The Dark Side Of Napster 567
Julian Morrison writes, "An article on Salon shows the dark side of Napster (and implicitly, Gnutella and all the other clones). Artists say they can't make money from t-shirts and touring, and if sales of their CD drop on the auto-indexer, the label says goodbye. Can anyone come up with a distribution model that will work with the new tech rather than being swamped by it? " Also check out the recent Suck article about the "Zapster". Pretty funny.
Re:Too Late For Distribution Model (Score:2)
It's funny that all of the artists were blaming Napster, as if Napster invented the MP3 format and that no piracy was occuring on the internet before Napster. Fact is, piracy is already a booming trend on the internet, and Napster is just a logical outgrowth of that. If Napster hadn't come along, someone else would have done it.
Pandora's box has definitely been opened...the question the RIAA and artists need to ask is, "How do we survive in an MP3 world?" Maybe the answer is that music distribution is handled by artists or their managers.
Every artist was talking about this being the end of their careers, but it's not. Maybe if people were only swapping your MP3's, your record sales would go down, and you'd be fired. But this is an industry-wide problem, and perhaps even a society-wide problem as the human race comes to grips with the computer age.
Regardless, music will survive. A new generation of artists will make music, and adapt to the internet distribution model.
It's unfortunate that the RIAA chose to fight this every step of the way instead of saying, "Ok, MP3's are here and we need to radically adjust our business model." I think the outcome now is the dissolution of a top-heavy industry.
Ok, so maybe musicians won't be living the fantasy lifestyle of the rich and famous anymore...maybe they'll be real people with budgets and station wagons and mortgages.
Welcome to the world the rest of us live in.
Counterexample (Score:2)
Sorry about that, but you didn't really pick the best example. Are you sure the Arvo Part or Harry Partch masters still exist? I _think_ that no Charlie Parker master tapes have ever been destroyed to save a huge record corporation a buck- yet. Give 'em another 20 years and they'll be destroying Miles Davis masters to save costs on storing the tapes. I'm sorry- this is already underway and you cannot save the tapes and the labels will not give up the masters they are destroying- you'd better believe people tried- it's gone on for _years_, there was an expose on this practice in The Absolute Sound v17 issue 80 (published in 1992).
This is _not_ the argument to use to argue that record companies are not inherently evil.
Ye gods! (Score:2)
"Why would anybody sit down and write a novel if it's going to be pirated for free the first day it's released?"
Ye gods. You'd better ask Emily Dickinson that, my friend. In fact, you don't have to (she's dead and still more lastingly popular than you could hope to be)- you can ask me. I have written a novel [airwindows.com] and put it up on the net to be 'pirated for free'. Ask _me_.
I'll tell you why: the story needed to be told. As it grew I eventually realised I was telling a story, also, about how the world seemed to me at the time- without intending it, the fiction and invention became a kind of communication. It became a means of self expression- and also an exercise in the joy of sheer craftmanship. I once told somebody I met in a bookstore about how I wrote the ending to Kings Of Rainmoor, and how through a series of twist endings and unexpected but inevitable surprises I ended it in a very artistic and appropriate way- and she was most impressed, and got some of the sense of _rightness_ I feel about that ending. And that sense is what writing the book was _for_... I created something that has power and beauty to me (and to other people, too.)
It's the same with my MP3 songs [mp3.com] and MP3 instrumentals [mp3.com]. Let's look at the latter for a second. I'm in the process of doing an album on animal themes, and I had some music in my head that gave a very romantic sense of what a Horse is (we're talking teenage girl obsessiveness levels of romanticism ;) ). I could hear it, could feel it wanting to exist- and through a lot of work and the application of skills I've spent a lot of years learning, I got it on tape- it's at the 'MP3 instrumentals' link above, named "Horse", naturally. I ran about trying to tell people it was there, too, because it's one of the finest bits of art I've ever done. I ran across a person on a MUCK who was a big horse lover (or, rather, a unicorn fancier) and he listened to it- and was blown away! And that validated all the effort I'd put in- because in part musical art is the fiction of imagining stuff and playing it, but it is also communication, and I was able to communicate to another person the almost mystical romanticism I was trying to express in pure _sound_. That's fscking magic, to be able to do that. It's addictive. Who the hell needs to get money to justify being able to wreak magic? I wonder if these 'artists' who don't understand this are even able to come up with even scant milliamps of magic. That seems simply pathetic to me- I know what I want and we're not even speaking the same language, it seems. When I get things set up right, work really hard, maybe bleed or get a few blisters from strenuous playing or drumming, and find the right listener (because there's always a right listener), I get to produce whole _amps_ of magic, I get to every now and then hit people with a charge of music like a lightning bolt and _stun_ them with art. I hardly exaggerate to say that I live for that- certainly I know musicians who can stun _me_ in turn. The Pixies, Captain Beefheart, Tom Waits have all managed to stun me one way or another with music (Beefheart is the man who said, "I'd like to give my music away because where I got it, you didn't have to pay for it"!). From the slush piles of mp3.com I've also found the same charge- there's this band Creeper Lagoon- most of their stuff didn't hit me so hard but this one song, "Drop Your Head" stunned me. And there it is- it's the visceral response to art, to music.
Reading Puff Daddy's take on the matter is even more ludicrous than reading the pop music hacks' take on it. Are we or are we not talking about a rapper who takes complete works of music by somebody else, grabs some loops out of the song, basically using those MUSICIANS' best notes for nothing, _talks_ over them (shouts? rants?) and thinks _he_ is guaranteed income from this? That's fscking ludicrous. Look, I have that MP3 instrumentals [mp3.com] area. Some of it, particularly the albumlength workout 'Extended Play' (which has been compared to 'really good Yes, or King Crimson') is absolutely _begging_ to have bits of it looped and used as a more rock-derived rap backing, a more snarling distorted driving beat. It's wide-range, it's fierce, it's just waiting to be sampled. I'd like to see Puff Daddy go raid _my_ music, grab notes that I sweated over and got blisters over, do some rap over them and then claim _he_ is entitled to money for it. How much time does he spend compared to how much time and effort I spend on the source for those 'fair use' loops?
And yet I'm not arguing that he shouldn't be able to do that- I'm arguing that he doesn't have special rights to money on that basis. If he finds people who want to watch him rap in person to my music as a backing loop, I for one will not bitch. If people want to buy physical media from him on that basis, I'll let it pass and will cheerfully allow him to not give me a dime for it. If he thinks he's _entitled_ to payment just for having done this, then I would have to ask whether I was _entitled_ to payment in turn for supplying those theoretical loops.
The logical conclusion is this: these frustrated pop business majors are _obligated_ to stop attempting to record music, because they can't guarantee that they are paid for every playing of a note (many use session men so they are trying to guarantee that they are paid for the playing of _someone_ _else's_ note). For the rap artists who feel this way, they are obligated to try and be paid for every word. Since rap is music of the streets and is taken from life and performed by people who live what they rap, the rap artists are logically obligated to try and be paid for every word they ever utter, and need to walk about with a big sack (and, presumably, a gun) speaking to people and taking money from them in payment for their rap performances. Since this is certifiably insane behavior, they will then get locked up and the rest of us can go on with our lives :)
Including me, finishing this post and signing it with the URLs where I give my art to my listeners:
http://www.mp3.com/RFW [mp3.com] (radio-type songs)
http://www.mp3.com/ChrisJ [mp3.com] (instrumentals)
Re:Copy Protection (Score:2)
Oh, please, please, mainstream industry, go right ahead and grunge up the audio quality of your CDs with watermark bullshit that 'consumers can't really hear anyway'. Oh, _do_ please encode in copy protection crud all over the music. You're talking to someone who always does fades (as at the end of 'Horse' in analog because digital fades are too grungy. You're talking to someone who's studied the sound engineering trademarks of the greatest selling albums of all time. You have no idea how dangerous such a suggestion really is >:)
Let me put it this way: I work quite hard and devote years of experience to producing a level of sound quality that beats what the major labels, with all their money, can produce. I can do it because technology's gotten lazy in some ways- digital can record subsonics happily but most equipment starts rolling off at maybe 35hz because supposedly people can't 'hear' lower (this in an era that has seen the emergence of thunder-trucks and vans with gigawatts of bass power!). Digital can even produce passably airy and natural highs but most equipment screws this up horribly by killing the almost nonexistent analog-chip hiss of their output stages with horrible ringy ceramic HF-rolloff caps. And in most cases the ultra-expensive studios the industry labels use still suffer from these judgement errors, using equipment _built_ to not give a truly full range.
I can beat the major labels much of the time due to hardware-hacker tricks of this type (and gladly share them). If the major labels take to putting _watermarks_ into all their CDs to interfere with mp3ing- particularly if it's for tracking stuff after it has been mp3ed- then they will be charging $14 for music with a thin, unpleasant haze on the high frequencies- and rather than simply beating their audio quality, I will be able to _maim_ and _stomp_ and _humiliate_ their audio quality, and for free >:)
So please, please, industry, you know the consumer can't hear and won't listen and doesn't care- put watermarks into all the CDs! ;) It won't hurt anything to lower the sound quality just a little bit- not like there is anybody out there _competing_ with you or anything ;) go ahead! You can even charge a little more because it is 'secure' ;) that's the ticket!
Please, industry, just a _bit_ more arrogance and contempt! You're not dying fast enough and I would greatly appreciate it if you make it even _easier_ for just me and my equipment to compete directly with you ;)
Anybody reading this, if you'd like airwindows to do a digital mastering job for you (ADAT 20 or 16 bit, 1/4" tape 7.5 or 15 ips, cassette or vinyl transfers), write chrisj@airwindows.com and say you saw it on slashdot and I'll digitally master your material for _free_. You will need to either travel to Vermont or pay shipping for your master tapes to get here and back. Hear what your music sounds like mastered through a custom board and handmade cabling capable of subsonic to supersonic signal carrying, with EQs to control it perfectly! All playback devices (ADAT, reel to reel _and_ even tape cassette) specially customised to give significantly wider range than anything you can buy off the shelf!
(Yes, I'm serious! This industry jihad is pissing me off ;) I happen to be able to afford to earn nothing at all from my sound engineering, for the moment, just to be able to insult the mainstream industry. If any of you ever wanted a professional mastering job done, talk to me and we'll work something out. You _don't_ have to be signed to a major label to have access to professional recording or mastering quality.)
Re:Some of those quotes are great... (Score:2)
No, thieves steal things. Pirates forcibly board ships, murder the crew, and then steal the cargo. Referring to illegal copying as piracy, even if you believe that the law is a right and moral law, is absurd.
If I were a pirate, I would be offended at people describing contract violations as piracy. That would belittle my entire career!
No, that's not theft, that's a contract violation. They are different things.
To steal something is to take it away by force or without permission. But if on monday, you are in posession of something, and on wednesday, you are still in posession of that thing, how can it have been stolen on tuesday? Many people believe that information cannot be a subject of property, as it has no physical reality. The nature of property is tied up in the fact that objects can only be in one place at a time. Information doesn't work that way.
Intellectual property is an oxymoron.
All that said, I would like to live in a world where artists get compensated for their work, so that there is more incentive for artists to produce art. However, I don't think we live in that world today: the people getting compensated are, by and large, not the artists, but their lawyers.
I hope someone can figure out a way for artists to truly get compensated. But trying to put the Napster toothpaste back in the tube just isn't going to work.
