - and I'm really jealous... not about the publicity they're getting, but about their possibilities. See, to make a record it's not like the only thing you need is a guitar. You need a place to rehearse with your band. You need a good studio to record what you have rehearsed over the past weeks/months/years. The studio's not empty: you need a professional sound engineer, you need someone to master you records, mix everything... You also need a producer - or at least, it's better if you have one. Let's make a comparison: when you write a novel, the publishing house - before publishing - hire an editor to proof read what you've written. Because you missed out on some stuff, for sure. It's just goddamn impossible to be perfect (sic!). You need someone objective, and who's closer to the audience. That's what the producer is good for. He'll have totally new ideas, he'll have suggestions and most of all: he's likely to have a lot more experience than you have. You'll need that.
My friends have all that, because they have a record deal. I don't have that, so I have to stick with my NI external sound card, my laptop, my (bass) guitar, microphones, and the hydrogen drum computer. I've not recorded anything in months, because it takes at least a day to prepare all this, nevermind making a good recording. And then mixing it! Don't tell me you can do that by yourself in Audacity or Ardour. You can't. Mixing a record is a hard job and it really takes quite some experience to do it properly.
Now, I see record labels as some sort of governments: you (the artist/the people) pay them (your share of your copyrights/taxes) and you're getting the infrastructure in return (studios, sound engineers, whatnot/streets, police, judicial system). You're also getting PR out of the record labels. So they are useful to the artists, even in their current form. Not every band can have a genius among them, or several ones, to assume the different roles of the guys the label will provide you with. And who the fuck wants all musicians to be singer-songwriters, because that's the only music that's easy to just do all by yourself?? We'd have a whole cult of Jack Johnsons! What a nightmare...
Now, I'm not telling you "respect the record companies, they help the artists". Not at all. They're bitches, most of them. They are capitalists, most of them. And thus we artists hate them, for being capitalists and c
Re:Don't worry about it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Get off my lawn!
Music is for everyone - it's just that they don't make decent music anymore ;o)
Re:D'uh from these quarters too. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Uhhh.... Duhhh..... What???? (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Spot the missing element (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:D'uh from these quarters too. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Uhhh.... Duhhh..... What???? (on Piracy) (Score:4, Insightful)
The RIAA doesn't have to pay one cent for these virtual "employees," i.e., average Americans acting as independent online marketing teams on behalf of various artists, yet it reaps a number of benefits that they might not want to realize. Although, it has come around a bit with the popular iTunes model and other similar companies.
Perhaps the upcoming younger execs of these music corporations will have a better sense of how to "join" P2P technology and not "beat" it.
Re:D'uh from these quarters too. (Score:5, Insightful)
People aren't paying attention and still finding what they want.
Sam
Re:Don't worry about it. (Score:5, Insightful)
What is happening is that only formulaic music is marketed.
Filtering out the good stuff (Score:1, Insightful)
Huh? If they're acting as a filter then they've got their two lists mixed up, and they're marketing the garbage one.
The problem seems to be with the definition of "good". What's good for marketting (totally forgettable simplistic rap crap that needs continual replacement) is not what's good for listening (music with values that persist for decades and so doesn't need continual replacement). Since the labels market what's "good" for them and not for the listener, they deserve to die. Immediately.
Re:D'uh from these quarters too. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they won't. Their livelihood is threatened, and no one gets "bored" in the face of rapid loss of income. It's definitely going to get worse before it gets better.
Re:D'uh from these quarters too. (Score:2, Insightful)
How about, the free market? seriously. Auction off the different frequencies, and let different companies fight for the public's attention and the marketeers' money. TV has done just fine doing that, why not radio too?
Re:RIAA doesn't hate downloads! (Score:3, Insightful)
Dr Crusher: A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says "why the long face?"
Funnyer - the horse says "my head hurts, I just walked into a bar" (that one comes from some slashdot guy)
Whereas the visage of a dead Sony BMG, dead RIAA, Dead DRM and all of us laughing at their funerals as their cocaine-soaked executives weep is absolutely hilarious.