The world has changed. Figure out a way to live with it.
Re:Bring back the notion of patronage (Score:2)
You have no right to demand any such thing.
You might want to negotiate with someone as to whether they might be willing to exchange their money for your services. But of course they have no obligation to pay you if they aren't interested in your services. Nor are you under obligation to provide those services if they don't want to pay you what you think your services are worth.
This is what we call ``commerce.'' ``Rights'' don't enter into it.
Musicians _can_ survive without CD sales (Score:2)
The minority of musicians who can live of royalty from CD sales would be affected. They would be in a good position to make money from sponsoring, live performances and merchandise, but it might not make of for the loss in royalties. I certainly don't see Michael Jackson being as rich as he is today. Being ordinarily rich instead of outrageously rich aren't that bad, though.
Do you want to be a businessperson or an artist? (Score:2)
The majority of great art is *not* rewarded by great fortunes: the streotype of the starving artist is not so far removed from the truth.
Great music is a labour of love -- and it isn't that expensive to make (especially nowadays, when most people could build a modest home studio if they scrimp and save for a while). Napster and MP3 provide an excellent means to get your work hear: which if it's really "art" ought to be a reward in itself. For money, get a proper job.
You used to need a record label to get your art heard: pressing and distributing records/CDs/whatever cost money. Now the record companies have too much of an influence over other media. Radio playlists are directly influenced by record company pushers.
I heard somewhere that record sales are a fraction of the money artists make: the real money is from broadcast royalties. In time, I hope to see broadcasters dipping into the massive resource that is available only on MP3 - artists with no record company. We really don't need record labels.
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Re:Bring back the notion of patronage (Score:2)
>>should get a day job?
>Perhaps you should get a clue. Other than the
>few that get massive press (Backstreet Crap,
>Titney Spears), most artists work day jobs
>so they can do art at night and on weekends.
I think you'll find that it's only the big commercial "artists" who are whingeing about Napster. The guys with day jobs aren't making enough money out of CDs to care.
The big names also seem to spend more time on
kids TV than actually making music.
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Re:Bring back the notion of patronage (Score:2)
I don't question Throwing Muses' artistic integrity however...
By the way, when I was about 14 I had quite a crush on Kirsten Hersh. At the time she was the demure one who always stood at the back of band photos, while Tanya (?) was the glam one... I found that quite alluring
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Re:Bring back the notion of patronage (Score:2)
Actually, I don't. I have an archive of about 15 albums in MP3 form, all of which I own on legit CD.
... and I'm not arguing that copying music (or software) when the license forbids it is right:
rather I'm arguing that a number of artists are enslaved by record labels because they feel it is the only way to get their creations heard -- and in the past this was true. Sure, musicians have a right to distribute music under whatever terms they like: I'm saying that there is an opportunity coming into existence for free distribution and other means of making money.
I've said it in other posts, but I'll say it again: record sales amount to a tiny fraction of what a musician earns. The vast majority of their income will be from broadcast royalties: radio play, public broadcast (discos, lobby play etc). If you're lucky enough to get your music used in an advert, that'll pay a mortgage for a long while.
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Answer: Say goodbye to the label first (Score:2)
The answer, of course, is for artists to ditch the label first and then ALL the money from their tours/t-shirts go directly to the artists, instead of 99% of the revenue ending up in some record boss' pocket.
With the record company out of the picture, the artist would also be free to sell CDs at a low price - ie. $5-$10 - which would make piracy irrelevent (fans will pay for original copies with proper artwork providing the price is low enough).
Not that I'm saying record companies operate a pricing cartel or anything, of course :-) In the UK we pay $20-$25 for a CD album. Often it is cheaper to buy British bands' albums from the USA and have them imported. Go figure.
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Open art license (Score:2)
I'd like to see a body of GPLish content to emerge to be enjoyed.
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Re:Musicians _can_ survive without CD sales (Score:2)
I think this attitude implicitly contains the assumption that all labels behave like Warner Brothers and Universal. Artists on labels like Rounder, Razor & Tie, HTD and countless other labels which rarely make it into chain music stores are often making a higher percentage of profits per album sold, but with a smaller up-front advance than they might get from a "big label" company.
Furthermore, let's look at the argument that the 7% they might make from the 15,000 copies of the CD that these "small label artists" sell is a small percentage of what they take in. That represents about $17,000 of income. Do you really think Dar Williams, Grey Eye Glances and other artists who perform in small clubs are making many times that through performances and merchandise?
Really?
Popularity isn't what they care about (Score:2)
This of course also has the neat feature of forcing the listings to churn, as the market for each piece saturates and another pushes ahead of it in the rankings.
Re:Ask Money For Service! (Score:2)
You must not be in a band. I am friends with a band (book them regularly, beg them to do shit for my label, etc) that has been going at it for 6 or 7 years. As far as I know, they just started getting paid for their shows in the last year or two at most. So that's 5 years of playing for free. Minimal t-shirt sales in those 5 years (they had shirts and stickers, but when the total fanbase is under say, 100 people...), minimal CD sales (the lead singer's a perfectionist and usually disavows any recording about 3 months after it's finished) on 2 projects, one a full CD (they still have probably 300-400 of the 500 copies), and one a CD-R EP later done as a tape.
Now they're on their third album ("their debut" to roughly the whole world) and headlining shows in Dallas. They played in Austin (first time outside of Dallas area) last weekend, and the room was mostly packed with Dallas area people. But it took them more than 5 years to get to this point. And I guarantee you, being huge in Dallas does not carry over to anywhere else in the world. Look At Tripping Daisy, Deep Blue Something (oops), Hagfish, Toadies (well, ok), Brutal Juice, etc... so if they were to play in another state, they'd be looking at the same old crowds of 5 people again.
The band in question is Chomsky. You can find them and some of their songs at http://www.chomsky.com.
Re:Lose-Lose Situation (Score:2)
Going one step further - I don't even want the CD's. I like MP3's much more than CD's. I have to store CD's in some kludgy rack beside my computer desk here. I don't have to with MP3's. Not only that, I can store a lot more MP3's on a CD (should I decide to burn them) than regular old Red Book Audio. Plus, I can get the ones I want on the CD.
I don't download lots of MP3's. I trade some with my friends, but it usually stops there. Most of the time, I end up listening to the stuff once then delete it (hmmm... a lot like warez...). For the stuff I do really like, I would buy the CD, but like I said - I don't want it and I don't want to give the record company money.
So, there's the dilemma. The only solution I see is somehow getting money directly to the artist. That would be nice. Problem is, the record company does all the promotion and distribution of the artist at the moment. Morally, I suppose, I'm obligated to give them something. Well, I guess I can live with that on my conscience since the general concensus is that record companies are just assholes.
Maybe I'll try to track down some artists who have internet fan sites, etc., and see what the implications of me sending them a cheque directly are.
Support the artists you like. Don't just give away something they've worked hard at to create. Ah, screw the sermon. You've heard it before. Those of you who are disrespectful asses know who you are.
Woz
gzw@home.com
Re:disappointing (Score:2)
And, of course, the quotes seem to be practically right out of the RIAA prewritten suggested quotes for artists [mp3.com] playbook, very fishy.
The -- deliberate -- problem with all these quotes is that, with all their foamy blather about "theft" and "artists' rights" and "property," they totally obscure the fact that copyright is not some God-given basic right, but rather a convenient, pragmatic, and somewhat unintuitive legal fiction that was created relatively recently to serve a particular purpose -- the purpose of funding the creation of art and knowledge.
Before copyright was invented, art and knowledge were created just fine, funded in many other ways such as by private patrons, governments, sales of performance tickets, and the tuition of students. Shakespeare had some problems with bootleggers, but he still made a living and created prolifically with zero copyright protection. Even today, there are many other models for funding creation: fine arts are mostly supported by the government and private charity; most basic science (and much open source software development) takes place in universities funded by government grants, private donations and the tuition of students. Even the blank-media taxes in the US and Canada (flawed though they are) represent a shift to a different payment model, one in which copyright is irrelevant but consumers pay indirectly into a common pot which is redistributed to artists. The point is not whether these models are better -- though they're all at least workable, unlike copyright. The point is that "intellectual property" rhetoric obscures the only real issue, which is how can society fund artists. And the answer need not automatically be the same way we do today.
Re:disappointing (Score:2)
Re:Ask Money For Service! (Score:2)
No one is currently making money from giving software away and "selling service" ( even Redhat are losing ) It's a myth that this is a money maker.
The problem is this -- you can sell service whether or not you do anything else. So why spend money on anything else ? This so-called model proposes running one losing business ( a software business where you give it away ) and another business ( service ). Obviously, it's optimal to only run the service business unless the software business makes the service business much more profitable ( and from what we've seen with Mandrake whipping Redhat, it hasn't worked )
Re:Artists surviving in the new media (Score:2)
I have a fantastic idea. You obviously have a business plan whereby you can get those CDs to the market for say $15- and give the artists twice as much royalties, otherwise you wouldn't be whining about how much CDs cost ( unless you're blowing smoke which I'll assume you're not )
So I'll tell you what -- why don't you go to town with this business plan, sign up all the artists ( who'll gladly accept your better royalty arrangements ) and at the same time, put the "greedy record companies" out of business ?
Good luck
Re:It's not that simple, I don't think (Score:2)
This is not really true. The record companies obviously have to compete with each other on price, to get both the consumers, and the artist's contracts. However, it's definitely true that there is a certain amount of latency in this model, which in some sense is "suboptimal".
It would be cool if someone did come up with and succesfuly exploit such a model. You say the best price is "free" -- well that's not going to make anyone any money. But if someone can profit by making a system as slick and responsive as say the stock exchange, then all the more power to them.
The problem is that all we've seen from the napster advocates is a lot of pro-freeloading or freeloading-sympathizer talk.
Still the same old argument . . (Score:2)
Problem is, you can't screw up the record companies without screwing up the artists, too.
There is a HUGE assumption in all this free downloading; that is, the record companies will eventually go out of business and all the recording artists will sit at home with their digital recording eqipment, record great songs and upload them for free to the 'net. Problem? YES! These artists are only, really, going to be able to turn out good stuff if they can work on it full time; that's the goal of just about any artist in any medium I've ever known/heard of. They can only do it full time if they've got money coming in from someplace else - record royalties, advances, etc.
All that goes away as soon as the record companies get out of business. Sure, Napster will still be there, but the content will start getting a little stale.
Re:A solution (Score:2)
now, what to do with this? well, my take is that the possibility to freely exchange data on the internet is real and is not going to go away, so anything that depends on that not being possible is going to have to change radically to survive. I'm sorry for any artists who get the bad end of the stick, but I don't think there's ultimately any point in trying to work a compromise. there simply is no compromise between the practical ability to share information and get away with it, and a system that depends on that being impossible. no law can stop millions of mostly anonymous file sharing and downloading monkeys.
as for Napster itself, who knows. maybe the current Napster company will get sued to oblivion, maybe not. ultimately, it's not very important either; the possibility is there, and Napster, being a company (with the need for "stragetic partnerships" and all that crap), is vulnerable. but it only takes ONE free, open-source, multi-OS (windows, mac, linux), non-centralized Gnutella-workalike for this to be 100% unstoppable. Gnutella itself almost made it, but got pulled before they had a chance to release source (that's what happens when you ignore "release early, release often"). Something else will replace them.
the whole thing is sad in a way, but refreshing in another. the record labels will not "go the way of the dinosaurs" like some people have been saying, but the whole landscape of popular music and its economics *is* going to be redrawn. it doesn't make sense to be for or against; it's like being for or against the tide. it's happening already.
Re:Lose-Lose Situation (Score:2)
Re:The Dark Side of Wrapster (Score:2)
Lower CD prices and cut out the RIA (Score:2)
Everybody wins here except the RIA (sob sob, weep weep)
Re:Shortsighted Artists (Score:2)
If you look at the music available on napster, you can get an idea of the demographics of the users.
Re:CD Sales up? (Score:2)
Correct. Sorry, but MP3 cannot replace a proper hifi stack. It is nice for work environments and on the road, but that is about it.
So I still go and buy CDs. Though I do not buy the crap they mix up nowdays. There are about 3 titles more recent than 10 years I have bought lately.
This is not intended as a flamebait. It is an opinion supported by facts. And the facts are: If modern music was not in complete and utter stagnation Santana would not have pick up half of the Grammies and Blondie would not have reached the top of EU charts by just reprinting a 70-es album.
You're missing my point. (Score:2)
While it does depend somewhat on the person, everyone has their time/value treshhold. For example, if I valued my time at no less than 30 dollars an hour, I would most likely not participate in mp3 trading if it only returns 1 CD (which I would otherwise purchase) for every hour I invest in it. Thus shutting down napster and clones would stop me from downloading with any regularity (as opposed to opportunistic/scavenger mode). While it may be considerably lower for others, anyone who values their time at a mere dollar an hour (just about what it must be for the average IRC-mp3 trader) truely isn't likely to purchase a great number of CDs anyways, nor is the industry apt to give these types of traders much in the way of chase.
Re:You're missing my point. (Score:2)
Well, I certainly won't pull out a calculator and compute it (normally atleast).
Yes, I generally agree with that. Though I don't know about always. As I mentioned before, these services all depend on a certain amount of centralization, and can always be shutdown directly. Furthermore, as a system administrator, I needn't stop all the geeks in the world from getting mp3s (although if the community is that sparse, it rapidly losses its music selection), all I would need to do is adapt the network often enough such that the majority of would-be napster clone users have to relearn and reconfigure frequently.
I disagree. The masses can be, and will be effectively stopped. The few who break through with ease can be written off.
In any case, time will tell. If and when this puts a real hurt to the music industry, they'll start coming after these servers with a vengence, and Joe Schmoe won't have his trivial mp3 downloads.
Re:Slavery, Oh That's Rich. (Score:2)
The person with whom I was discussing did not dispute the validity of IP itself. He simply had an inconsistent view, in that he effectively claimed to be concerned about the property rights of the artist, but failed to recognize artist's right to sell it, or the purchaser's right to price it however they please. Because reducing the right to transfer property reduces the rights to property itself, it is inconsistent with arguing for the artist property rights. I called him on this. End of story.
It is not necessary for me to attempt to "prove" undisputed facts. What you are asking of me would be equivalent to my demanding that you "prove" the morality of ownership, when, in fact, you are only debating someone else about how you should be allowed to transfer it.
You, at once, manage to over- and under-simply matters. Just as the notion of property interferes with the right of any man to do as he pleases, whenever he pleases, so do all human laws. However, it is highly myopic to think the only area of differentiation is the degree in which they interfere with the exercise of free will. The most important, though far from the only, distinction is in fact their morality--not the degree to which it retrains free will.
To quote MLK Jr:
Proceeding by this definition, slavery is clearly unjust, by pitting the majority against the minority it undebatably detracts from society as a whole. Contrast this with the utilitarian ends attained by the legal recognition of property. Though far from perfectly equitable, it furthers the greater good. One need look no further than the now defunct USSR (amongst others) to see what the results of the alternative is. Because the legal institution of property (in a general sense, not every instance of property) furthers the greater good, it 'uplifts the human personality', and thus is moral.
If you accept that the artist would not have produced that work at all were it not for IP, it is hard to assert that IP is hurting you in this instance. Simply put, you would never have an exact digital copy (read: mp3) like that, if the artist had not created it; the odds of someone recreating an exact copy on their own (read: without the artist writing/singing etc) are astronomically low, which is, in fact, the topic here.
This is a typical ploy of extremists (though some, apparently, legitimately lack the ability to make such basic distinctions), put words in the person's mouth or make absurd comparisons. It is more of a scare tactic than anything else. Not only that, but you are comparing apples to oranges. As I've already mentioned, intellectual property, unlike slavery, is moral, and it is law (not to mention very positive effects on the aggregate), thus it should be obeyed.
Re:Artists surviving in the new media (Score:2)
As for your $18 dollar CD:
Record store: $6
Distributor: $3
Pressing: $1
Printing: $.10
Studio time $.50 (it gets amortized across the number of CD's sold, though)
Manager: $.50
Producer: $1
The list goes on... It's not like the band sees $1 and the label gets $16.50... Think about it some... there's a LOT of costs involved with making a CD and getting it out.... A lot of those costs wouldn't occur with MP3's, but a lot more of them would never be able to be paid without the money made from records and CD's... No ones going to pay $9 for a download only version of a CD... That's a LOT of money for something that's not at all tangible... IF your hard drive crashes, your're toast.
The whole media model is wrong (Score:2)
Napster has nothing to do with it. Napster is the UZI and the AK-45 when compared to the front-loaded musket of cassette tapes. The whole concept of copy-able music is wrong, and it all hurts artists who are looking to make money on economies of scale.
There are two types of art: Static and Dynamic.
Static art is a painting or a sculpture or an architectural work. It is something people have to go to see, and something they're willing to pay admission for. It is something that can not effectively be copied, because even though everyone can have a copy of Michelangelo's Pieta in their back yard, there is only ONE ORIGINAL.
Dynamic art is fleeting and temporal. It is a performance. It is ACTUALLY BEING THERE when Tyson bit off Holyfield's ear. Everyone has, by now, been able to see a replay, but seeing it live - or AS IT HAPPENED is where the value is.
Selling copies of reruns of sterile performance is somehow abhorent to me. I don't have Napster, I only have a couple of MP3 files (of my girlfriend's brother's music - he's pretty good) and I have bought, or received as gifts, all my CDs. But when an artist whines and complains about being hurt by piracy, I feel no pity.
It's like selling software, really. If you write it once, and perform it once, and it can be copied ad-nauseum without you ever again lifting a finger... Why should you keep getting royalties??
These 'artists' need to take a lesson from the Grateful Dead. I'm ambivalent towards their music, but I respect their attitude about it.
Music should be free. It is a result of a persons point of view on reality, and their willingness/need to share that view with the world. Having people give you money for your opinions, or perspectives on the Universe, is a compliment, not a right.
Everyone has bills to pay, and everyone needs to eat. But how much MORE than that? Perform. Make it a unique experience each time, and people will flock to see what you will do next time. They will gladly compliment your work, and compensate you for your time.
But if all that had to happen to buy you that gold chain or that phat sports car, was that some recording engineer monkey pushed REC, and the machine spit out a thousand copies... What have you don't for me LATELY?
Re:Artists surviving in the new media (Score:2)
Excellent point.
Remember Apartheid in South Africa? Remember Bishop Tutu's pleas to the West from his cell?
Tutu asked for sanctions to be imposed, severe economic sanctions. The S. African government said that this would hurt the population, which was already starving.
Tutu rebutted that the poor black majority never see any humanitarian aid money since it's all embezzeled (sp?), so imposing sanctions would only hurt those few who are in control of segreggation and repression.
How's this on-topic? Well, how much of that $18 dollars goes to the starving artists? Pennies! The rest goes to the RIAA execs, LAWYERS, paper pushers and agents, managers.
We see musicians in fast cars, LearJets, penthouses... These are mostly Recording Studio property, given to the artists for use while under contract.
Blah, blah, blah... Vent, vent, fume... Done.
I can. (Score:2)
But I see it as being like fansubbed anime...some people see it just as a temporary alternative until they can find a commercial version or learn to speak Japanese, but others see it as a nice way to build up a free tape library without having to pay quasi-exorbitant prices. The artists should be paid for their work. (And I admit I'm guilty in this respect...) Will this happen? I doubt it--not until there's some sort of a workable micropayment system in place that will let, say, a penny or some fraction thereupon be charged for each MP3, and directed to the right place. And even then people who don't like that will find backdoor sources...
The genie is out of the bottle. I think the next few years will be fairly turbulent on both sides before things settle out.
an idea (Score:2)
Upon downloading a song that is registered by an artist, you have the option of donating some money to that artist for your download. You can choose to pay nothing if you wish, for those who just want to check out the song, or see if they like the artist.
As a user if Napster (Gnutella, etc...) you can also donate money to the service, which will divide the money between the various artists that you have downloaded.
As an incentive to donate, those who do donate money can be put into a competition each week, which draws prizes such as signed t-shirts and cd's by various artists who contribute to the prize pool. Large corporations could donate money to put advertising upon logins. (I know alot of people will dislike this idea, but I can't figure out a better way of attracting the corporate dolloar). Those who don't pay a cent will be issued with guilt tripping notices, (perhaps more advertising, reminded of the other alternative to this service - that being of having to purchase CD's).
If people were aware of how the service worked, I'm sure many people would donate money to the service. I would. What about you?
Ian.
Re:Ask Money For Service! (Score:2)
OK, how do you distribute the money to the artists equitabally? If I listen to nothing but jazz and swing, I don't want heavy metal bands to make money off of me... It's a difficult way to distribute compensation.
As others have mentioned, a form of pay-per-track is probably the only way to go. That way, those artists who are more popular and have a larger market get paid more, just like now...
Eric
Re:You're missing my point. (Score:2)
Do you seriously mean to tell me you consider everything you do based on time vs. value recieved?
You must be joking. How can you post to
What I will say, however, is that the industry can effectively stiffle the ability of the average Joe (and even more skilled users, to a lesser degree) to get whatever song they want, quickly, cheaply, and without wasting a great deal of time.
This is true. I totally agree. But, that just gives me more incentive to find another way that avoids the pitfalls of the previous. Take Napster/Gnutella. Napster looked like it was being shutdown by campuses everywhere, so Gnutella came out, and was much harder to block. Gnutella got pulled quick, but now people are creating clones of it. If they figure out how to block that, someone else will make another way to do it. Hell, you could make a distributed system similar to Gnutella that uses HTTP protocol, if you want to be tricky. Will they block the whole web?
There's ALWAYS a way around, and as long as people want to do something, they will. My point is that even if you make something illegal, it will still be done by those who want to do it bad enough. You cannot stop the masses. The 'net community essentially automatically self-organizes to avoid the same problems as before. It's not intentional, that just the way it ends up. I know how cheesy it sounds, but it's true. All the corporate lawyers in the world cannot fight the power of a mass of billions of people.
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Re:Hey throw the agents out (Score:2)
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Re:Lose-Lose Situation (Score:2)
It may surprise you, but yes, it's my decision. It's my money, after all.
The Artist signed the contract with the Label. This is a decision between the artist and those he chose to go into business with, not your and your moral conciousness.
You are confused. I choose to give my money to whoever I want. They can choose to do whatever they want with that money, but I still get to choose to whom I would give the money in the first place.
That is part of the discussion here: a lot of people feel that by buying a CD you are giving money to the record company, which then would give some (very small) percentage of it to the artist. People want to give money to the artist, who then can (depending on his contracts, etc.) give some of this money to a record company. It's all about the balance of power between an artist and a publisher.