It seems that the 21st century uselessness of this 21st century phenomena is becoming apparent to all. Bye bye buggy whip manufacturers, we won't miss you. At least the buggy whip manufacturers didn't sue their best customers like the "big four" and their sock puppet the MAFIAA do.
-mcgrew
Re:Don't worry about it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Uhhh.... Duhhh..... What???? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It wasn't the cannons man! (Score:3, Insightful)
I like your comparison a great deal. I'm not an author (merely aspiring to be so), but having watched a relative get taken for a ride by XLibris (or a company of the same ilk) and having tried to puzzle out how I'll avoid the same fate, I think I have some sense of the wide gap in value between the average book published by self or subsidy as compared to the average book picked up by a legitimate publishing house. I can't say that every book that comes out in trade paper from Tor, Bantam, or Baen is flawless (or even good). I can't say that every author who publishes through a vanity publisher is a hopeless hack. I certainly can't vouch for the quality typesetting of a purely self-published author.
I can, however, apply certain heuristics in evaluating the three classes of book (and author). From pro-published books and authors, I can expect a certain degree of polish. I may not like the writing style of the author in question, but I can expect not to see above one or two typographical errors in a full-length novel. I can expect the paper and ink to be of reasonable quality. If the book disintegrates, I clearly wasn't being sufficiently gentle. (I can be hard on trade paper.) From strictly self-published authors, I can also expect a degree of sophisication. In this day and age, with teh intarwebs spangled with bogus publishers and warnings against them, a person who deliberately avoids the author mills shows a degree of insight and demonstrates that he cares more about the text than about the author. If these authors interests co-incide with mine, they're worth a look. If they don't, at least they were smart enough to dodge Xlibris or PublishAmerica. Finally, van-published authors may be worth a look, but I can reasonably expect the "publisher" to phone it in - the typesetting will be shoddy, the editting (line
From your comments, the gap between the signed and the unsigned artist is similar. An author may not need to build a sound-proof room in which to work, but he is still likely to lack necessary experience. Later projects may benefit from his own harsh assessment of earlier works, but however harsh he allows himself to be or invites those around him to be, he is still too close to his own work to know its value to others. That, as you said, is the publisher/producer's function.
Yeah, the subjective gatekeepers argue... (Score:2, Insightful)
Ummmmmmmm, why? I would suggest the only people arguing are those subjective gatekeepers, which are completely unnecessary.
Re:D'uh from these quarters too. (Score:4, Insightful)
You go out to a dance club, and hear music you have no idea who the artists are. That will change. And there will be new money and new fame for new talent, for new different artists and new different gatekeepers.
Those pushing Payola music will have their clocks cleaned by those pushing new raw talent not inhibited by restrictive play lists. Sure, some Payola music is good, but some of it is just old model artificial scarcity pushing of tired formulaic drivel.
I never understood why information in the music industry is so far in the dark ages. It's not at all easy to even know the name of the artists and songs which are playing on the radio. How many times have you heard a good song and it takes listener effort to discover who the artist is? You see tons of internet threads asking for help finding the artist/song with "...lyrics...".
Re:Why... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, I personally don't give a flying frog about 3G iPhone [slashdot.org] or the Asus [slashdot.org], so I just don't click those links.
If you don't care about the RIAA then just don't bring those articles up. Many of us care about computer illiterates being sued for "illegal" downloading.
Re:Uhhh.... Duhhh..... What???? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, I have no idea how my earlier post got formatted like that. Here's how it should have appeared.
I didn't get that from the article. The article seems to imply that the labels act as gatekeepers (which would make no sense if the gatekeeper just let everyone in), and that they provide the infrastructure, and take the risks. That's why they do not just sign everybody. There are only so many studios in which to record. There are only so many billboards to buy, and only so much space in which to store CDs.
The article does seem to over emphasize the do-it-yourself aspects of the music industry, however. There is still plenty of room for people who can run the studios, produce and promote a product, and who simply know what to do next. The methods may be changing, but the well-produced pop groups of the future are still going to need someone who understands the technical and business aspects of making music.