[record labels] it is a viable method of distribution
Looks like it used to be a viable method of distribution, no? That's what all the uproar is about.
if you are realy that concerned, start a label yourself
You don't understand. I'm not concerned -- it's the record industry that's concerned.
The basic problem is that I don't want to pay $15 for a CD with one good song on it. I'm perfectly willing to pay a couple of bucks for a single song as an unencumbered digital file. Given that this seems to be a widespread wish, I believe that the market will adjust itself to serve this need. Those who can't adjust will... remember those huge scaly mountains of walking meat?
Kaa
Re:disappointing (Score:2)
Why should they? we know that the big-name artists aren't the victims in Salon's article. We know that MP3 leeching (as of now) doesn't put a dent in big-selling name artists. Why do we need Britney Spears to tell us that she doesn't like Napster? She has better money-making things to do with her time.
It's the less popular artists that are getting screwed - the ones that are praying on the sales figure of their next record so they won't lose the next contract. The ones that won't have a big enough audience to do a country-wide tour, and having mp3 eating into their profits.
I'm appalled at how many bigotted comments there are in this thread, those who think this is more of RIAA propaganda, even when they have a plethora of artists telling you how much they hate Napster. Even more appalled is how many of these bigotted comments are getting moderated up. so much for "insightful."
How will the artists survive? (Score:2)
I realize that it costs money to record music. Get a job! It's not that expensive. There's lots of jobs out there, and why should you be exempted from being a productive member of society?
It costs even more money to tour. But if you're good enough to be able to play outside your home town, you should be able to charge enough for tickets to cover your costs. Tour during your vacation. If you're making money touring, take some unpaid time off work from your real job.
Basically, what I'm saying is that these people have chosen to become musicians. Now they're bitching to me because they can't make any money at what they've chosen to do. Hint #2: the good musicians are making a living. So are some of the bad ones, but when recorded music is freely available, that will stop.
Score: -1, Incoherent Ranting
Re:How will the artists survive? (Score:2)
If I want to duplicate an MP3, I have to invest diskspace (which I have already paid for), bandwidth (which I'm paying for anyway), and CPU time (ditto). The cost of production is negligible..
And I'm the one with no grasp of economics!
I have an idea... (Score:2)
More to the point, how do you stop technology? It's easy to bad-mouth Napster, maybe easy to put them out of business. So what? Does anybody really think this will stop people from trading MP3's online? Is anybody naive enough to think that if Napster disappeared then copying would stop? There is always another technology around the corner, ready to fill in where Napster falls short.
It's easy to sit around and lament that artists aren't paid what they're worth. Hell, they never have been. But what can be done about it? How do you stop people from sharing music with their friends? The only way to do it is to police the people or to police the technology. Policing the companies that sell the technology won't do it, because... well the companies aren't the important part of the equation, the technology is. And technology is increasingly in the hands of individuals. That's not something anybody planned, it's just part of evolution.
Re:Artists surviving in the new media (Score:2)
Embodied in the song "Free" or "Prince Caspian" or any other number of songs.
BTW, if anyone wants to check out some tunes from their marathon 7-1/2 midnight to dawn New Year's set here's a mirror [phishingpole.com], (and I should have another up on my site this weekend), BTW 75,000+ people paid $150-$175 to see this show, so keeping your phans happy can pay off. And while I'm at it, if you want official Phish merchandise, try here [phish.com]
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Re:Some of those quotes are great... (Score:2)
So providing MY OWN resources to help promote their music is nothing? All that money I paid for concert tickets this last year is nothing? All those CD's I buy are nothing?
All those artists back on the street after a fun two year ride with NOTHING to show for it but some of their own concert t-shirts, that's what record companies give back to the artist, walking papers when their product doesn't move as fast as the next one. Oh, and by the way, "you can't play your song anymore, we own it!"
Define steal for me. Then define intellectual property. Then define right. I'll be here waiting. And my "God-given" rights as you say, go a lot further than you think. It's those "Man-taken" ones that seem to cause the problems.
and while we're at it
but this post is just a thinly-veiled justification for theft.
I suggest you go read a Sony recording contract. And do a little studying up on the concept of a "protection racket" (the mob kind, not the IP one).
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Re:Some of those quotes are great... (Score:2)
We can debate the definition of stealing in the digital realm all day long. I don't think what I'm doing is wrong. I consider it the equivelent of listening to the radio. Luckily, since I have the 'Net, I get to pick my own programming. The 'Net empowers people, as I'm sure you're aware. Now on to the examples.
I suppose if you copy photoshop and use it and give it to whoever you wish, as long as you don't sell it, that's okay
I don't consider Photoshop to be the same thing as an MP3. One it is a tool used to create content, rather than the content itself. Photoshop is not somethig you can turn on the radio and hear. Photoshop is not a cornerstone of our culture, music is.
What if you simply photocopy all the Tim O'Reilly books rather than buy them?
Why would I do that? I don't pay to go see Tim (or any of his authors) read thier books live. Why take the hours to copy something when I could spend those same hours making the money to buy it? MP3's make my listening efficient. Besides if you wanted to, you could just go here [corvin.spb.ru] and print them out page by page.
I've seen numerous "examples" in various debates on this issue, and have yet to find one that fits or makes any discernable point by fitting.
You seem to have the very confused idea that stealing equals "Selling what I took".
That is a response to the whining of the RIAA that "pirating" costs them potential sales. Well, heart disease does the same thing. The only way they would lose "sales" is if someone spends the money somewhere else to obtain the same product. Of course, online MP3's might seriously undermine the demand for CDs (the physical media), but I have yet to see evidence for that position. In my own life, it has proved the opposite. The RIAA is working very hard to keep the supply of it's product limited, which goes against both the ideals of music as an art form and the current nature of the product (given the Internet).
I see - so I suppose you send off checks to the artists you're "listening to" currently? Do you pick an arbitrary amount, or do you ask the artist.
Hell no. At least not under the current environment. But do I think that's a possibility in the future, yes. You've seen street musicians, no? Play a bit, ask for hand-outs. Move that to the web, set-up up a micropayment system, and such a model might be possible. Given the right artists who works hard to continually provide high quality service to their fans. Given a possible audience of 6,000,000,000 most talented musicians could find a niche to get comfy in. Couple this with selling cd's and touring (which is how many musicians have made a living since time was recorded), and I think it would be possible to build a music career. There are numerous other suggestions around, if you are an artist and wish to go this route, I think creativity might be a dang good quality to posess.
So we just need to do is indoctrinate society to do the right thing, and viola, problem solved!
Nope, just the idea that art should appeal to *you* and not someone you've been taught to think is better than you. To put it bluntly, I think this society (U.S) is severely fscked up when it comes to things like art and beauty, how to deal with them, and what they mean. I think it's a side effect of a number of influences, not the least of which is a media that focuses on appealing to the lowest common denominator and repetition, repetition, repetition. By convincing you so deeply that sharing is stealing, they've built a nice nest egg with which to sue.
Why? Many reasons, but I'll stick to one - almost no one is willing to pay for these mp3s you self distribute.
no, but many, including me, are willing to pay both for the CDs from which they came, and the gate/door fees for the places that they (the artists) are playing.
That makes it real hard to make a pro sounding CD, support a tour, or cut back on the dayjob a little to make more music. So as bad as the tradional model is, artists are forced to it simply because it is the only way they can hope to make any money.
And I think that is exactly the kind of attitude the RIAA will continue to enforce, through repetition, repetition, repetition. YOU CAN'T MAKE IT WITHOUT US. But, I don't think that's true any more. When the Net is as common as TV (which should be about 5 years now if trends continue to accelerate as they have been), I think the only thing that will keep it from working is artists thinking it won't. It will take an example to kick start the thing, but it will happen.
I'm still lost on your plan to protect the rights of artists.
I tell how I don't think the right way is to do it, the DMCA, and UCITA. I don't think taking rights (fair use, an origianl check vs. copyright) away from others is the best way to protect artists right to profit.
Complaining about the current model is easy. Coming up with a good solution is not.
True, it is easy to smell shit from a mile away, if it's a really big pile. But, what you are proposing we do is stick with the evil we know rather than face the one you fear.
I think popular culture in this country is very sick. I think it's part of the disease that leads to so much hate and violence here. I would like to see it change, and working from the ground up is a good way to do it. Yes, I'm a revolutionary, or perhaps evolutionary would be a better term. I see the potential for people to take back our culture from the 20 people who have been able to control it. People who have put aside ideals, or any notion of public responsibility, for a fat profit margin. I could go on and on about this, it's one of my passions, as I'm sure you've noticed, but that should suffice for now, you know where I stand and why I stand there.
(I never thought I would be arguing the ills of rampant capitalism with someone called "Commie", welcome to the 21st century (next year, ya nitpickers
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Re:Some of those quotes are great... (Score:2)
However, we already have defintions for these things.
We didn't until the DMCA of 1998. And do you think that is a good law?
What happens when someone takes that mp3 as begins sampling it or putting it as the background to their adbertosement (IE - Using it to create new content)?
Most likely they'd get sued, stealing the work for personal gain, not personal use. If you'll reread the whole argument, I AM TOTALLY FOR PROTECTING AN ARTIST'S RIGHT TO PROFIT. But not for draconian control of media. There is a line to walk between control and chaos.
>I don't pay to go see Tim (or any of his authors) read thier books live?
And your point is?
I DO pay to go see bands play. Quite often as a matter of fact. This was to illustrate the difference between playing music for a living and writing for a living.
I don't know if you've seen a modern photocopying machine lately, but it's a very simple, automated process to copy hundreds of pages at a time -- and certainly far cheaper than say, a O'Reilly book would cost new.
Hullo, go take that book, photocopy it 1,000 times and tell me how much time and effort it takes. Put an MP3 on the Net, let 1000 people DL and tell me how much time and effort it takes. Are these things similar, NO! That's my point.
Examples of? Fitting "what"?
Analogies, metaphors. Like your O'Reilly Books, or Photoshop, or (as many people have tried to argue) Cars. None of these "examples" can be used to argue that you shouldn't freely exchange music files. They don't "fit" the same model.
This is a stupid analogy. Uhh -- murders cause people to die, but so does heart disease! Guess it's the same thing.
Yep, and both of them could be argued to decrease music sales in the same way as MP3s, they attack "potential" sales. This loss of potential is one of the RIAA's cornerstones on why they want to make the everyday and convenient tasks of listening to music, illegal.
Supply has nothing to do with anything.
This is where I realized you were an idiot. Go check up on some fundamental economics and tell me how supply has nothing to do with price or value.
>Nope, just the idea that art should appeal to *you* and not someone you've been taught to think is better than you
This is great, but it has nothing to do with the issue.
again, this IS the issue.
I'd go into much greater detail on this for you, but this post is long enough.
Then just use that as the reply.
Right - you have no plan other than vague allusion to a micropayment scheme
That and every other revenue stream that already exists. Do you even read posts before you reply, seriously?
I do propose copyright law stays intact. I'd like nothing more than to see the music industry as we know it disappear,
So you'd like to see major changes....without making major changes, riiiight.
It's doing zippo to expand culture.
This is where you're dead-on wrong. I've been exposed to many, many bands in only the last year because of their availability on MP3. If they had been on the radio I would have heard them there, but they weren't. If you think the media companies in this country are doing a good job and have a positive effect, fine, stick with them. I don't and I see it as the single biggest threat to the future of a free country. You control what people are exposed to and you can control, to some degree, what they think, but you can control, to a great degree, what they think about. "I like girls who wear Abercrombie and Fitch"!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Re:Some of those quotes are great... (Score:2)
That's exactly what I wanted to address first. This word you keep using, "stealing". Everywhere you put that I would probably use sharing. I am not stealing songs from Napster, I'm sharing them. This is a big part of my argument. Not stealing, sharing. (to steal is not only to take, but also to deprive, IMO)
Contributing my personal resources, I become the equivalent of a radio station. Except my listeners get to pick their own music and listen to it on their own time. Like right now, there are 609,193 pieces of music that I could be listening to in less than 5 minutes. Many of them are duplicates, but that's why the RIAA has to go after Napster and not the individuals. That, of course, is a moot point already, as folks have taken the idea of distributed file storage networks, and run with it. THAT is the reality of the situation. Our laws need to reflect that reality rather than try and dictate a different one.
NOW, given that, you still need to be able to "promote the progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
This Right is what needs better defining. The wrong people are writing the laws.
But what scares the RIAA (and their (tense) clueless friends in Radio(the *worst* industry at moving to the Net, worse than newspapers.)) is those 609,084 songs. The Choice destroys their control. The availability destroys their marketing. And the digital transfer and reproduction destroys their usefulness.
You've admitted a couple of times that you don't like our current establishment, yet you defend the tactics they have used the establish that position. I understand the need to profit as an incentive to work, I hope somewhere you can see how some of the things I have mentioned would work, if not, be patient, wait until eveyone in your neighborhood has brodband and a home website (~10 years). Where / (v3.2), Shoutcast, and G27, are plug and play. Nanomedia [wahcentral.net], it's coming.
If you think overthrowing corporate popular culture is simply a matter of throwing out copyright laws (for certain things - anyway) alright!
Eh? Copyright is the only relevant major change needed to fix everything?! Whew
Yep, and they know it. Wouldn't that make you nervous and hostile? But it's not even throwing out copyright laws, we just need to bring them back to reality (which I outlined above for you, so argue that). I think we need them to stick with the Constitution, but I don't think they are even close now.
The RIAA has an easy time laughing someone like you off because you make such ridiculous statements.
The RIAA has an easy time laughing off someone like me, since they've been laughing off the COnstitution for over 20 years. Laughing all the way to the bank, as it were.
I want you to read this before replying [livedaily.com]. And then tell me which side of this battle you want to be one.
Read that story, read that part of the Constitution, and then tell me what that Right should be, given the Internet. We'll go from there.
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With such insanely prolific commenting on slashdot (I originally tried to track your old replies via your user info -- so many comments they scrolled off the last 50 list in less than a week!) you'd think by now you'd gotten over the joy of weak personal attacks.
Two things about this. In less that two weeks of "insanely prolific posting", I have had over 600 individuals in 42 different countries visit my website (no other promotional effort on my part). The "weak personal attacks", are exactly that, jabs, just to see who I'm talking to. I've argued with fools on
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Godwin's Law, I WIN! (Score:2)
If you're not familar with it. [tuxedo.org]
Sorry, those are the rules.
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I'll point out that it is my opinion most humans are fools. Humans are not inheriently evil, they are inheriently selfish.
Here we disagree. Not only are most people not fools, but there's a good bet that half of them are smarter than you, in one way or another. Are five year-olds inherently selfish, or is it perhaps a learned behaviour? Two-year olds? Who needs to be selfish when you never want for food? Does that make evolutionary sense? Or is it economoic logic?
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Re:Godwin's Law, I WIN! (Score:2)
The problem I've noticed is when we equate self with billion dollar companies, like the laws say we should. This creates a massive imbalance in personal power and eventually erodes the Freedom and Personal Liberty we both hold so dear.
Anyway, it's been fun, I'll leave you to get muddled down with the likes of "Emerson", who seems to have some well-thought through points
without having mentioned the Nazi party.
It has, I'll see you around. And Emerson seems to be coming around. I'm quite a different person than I think most people see when they read my posts. Usually it takes too much time to sound civilized and since I do most of this at work (shhh), sometimes it's easier to blast than to cajole. This discussion would have been quite a bit more civilized over a couple of beers.
Thanks again, and keep an eye out for those Nazis.
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Re:Artists surviving in the new media (Score:2)
And most of the musicians cited in the article aren't millionares, but people who get paid a lot less than "over paid software geeks". Musicians do badly enough as it is, without you taking their main source of income away.
Cian
"I hate Napster." (Score:2)
The Dark Side of Wrapster (Score:2)
AS long as people stick to transferring media documents (JPG,ASF,RM) we're relatively safe. But mark my words, the first Wrapster-related massive infection will happen in the next weeks, if not days. This is like a huge clusterfuck where everyone's wearing masks but no rubbers.
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Re:Artists surviving in the new media (Score:2)
Not to be cliche, but time is money. Everyone who works is being paid for their time and effort. People tend to brush this off, though, because it is intangible. That's why intellectual property is such a sticky issue. Normally fairly ethical people can rationalize stealing something like a song or a program when they wouldn't think of stealing a car or a wallet, because the product and the cost behind it are both ephemeral.
The other main difference is that physical objects are expensive to replicate, while virtual objects are not, which is the base of this whole issue.
Indeed. When a person labors for an hour to make a lamp and you steal it, it is very obvious the cost: the materials and one hour of the person's time and effort. When someone labors for an hour to write a song and you steal it, the costs are much harder to quantify. There are no materials to the song itself and they can still sing it, so what harm have you really done? Similarly, once you've heard the song, it is in your head. Are you stealing it if you hum it while you are working?
However, I think it is faulty to look at it purely as a matter of harm (and harm is done), but one of recognition. That was part of the point of the article, that nobody in this debate is giving the artists any recognition. They aren't interested in their opinions, they aren't even asking them permission out of courtesy.
Paying for a piece of intellectual property is recognition of the time and effort put into it. If you don't recognize this, you are stealing, regardless of how cheap the cost of transfer is or how infinitely replicable the product is, because you are not recognizing the status and attendant rights of the creator.
Eric Christian Berg
Popular artists (Score:2)
Re:Lose-Lose Situation (Score:2)
Example: The artists can always flood the pirate sites with music that is slightly highwer quality then your average rip, but has advertisments in the song (or in an attached HTML file), i.e. use the pirates for promotion and corn-fuse the pirate community enough to make people just DL the music from the official web site. Now people may not pay for individual songs, but they will pay $20 for a year of "fan club access" which lets you DL songs without advertisments. Assuming the band releases a lot of songs this is a really good deal for both the band and the fan.. and unlike the current buisness model it would be stable because the pirate community would be spammed.
Anyway, those people are morons if they think the artists can not make money.. the question is how? Also, (1) do the artists become rich? (2) do the record companies become rich? (3) do the consumers need to spend a lot on money? Clearly, the good answers would be (1) yes, (2) no, (3) no, but we really have no idea what will happen.
Napster's real threat to the artists is: Napster could become a monopoly over promotion, i.e. give us $10,000 per year per song and we will put the version with the advertisments first in the search list when someone searches for the song. Clearly, it would be a lot cheaper for artists to spam Gnutella, IRC, and the FTP sites then pay off Napster. It might be a good thing for Napster to lose the law suit because then Gnutella could take over.
Re:Too Late For Distribution Model (Score:2)
Oh yeah? Well, I'm even more snobby than you are! I disdain such low-brow pursuits as recorded (it pains me merely to think the word) music. Ugh. I pity anyone who finds the artificial screeching of recorded media pleasurable. No, true lovers of music, like myself, have acoustically perfect theatres in our basements, and if we want to listen to Dave Matthews*, then, by god, we call up Dave and have him come to our house and perform live. When we want to hear Rimsky-Korsakov, we fly in the Kiev Symphony Orchestra and have them play for us. We have our own house bands to play for us when we merely desire background noise.
Or not. Maybe I'm just trying to point out how silly the post I'm replying to is. No one cares how much your sound system costs. Really. Trust me. Additionally, it's not your duty to provide salvation to the masses of mp3 listeners. If people prefer to have their music stored in mp3 format, that's fine. If they prefer magnetic tapes which have been recorded over a dozen times, that's fine too. If they prefer vinyl or compact disk, more power to them. But claiming personal superiority because of your choice of music media adds absolutely nothing to the conversation besides evidence of your own feelings of inadequacy. (moderators: feel free to mark this -1, flame, and the message it's in response to -1, flamebait)
If this is all you have to contribute, I suggest you go back to your collection of "perfect" cd's and leave everyone to discuss their personal preferences in peace. Thank you, and have a nice day.
*disclaimer: the author of this post does not condone listening to Dave Matthews.
Re:Too Late For Distribution Model (Score:2)
Why a Napster-type program? I think if Napster worked with the artists, they could both benefit.
Here's what I was thinking. Napster could serve a dual purpose. There will always be free
Then it would have some sort of protocol for the commercial stuff. Say you're allowed to listen to a song 2 or 3 times to determine if you like it, and then you have to buy it if you want to keep listening. And these songs could be distributed in some sort of protected format until they're bought. And of course, Napster would have some sort of system in place to make sure nobody's distributing unlocked versions of the songs.
It's not foolproof, by any means. But it would take advantage of Napster's popularity and systems to distribute artists' songs to paying customers. Both Napster and the artist could possibly benefit from this.
I know there are plenty of technological problems that would have to be worked out, of course... but it's just the idea.
---
So how much did the RIAA pay Salon... (Score:2)
What about the artists who tell the truth?
What about the artists who are NOT luddites, and who are NOT afraid of technology?
What about the artists who ENCOURAGE distribution of their music MP3's?
What about the artists who have been SUED BY THEIR OWN LABELS for making their songs available in MP3 format?!?!?
Wanna see a good example of a major band that "gets it"? Go to:
www.lessthanjake.com
Under their "sounds" link, they host realaudio of many of their own songs. AND they provide links to other sites that host MP3s. For example, the "The Skankin' LTJ MP3 page" has MP3s from most of LTJ's major label releases. AND LTJ provides a board for fans to trade bootlegs and collectibles!!!
That "we don't make money on tours" line is pure BS, plain and simple. I have quite a few friend in local punk and ska bands, one of which TURNED DOWN an offer to sign with a label.
Once, I asked one of these guys about it, and he told me the economics of a CD break down in three ways:
1)
Small band that sell their own CDs. CDs are produced in runs of 500-1000 @ about $2 per. Band sells said CDs at their own shows and sometimes on consignment at local indie stores for $8-10. Profit to the band == $6-8. CDs CAN provide a reasonable income in this instance.
2)
Band signs with small label. CDs are produced in runs of 5000-10000 for about $1 per. CDs now sell in indie stores, at the shows, and at mall stores in the band's home town for $10-12 with the label taking about half the profit. Net gain to the band from a sale == $3-5 per. At this point the CD provides a smaller percentage of income and the band throws more out at the crowd free at their shows. (Anyone who's been following LTJ since their Asain Man days knows this trait well).