And they will also need someone who can provide the money to make this happen. That may mean that the RIAA could transition to a specialty lending institution, since they are more qualified to determine the marketability of a music act, than traditional banks. Of course that's just my $0.02
Re:Uhhh.... Duhhh..... What???? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anecdotal example: Death Cab for Cutie. Most people are shocked to learn that they have more than one album when I ask them which one they favour. Most people are MORE shocked to learn that the band has been around longer than their children have been alive...
Re:Uhhh.... Duhhh..... What???? (Score:4, Insightful)
As someone else already noted, the record industry uses Radio to control what we hear. There might be some great garage band out there, which would go straight to number one on the charts, but since they don't get any airplay they don't get heard. Thus the average citizen remains blissfully unaware of many great artists, simply because the record companies don't play them.
The corporations control what we hear.
Internet sharing puts the control back in OUR hands (we can try whatever we feel like trying).
Re:Uhhh.... Duhhh..... What???? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think the argument is so much that "people don't decide for themselves what they like" but rather that people don't get a say in what choices they get to choose from. Through the Internet, not only have I found contemporary music that I never hear through industry channels, I've found a lot of music from many years ago that I'd had never heard of at the time because the industry didn't deem it worthy of my consideration. I certainly decided for my self what I liked out of what was available to me, but I did not get to decide about the stuff I never got to hear due to corporate control of music distribution channels.
Re:Don't worry about it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Your statement is, being completely serious, profound. I often scan the usenet newsgroups and over the years, have discovered a world of music that was never available to me at any record store, with the exception of a few of the very largest like in LA or New York City, or in small mom-and-pop stores scattered here and there. But, I don't have time to go from place to place looking for what I like, and neither do many others, I'd guess. That's why the internet should be a boon to music lovers like us.
I suspect many of the artists from bygone days would still be recording if there was a way for them to get their music into the market, but having been weaned on the record company system, and probably not being 'net savvy, they either don't understand how or haven't figured out who they can trust. The record business is littered with stories of how so many musicians were screwed over by unscrupulous promoters - John Fogarty [wikipedia.org] and Ray Charles [wikipedia.org] just to name two.
Subscription-based music is probably the business model the music business should follow, I'm just waiting for the next Jeff Bezos to figure out how to do it successfully. It doesn't seem like it would be rocket science, but perhaps it is.
The rules have changed (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you've hit on perhaps the key point in all this.
The big labels became what they were because of the "rules" of the music business - it took corporate money and muscle to create and distribute high-end music. They grew to fill a need, and became rich doing so.
Thanks to modern information technology, though, the rules have changed - it's much, much easier to create and distribute music now than it was 30 years ago. They got rich under the old rules, so obviously they don't want them to change. They were comfortable. But they have no choice.
IBM didn't want the rules to change, but they did, so - eventually - IBM changed to survive, but lost much of its power to a more agile competitor (MS). Same here - the labels cannot enforce the old rules, and while they will eventually adapt, there's no guarantee they'll have the commanding position they enjoyed before.
They don't like that, obviously, so they're fighting it, but it's not a battle they can win. Not because "information wants to be free" or anything like that, but simply because the rules of their business have changed, and the market won't let an inefficient company live for long.
Which raises the question, of course, of what are the new rules? Are the new gatekeepers sorters, like Armin, Google, and Bob-on-Myspace? How concentrated - or dilute - will power be when the market adjusts to these new rules?
Should be interesting.
Re:Uhhh.... Duhhh..... What???? (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree that the reason is because people prefer mediocre stuff. Good music is unpopular because it's not played on the corporate-owned radio. Good music is unpopular because it's not exposed to the masses.
If it was played, it would be on the top of the charts.
Radio's purpose is to provide free advertising for the record companies' latest offering... they control what we hear on the radio. And if they decide to ignore good music, then it will sell poorly. It's the CEOs that control the music, not the people; not free choice.