3)
Band sells out to a major label. CDs are run in lots of 100K+ at a cost to the label of about $.10 per. CDs now sell in mall stores for $18. Of that $18, the band is *LUCKY* to see $.50 !!! (and that's if it's a BIG band with GREAT managemant). The rest of the $17.40 goes into the pockets of the record label, so that the CEO of Time Warner can buy an extra Porche for his daughter to use on weekends when that Land Cruiser is just too much car.
When a band signs to a major label, they get JACK SH*T from their CD sales!!! They are being raped. The only reason to sell CDs really, is to promote the tour. Bands then are MUCH more willing and able to throw out free CDs at their shows now (go to a Reel Big Fish show to see a good example of a hazardous number of free CDs being thrown at the audience).
Solution? I would not, and do not, distribute MP3s or CD-R copies of bands in situations 1 or 2 except under extraordinary circumstance (only recent time is when a friend lost his Operation Ivy CD. I KNEW for a FACT that he had boughtand paid for it, so I didn't feel bad about burning a CD-R copy)...
But in the case of instance 3? I have no sympathy for the record label whatsoever. They are absolutely RAPING the bands that sign with them. I feel no guilt whatsoever about depriving Sony records of an extra $17.40 (assuming it's a band that can GET a whole $.50 per CD).
Depriving the band of $.50? Mabye a touch of guilt at first. But that guilt goes away immediately when I go to the show and buy a T-shirt, providing the band with more profit than if I had bought their CD twenty times over.
Sick thing is tho, that, if it's a good band, I usually wind up buying CDs anyway. I travel a lot, and need CDs for my car stereo.
john
Bandwidth is the enemy of copyright (Score:2)
- selling "distributions" of their work with value-added features (CDs with nice covers, autographed, first-to-market, etc.)
- teaching music
- being hired by other artists
- creating custom studio pieces for others' art projects (film soundtracks, theater, tv, websites, etc.)
- working in expert capacities for stores that sell instruments and sound gear, or for websites that give advice, etc.
These can all be noble professions, and are actually the way that most musicians do make their money when they make it from music (plus playing live).The fact that current copyright has the potential to help some deserving people is no reason to not abolish it, or to not live as if it were abolished. Good artists will always figure out ways to do their art, and with hope, ways that their art will make them money. They don't need no stinking copyrights.
As copyright dies, we concerned-ones will continue to fret over the fate of creators. But I see a rosy vision ahead. Artsists freely stealing from one another, acting to make works evolve as they pass through many hands. The distinction between "artist" and "regular person" slowly vanishing, as it becomes easier to create works.
I always liked the term "release" when describing art, like "Jamie released his latest film" or "The new release from JD & RPM."
That's what you have to do if you're an artist--RELEASE the shit. Take the risk. Don't hide it behind violently-enforced rules. Take it public.
touring (Score:2)
right. So thier last tour bombed, and they decide to blame it on napster instead of the fact that they SUCK
If these crap-ass alterna-rock bands can't live without the major label perks and freebies, then maybe they shouldn't have been so quick to quit their day jobs, eh?
Re:YHBT (Score:2)
Re:touring (Score:2)
Not quite. Let me 'splain. I do a show. The few people who are there are there for the other band. They're so-so on my stuff. Poor reception. I promote myself a little. The people who WOULD like my stuff come to see me. I don't make money off the door (most bands don't), I make money of cds and merchandise. And by being (if only marginally) good.
The fact is, even selling out the local sports stadium, most tours lose money.
Don't believe everything you read. Take the last Pink Floyd tour (a very media-visible event). They "lost money" on the tour if you look at ticket prices. They more than made up on merchandise sales. Then they released a live album which was nearly ALL profit. Fugazi has been doing shows exclusively under $10 their entire career. They exist on t-shirt sales.
Yeah, that's what people get into music for, so that they can "learn business" and spend all their time looking through spreadsheets.
Well, that's what seperates serious musicians from people living the proverbial rock & roll fantasy. Yeah, I don't like doing it. But I do it so I can keep more of the money I make, and thus have more time to spend working on the music. It sucks. And I don't have enough of a return to quit my dayjob yet (else I wouldn't be here!), and I'd prefer it if means of inexpensive promotion, like Napster, weren't dragged out from under my feet, yanno?
Let me guess, you're a Garth Brooks fan, right?
not quite, but thanks for playing. We have some lovely parting gifts, but you're not getting any
Re:Artists surviving in the new media (Score:2)
The reason Phish, The Grateful Dead, and many similar bands allow their fans to share their live music has more to do with just a financial model. It has a lot more to do with what they believe in as people. The whole point to Phish's music is that they stand for freewill and the freedom to enjoy life. This comes through in their music, as much as it does how they live the rest of their lives. The same was true of The Grateful Dead. One of the reasons their music is so powerful, to the people that relate to it, is because they really believe the things they are saying, and they aren't just out there for the money.
Also, I buy more CD's when I am able to access music on the internet, not less. It's because I'm thinking more about music in general, so I'm more likely to be interested in seeking it out. Now, I may not buy the music from the bands I was listening to on the Internet, but I probably wouldn't have bought that music anyway.
Everytime a new technology comes around that allows for people to distribute music, the industry freaks out and goes into a tizzy fit. They did it with cassettes, they basically kept DAT from existing in its true form, and they definitely aren't fond of CD burners. But when it comes down to it, CD's are still better quality than MP3's (even if many people haven't noticed yet), and you don't get all the cool stuff with them you do with the real CD. If artists really want to make a living selling music, all they need to do is provide their fans with quality music, and a quality product to back it up.
Another point I have to make is that in much of "Eastern" society, such as Taiwan, thought and expression are considered to be public domain by default, and there are still great movies and music in their society.
In conclusion, if I like music enough, I WILL buy it. But not because I couldn't get it elsewhere, and not because I will ever feel the slightest bit guilty about freedom of expression, even if that expression originated from someone else. It's because I want the best possible quality, and that usually comes from the most direct source. If at any time it doesn't, the only way that musicians are going to make money selling music is to improve their quality. If this means distributing music at 96Khz/24bit on a DVD, or including cool holograms in the box with the CD, or giving discounts on concert tickets to loyal fans, they are going to have to do it to survive. They can spend the same money on lawyers, but the best of them would be violating what they believe in by doing so.
Re:an idea (Score:2)
You would then go to a website and enter that Key-ID which would then allow you to make a donation from your CC or whatever of a given amount which would go to that owner.
The problem is that you need to authenticate ownership keys
... the other idea, of course is to integrate it into the software. This allows any person to collect from any other -- but again doesn't guarantee ownership.
The best idea is for bands to have a website that endorses MP3s and has a 'donate to our incomes' button mentioning how much they think is a fair profit on a per-song basis.
Some REAL news about Napster (Score:2)
Esperandi
I'd give you a link, but I gave it to Slashdot and they wouldn't post it for you. I'm sure they know best.
to be honest... (Score:2)
So why is anyone surprised that artists get upset about it? Sure, the labels are over charging for CDs, sure they're nasty evil megacorps, sure they wouldn't piss on the artists head if their hair was on fire.
But just as MP3 offers the chance for artists to bypass the label, Napster just allows us to get stuff for free - and that is no use to the important person, the artist themselves.
MP3 - or at least a secure version - may be a good idea (in that it frees the artist and makes for cheaper music).
Napster, however, is just theft.
still, I do like free music
Media costs. (Score:2)
Blank CD-Rs, the same material used in commercial CDs, sell for less than 50 cents each in bulk quantities of 500 or more. I think the RIAA would probably manage to get bulk rates that are even lower, wouldn't you?
Actually, CD-R disks are not the same material used in commercial CD's, the recordable material in a blank CD-R disk is considerably more expensive than the material used to press a commercial bulk pre-recorded disk.
The media costs for commercial music disks are next to nothing. There is a huge investment in pressing plants and technology that needs to be recovered, but they've long since paid for that.
*NO* music before the music industry appeared? HA! (Score:2)
See, thats what *really* worries the music industry, methinks: The fact that masses will start seeing music as something you *make* rather than something you *buy*. They'll all be out of their cushy jobs.
It's not like flying planes as Copeland suggests. Its not just a job. Music is in everybody, its only in the last 60 years or so that there has been this subtle shift to the idea that music must be made, at great expense and only by extremely talented people. Thats a myth. Long before the recording industry came along, people sat around the piano or guitar around the fire or just sang sea chanties or whatever. If anything the music industry has *deprived* us of music.
Okay, I'll admit the music may be better if we pay the best people to keep producing it (though even then I wonder: Is a Fleetwood Mac album that cost $ 1mil to make *really* 1000 times better than a Ramones one that cost $1000??? But I digreess), but if the ecomonics dictate that no one is going top make phat money out of it, then its going to go back to the people who 'll make music *only* for the sheer joy of making it. They may make it after their day jobs, but they'd still make it. Not to say that would be better music, but it sure would wash out all the people who are making it only for the money.
I'm sorry, but no one is stopping Kirtsen Hersh from making music. If she wants to stay home and make music, fine. But I'm not supporting her and I don't appreciate people tellling me what software I can or *can't* use on my computer based on their *percieved* losses.
Re:It's not that simple, I don't think (Score:2)
Either you want to pay fairly or you don't get the music.
The problem with the morality approach is that it's not mirrored anywhere else on the net. Why is eBay such a success? Dynamic pricing. It's happening everywhere.
The net allows consumers to be more involved with the pricing and bundling of products. The old-world model you're talking about doesn't allow consumers to be involved in determining what they think is a fair price for your product. No wonder then that they'll go elsewhere - not just to get a better deal, but to be involved in price setting.
As other posters have indicated, the major labels make their money from selling low-involvement products to youth markets. It's no different to packaged goods like Oreos. How many online packaged goods successes have you seen? Uh-huh. Online, low-involvement products basically have to compete on price. And the best price is free. No amount of moralising about artist rights is going to change that. And yes, I have spent some of my life making my living off my music.
Look, the horse has bolted on online music. There was probably a point where a solid move by the labels could have maintained the status quo, but that time is passed. Music is highly commoditized, and just like every other content form there's a global oversupply, and the price is tending toward zero. I don't have a lot of time for the "artists rights" whingers. The fsking New York Times can't charge for its product online, and you think your musical masterwork should rake in $$ every time someone plays it? Puh-leeze.
There's nothing special about music. It's just content. Because the web is primarily a text medium, the business models are a lot more worked out for writing than anything else. Why not look there for innovative ways of pricing your work?
Danny
Yep, I've bought more CD's after trying out an MP3 (Score:3)
Nobody wants to blow $18 on a CD that they think they might like. I sure as hell don't. And sure, the 10 second teasers that CDNow supplies (Sometimes) are okay, but not enough for me to make an educated decision on.
At the risk of repeating what's already been said, MP3's simply don't cut it all of the time. I have to have that physical media in my hand that I can carry around and have a case for.
Re:Artists surviving in the new media (Score:3)
The truth of the matter is that it takes money to make music and that money has to come from somewhere, unless we want to go back to the time when the only music was what kings and princes felt like paying for.
The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Interview with John Perry Barlow? (Score:3)
And John Perry Barlow, who wrote some of their texts, was a founder of EFF, wasn't he?
What about a Slashdot interview with John Perry Barlow or other members of Grateful Dead? I think their view on this issue (and other Slashdotic things) would be very insightful.
--
Lose-Lose Situation (Score:3)
I'm personally willing to support artists by purchasing individual songs online, but the question still remains of why I would buy water when I can get it free from my tap. Less than 10% of the price of a CD goes to the artists anyhow, and I'm just not willing to support the industry anymore (though I really do like quality music and would like the artists to continue making good music, unlike the garbage at mp3.com).
It's a catch 22. There's no winning for anyone here, including the consumer.
EraseMe
Re:Classical anyone? (Score:3)
Classical composition and, largely, performance, are not funded by the sale of commodities. There are royalties for performance, but CD sales are usually too low to sustain new work. Instead, many composers are academics, or are funded by public and private grants. There's thus less accountability to mass taste and a more sophisticated aesthetic discourse.
Whether this is a good or bad thing is, of course, dependent on who you are. If you are making money as a manufacturer and producer of pop-music objects for retail sale, you of course hate the rarified model of grants, patronage and peer review. You got rich from mass appeal, not from critical appeal.
This is unabashedly elitist, even as it democratizes access to music.
However, it should be recalled that the technologies of music distribution created pop music as we know it - before the era of the mechanical reproduction of sound, most popular music was sold as sheet music which was performed - for very little recompense - by local musicians. Technology giveth, and technology taketh away.
Sounds like hooey to me . . . (Score:3)
But I've met and spoken with some of my favorite full time musicians, people who have been playing their music for their livelihood for over a decade. And what they told me wasn't different from what I'd heard about all but the most popular recording artists.
If it weren't for the touring and live shows, they'd go hungry. Literally, if it wasn't for their cut of the door, and the tshirt sales, and the poster sales, and the substantially thicker margins of CDs sold at the show, they would not have money for food.
Just as i have to get up in the morning and go be an admin, they have to get up in the afternoon and go please the fans on stage.
Nobody hates the record company more than the average recording artist. You pay, what, $15 for that cd. The band gets less than a dollar of that. And the cost of manufacturing the cd comes out of the band's cut. When i's all said and done, they're getting a piddling sum of money for it. They'd probably make twice as much money paying for duplication up front and selling them direct for $1 each.
But they can't. There's a little problem of contract law, and only the record company has the right to distribute the albums. Yes, believe it or not, most of your favorite songs will probably be making the RIAA money until 70 years after the artist dies. This is what they call "standard industry practice"
Comment removed (Score:3)
Shortsighted Artists (Score:3)
Like warez kiddies, many napster users are young people, without a lot of money, who would never have bought the official product anyway, so they aren't a loss to the artist.
Many people buy the CD after they hear MP3s from the CD and decide they like the artist's music. They have money to spend, but they aren't going to walk into a music store and spend money on a bunch of random CDs from unknown artists.
Radio used to be an important medium for exposing the public to an artist's music. Today, it is difficult to find a radio station that plays a wide variety of music. Most have rigid and short playlists based on some consultant's version of "make money fast in radio". There is a lot of excellent music that never gets airplay.
Slavery, Oh That's Rich. (Score:3)
No, it is nothing like slavery. Slaves do not have a choice in the matter. All artists do have a choice, even if they sign stupid contracts, sell the rights, or what have you. The fact of the matter is that artists still choose to sign with the top labels of their own freewill, despite the presence of "indy" this and "indy" that. They still find it more advantageous to get "raped" (as you would put it) by industry, then go it alone. Put simly, this means that the labels are offering the artist something of greater value (e.g., promotion, marketing, distribution, mixing, etc.), even if you personally (as a consumer) don't appreciate or benefit from it.
The word is 'intellectual property' for a reason. Once you have it, it's yours, like more tangible property. Amongst these rights, is the right to sell it. If you don't recognize the right of the artist to transfer full ownership (including the right to price it however they want), then you're denying the artists' rights.
Re:Artists surviving in the new media (Score:3)
Indeed, until the music business hit escape velocity sometime around 1971, virtually every musician in history made his/her living by staying on the road to play, play, play. I suspect Elvis and a few others were early exceptions, but even some of the "rich" rock bands from the late '60s burned themselves out by living in buses and playing seven nights a week.
Even today (or the day before Napster was invented) the overwhelming majority of musicians make ends meet by playing as often as possible and selling their tapes/CDs on a table out front. Assuming they did make ends meet: most I have ever known actually had to work a day job.
I do happen to believe in the concept of intellectual property as applied to music and literature (as opposed to patents), but unfortunately for musicians, being a millionare at 20 isn't an entitlement, and never was. So though I encourage consumers not to steal, I also encourage artists to come up with a new business plan. The old one only ever worked for the tiniest fraction of all musicians, and those not necessarily the most talented; and even that limping system doesn't look like it's going to work anymore.
--
Re:How will the artists survive? (Score:3)
No-one should make music for money. If they get money, that's good, but if not getting money is going to stop you performing, you should probably stop anyway.
No pity -- Capitalism works, but it's harsh (Score:3)
If they had really pushed since the founding of the Internet, they could have molded online music into a massive profit center, but they stuck their fingers in their ears and tried real hard to believe that the Internet fad would pass.
Well, now they get to lie in that bed, and to quote far too many people, a little revolution can be a good thing. In 20 years, we will likely not recognize the music industry on planet earth. I suspect that the real product will be bandwidth, and songs will not be sold without video. "Pirating" is already the new radio, and as music companies realize this, they may seek to find ways to advertize through the distribution channels of "pirated" music. This will mean a consolidation and commercialization of those services and technologies.
Actually, it sounds like a damn good time to be getting into the online music industry. But, you have to choose your competitors carefully. Companies like MP3.com seem very avant garde to the music industry, but may not be radical enough to end up on top. Remember the early days of the net when first FTP software and then Netscape seemed poised to take the most advantage of software sales to consumer use of the Internet?
There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth from artists because they are used to the status quo. Ignore the fact that the status quo has lead to one of the most abusive producer/distributor/consumer relationships in history. The artists feel that they have stability. So, as instability sets in, the ones that do this because they think they can make the system work for them will say that they are being hurt by the "pirates".
The artists and small publishers who push the envelope and take a risk will profit. It may come in the form of creating a new music format that includes graphical or textual information about tour dates. I just don't know what will happen, but I know that artistic creativity will always be a valuable commodity, and artists may not be able to profit as much from the music industry, but they will certainly have the public's ear and thus a door do their wallets for a long time to come.
The coming critical junction (Score:3)
It is wholly unimportant in the long run what profit model is chosen to represent audio, video, or any other information idea that we have traditionally paid for. Unless the tools are outlawed, it is only a matter of time before anyone will be able to duplicate and transfer any idea to anyone, anytime. The media industries will lose money and (whether they deserve it or not) will take losses. Eventually this will lead to a degradation of quality of information being created. (if you don't feed the hand that is feeding you, you will not get fed!)
Economics would suggest that the benefit of free ideas would eventually be outweighed by the cost of the worthless ideas created from the free idea model. As demand for quality media rises, eventually society will reach a critical juncture -- continue the current morality (acceptance of costless information duplication and transfer) or adopt some new morality that allows for the creation of quality media.
In "short" run, there is no way that I see a profitable future for certain information based industries -- music especially, since it's products are so completely pre-packaged prevalent in our lives. Sound quality will improve with better algorithms, distribution and accessibility issues will cease to be a problem as faster networks and the wireless convergence occurs, copyright controls will either be hacked or worked around, and prevalence will increase rapidly as the technology to duplicate and transfer information becomes easier to use for the common man and more widespreadly available. Until we reach that critical juncture, I don't think that either the label nor the artist has much going for them.
This issue cuts both ways (Score:3)
Napster is being used heavily, and probably primarily, as a tool to facilitate music piracy. And there are factions that want it banned. But it is the piracy that is wrong, not the tool. There are people using it legitimately, or who will soon. MP3's can serve as a promotional tool for new bands. They can be a way to put a recording of a school concert on the web for proud parents when pressing CDs would be too expensive. I could sit here dreaming up uses for them.
And if Napster is banned, if the MP3 format is banned, piracy will go deeper underground, but it will not go away. That bottle has spilled its genie. It will have two other effects. The people with legitimate uses for the technology will be denied access to it. And it will set another precedent of banning software, a worse one than DeCSS.
Richard Stallman wrote a cautionary story about some possible consequences of this road once we start down it entitled The Right to Read [gnu.org]. I don't think it will get as bad as he described, but imagine the consequences of some of the measures that he mentioned. Imagine programmers only having access to debuggers and other programming tools if they are licensed and bonded. Free software would not be what it is today.
I have seen in various places comments that locks and contracts show us the history of the struggle between people trying to secure their property and thieves trying to take it. Rather than seeking a new technological advance or a new model for marketting music, the recording industry and many musicians are clinging to the model they have. The law is with them, and they are in the right (in general, I'm not discussing detailed cases here) morally. That won't save them without a draconian police state.
They do not have the right to impose additional obligations on me in situations that do not involve their intellectual property. Whether they like it or not the technological tide will roll in. Institutions that do not change become obsolete.
Re:Artists surviving in the new media (Score:3)
The Grateful Dead certainly earned that following. They toured constantly and really gave their fans a lot more than just some CD's and a couple videos on MTV. Honestly though, I think the recording industry, in its current state, prefers bands that they can sell in a box. I don't think we'll see any more bands like the Dead coming from members of the RIAA. When I say "like the Dead" I'm refering to their consistant dedication to their music and fans, not the type of music.
The truth of the matter is that it takes money to make music and that money has to come from somewhere, unless we want to go back to the time when the only music was what kings and princes felt like paying for.
In effect this is what's been happening. Most people only get to hear what the record companies feel like paying for. And they only feel like paying for what will make them more money than they spend. Of course, this is not the "only music" now, nor was it then.
The artists that 'survive in the new media' will be a lot more like the Dead and a lot less than the crap the music cartel is pushing on us today.
numb
Artists surviving in the new media (Score:3)
Re:Yes, and No..... (Score:3)
This, I think, is the core of the matter. It's also interesting that this is not, by and large, what the labels are saying. They're talking mainly about "artists' rights", while the artists figure they worked hard, and really ought to get paid, thank you.
So, I'll lay out the idea below again. I've run it through various discussion forums at mp3.com a couple of times, and nobody really noticed. I thought it was simple and straight-forward, but maybe it really is revolutionary...
First - you can't digitally protect music. If you encrypt it, then you have to decrypt it to use it, and unless you're using secure hardware, that protection won't last long. [see deCSS] You also can't use watermarks for that reason - if someone can identify the watermark, then they can remove it. You can identify music using watermarks, but only to determine that piracy and illegal distribution has taken place. You can't actually distribute the watermark check (see above). And if all else fails, someone will just digitize an analog copy.
It's beginning to look like it's digitally hopeless to try and protect music, until you realize that's not the goal. You just want to pay the piper. Literally.
Everyone's worrying about music distribution, but as MyMp3 and Napster show, the distribution problem is solved. We're just waiting on a little more bandwidth and disk space, and it will be solved for everybody forever. The distribution cost will be so low, that you would pay more to control the distribution than you would to actually distribute the content.
So, rather than worry about a solved problem, how can we pay the musician? The other time-honoured method of paying for music is pay-for-performance. This could be like a penny-an-hour radio station, but this ignores portable MP3 players and large hard drives. Last time I checked, I can't connect anywhere while I'm riding the subway.
The next step in the thought process is to let you store the music, but whenever possible, the player notifies ... well, it notifies someone of this selection. Ah, yeah, right. I don't want to think at all about the privacy aspects of that model. [see RealAudio]
The final ah-ha is realizing that I don't need to charge for all performances, or even most performances. I just need a good-enough sample of how often the music is selected. This, it turns out is easy.
First, you embed additional information in MP3 files - you can do this today without breaking existing MP3 players. [see MP3,ID3v2 [id3.org]] We can squeeze in about 64K for the equivalent of about 4 seconds of audio - in other words, it's really inexpensive. In this 64K, you get about 3 or 4 sets of information. Each set is for one entity - the artist, the label, and (critically) one or more for sponsors. Each set has (a) a big banner advert, (b) a tiny banner advert, (c) a 16x32 black and white logo, (d) a name (ascii), and (e) a special URL.
Now, crank up that compiler, and go back to your open source MP3 player. When you encounter this block of data, display the appropriate chunk from the section. Try for the big banner, or just use the small one. Portable players with a graphic screen can go for the 16x32, and the really simple portable players will go with scrolling the name. Then cycle through each set, moving forward about once every 20 seconds. Finally - if someone selects the banner, logo, or name (by clicking - or whatever) then launch that special URL. Notice that the selection is clearly a user action - nothing happens unless the listener does something.
The URL is very special. It uniquely identifies the advert, and also uniquely identifies the tune. It could uniquely identify the original download as well, but that's up to the distributor. Before launch, the player will add the X and Y address of the click on a banner, and a hash code (with salt) of the following few seconds of music.
The server that receives the URL will redirect the user to something appropriate - artist, label, or sponsor - to what was clicked. If it is a sponsor, it records the click-through. But as it does the redirect, it notes the tune that it came from. That's all for the core technical stuff. The server itself would sensibly be the label's, but there's no concrete requirement for that.
Now look at the information stream you're getting. The number of click-throughs is going to depend on both how widely the file is distributed and how often it is listened to. These are the core attributes we want to measure for music popularity. In addition, since sponsors get a click-through, the artist and label can share a click-through revenue stream and an impression stream. As a final note, if you let the URL identify the specific download, then you can get loyalty points for downloading and distributing tunes to your friends.
So, did we achieve what we were after? I think so (but then, I'm biased). We have:
Conveniently, this is completely compatible with streaming MP3, so netradio works immediately and automatically generates the artists revenue stream. I don't think there will be a lot of pressure from artists and labels to penalize (or even regulate) netradio if it is going to automatically generate income.
Yes, you could strip out the information and pass on the file. But this has relatively little effect. With legitimate hyper-distribution it becomes very difficult for a pirate to get their works out to a lot of people.
Most conveniently, this is completely backward compatible with MP3. Artists could start adding sponsor info to downloaded MP3 tomorrow, and it won't affect properly built players. Once a large enough base of tunes exists, players can be reasonably expected to support the option. As a final nice touch, this can even move into the physical world, by including pre-encoded MP3s on the end of each CD, ready to move to the PC, stereo, or portable player.
So - final question. Would this model help solve some of the difficulties we're having here?
disappointing (Score:3)
It's surprising that Salon would publish an article that could've come straight from the pages of a RIAA press release or music trade mag. Using a record exec as the spokesperson for the starving artists doesn't quite help the piece's credibility. Some artists' comments are spliced in for good measure, sure, but the author (an editor at Rolling Stone, which to the music establishment is what the WSJ is to the business world) apparently couldn't find any well-known, big-selling names to support his argument. The article also chooses to almost completely ignore those artists who support the MP3 phenomenon, mentioning proven, publically-acclaimed performers such as Chuck D only in passing, and instead devoting the best of three pages to quoting middling record execs and their unsuccessful acts.
Unfortunately for the Rolling Stone hack and his corporate backers, the initiative backfires, since even a mildly critically minded person can see right through the bullshit of statements such as "We send them to Napster and they see all their work being given away for free, and they're stunned and horrified." The artist as a weak puppet in the hands of the omniscient record exec who always looks out for his proteges' best interests? I don't buy it. If your music is good and I dig your stuff, however, I will go out and buy the album, if for no other reason than finding entire, properly ripped albums on Napster is next to impossible, unless your searches consume most of your waking time.
Missing some important factors here--- (Score:3)
The thrust of the article was not to indict record companies for overcharging for CD's (they do (duh)), or to showcase artists complaining that they're underpaid by the record companies, but to make this very important point--
To cast the Napster debate as a free-speech issue is misleading and beside the point, like making the right to shoot someone a second-amendment issue.
Artists (and unfortunately their labels) own what they produce-- that's why we have copyright laws. Napster is, as cool as it is (I love it), it is nevertheless pretty much illegal, and unless you are talking about Phish, or Britney, or some other artist who no longer has to live in a van and shower in bus stations while on tour, Napster screws musicians right in the ol' cornhole.
YES, it's true that the distro structure of the music industry needs to change.
YES it's true that record companies pocket most of the $18 sticker price for CD's.
YES it's true that it's much more fun to get music for free on a large scale. That's why tape trading is such big business for Dead- and Phish-heads, fans of Medeski Martin & Wood, Zappa, etc.
However, avoiding the traditional distro and payment structure entirely hurts artists who are not yet top-shelf successful.
Copyrighted music is a commodity just like anything else, and the producers deserve compensation. I'd think that lots of people on Slashdot, being overworked and underpaid IT folks, can definitely sympathize with this situation. The open-source metaphor only allies ot music int he public domain. It not yet apply to copyrighted musicans unless they want it to.
I apologize for coming off so strident, but I'm one of the very-lowest-echelon struggling-musician-types, and I'll be damned if I'm giving away all the rights to my music for free.
---
It's not that simple, I don't think (Score:4)
Everyone's the victim *and* the antagonist(sp).
It is, of course, a question of morality. Who is wrong and who is right?
You mention the price of CD's but you are not buying CD's, you are buying music. Music that takes time and talent and money to produce and distribute.
Now I am not against Napster. I am against illegal copying (the word piracy isn't right, now is it?). Napster isn't at fault, it is simply a medium that human beings make the decision how to use. Not to you specifically, Palin, but anyone who wishes to answer: How have you decided to use Napster? Have you become the victim *and* the antagonist?
I am not someone who beleives in the law for the law's sake. But I know why we have law: to stop anarchy. You see, we don't pick and choose which laws we will follow because then we have undermined the purpose of law. If you think a law is unfair and unjust then, at least in my country, there are methods to challenge the law. This is why I am against illegal copying.
If you beleive that you are the greater victim then find the groups who beleive the same as you do. Boycott the industry seems to be the valid method of protest but that is the precise opposite of illegal copying, isn't it?
There are two methods of going about the issue: either you can formally protest or you can copy illegally and *then* justify your actions. If the later then you should at least acknowledge that no one has any God-born or natural right to gratis music. Either you want to pay fairly or you don't get the music.
The RIAA has caused nothing to happen. The only thing that has changed is that with Napster it becomes easier to copy music. Napster does a poor job of keeping honest people honest. People don't copy music illegally out of protest. Protest means boycott. No, people copy music illegaly because it is easy.
One of the worst traits of human morality is that people have hard time controlling their own actions.
(I should put this kind of disclaimer in my
The ideas in this post are my opinion only. No one said that I had to agree with you or that you had to agree with me. I will agree or disagree politely to you. I expect the same in return.
Thank you)
Where's my money? GIVE ME MY MONEY! (Score:4)
Too Late For Distribution Model (Score:4)
What is sad is that this may have been true before but the chances of this happening now that people have gotten used to being able to download music quicly, easily and for free on Napster are rather slim. People will keep using Napser, there's no way this is going to change without the disappearance of Napster and its clones or at least a fundamental change in the way they behave. Reasons why it's too late
No website distribution model will be faster easier or cheaper than Napster. So why should people switch to downloading music from several websites or officially sanctioned MP3 servers when they can just use Napster to get all the music they need.
Napster allows access to all sorts of music for free. Do not underestimate the power of free stuff. Most of my friends have stopped buying CDs and while I still buy them (I have over 150) I do it more from a guilty conscience (and because I can afford to) than due to any real need. And even then, if I ever find an affordable car MP3 player I doubt that I'll ever buy a CD again. I have seen this same sentiment echoed by journalist for magazines as prestigous as Fortune and Forbes when describing the new threat to the music industry.
Microcharging for individual songs only means that the record companies and artists get even less money. Now instead of 1 person buying a $16.00 CD or $5.00 single and making it available on the Net for Free, the song would have cost $0.50 or $1.00 and would still be available on the Net for free.
Napster and its clones have rocked the foundations of the music industry. MP3s may have begun the funeral dirge but it is Napster that began the nailing of the coffin shut. The reason the RIAA is so up in arms about Napster is because they also have realized the above points and know there is no viable distribution model that would not seriously reduce their income (Frankly I wouldn't mind if the Backstreet Boys & Britney Spears weren't millionaires). The only way they can defend what they feel is their right to selling overpriced music will be to lobby for legislation. Everything else they do is at best a holding action, while they keep trying to get more of our rights stolen...(maybe a proposed ban on CD burners or a music tax on them for all the music that will get stolen is in the works).
It's the RIAA's own fault. (Score:5)
The only difference with Napster is that there is now a company behind. A perfect target the RIAA to file suit against. Which, ironically, only serves to fuel Napster's popularity. RIAA says "Napster lets you download pirated music for free! It's bad!" Your average college student would probably stop listening at "free".
Then there's the real blunder that the RIAA made. RIAA launched an all out war against the MP3 format. Not the software that makes it, not the people who use it, the format itself. And in so doing, they doomed any chance they had to use it, or for that matter any other compressed media format, for distribution. Why? Because adopting such a format would be the highest form of hypocrisy. While shouting down from the heavens and condemning the online distribution of music, they'd be asking their artists to use the same formats to distribute the music.
And you wonder why you've never seen more than fluff and hype about the RIAA's SDMI initiative?
The RIAA had a chance to capitalize on the MP3 movement. Instead, they did the last thing they should've done. Look at what the my.mp3.com service is offering now! The RIAA could have _easily_ offered up such a service, with the support of the artists. And by adding the ability to buy a new album online relatively inexpensively, you've just made a service that people will not only want, but one people will _use_.
The RIAA's only goal here is to stave off their current business model. They missed the proverbial boat when they slammed down on the mp3 format. Now they're trying to do too little, too late.
The problems that have led up to the current MP3 "scene" are pretty obvious when you stop to look at them. People have access to both the blank media and the neccesary hardware to imprint on said media. You can pick up a CD-RW drive for under 200 bucks now, if you're willing to get an older, slower model. Blank CD-Rs, the same material used in commercial CDs, sell for less than 50 cents each in bulk quantities of 500 or more. I think the RIAA would probably manage to get bulk rates that are even lower, wouldn't you?
Yet commercial CDs sell for between 10 to 20 dollars. What exactly is it that we're paying for with that 2000% to 4000% markup? The shiny cellophane wrapping? The stupid adhesive plastic strip along the edge? The cheap (as in quality) plastic case? Or maybe it's that flimsy booklet inside, printed on poor paper stock and as often than not containing no lyrics.
The RIAA probably asks itself how this could happen. I'm sure the artists are asking their labels that very same question. And the answer is simple:
You made it happen.
Overpriced CDs that don't contain a full CD's worth of music, wrapped in poor quality containers makes for a helluva lot of profit for the RIAA labels, a steady stream of royalties for the artists, and an overall poor quality product for the consumer. After nearly a decade and a half of this abuse, the consumers are finally fed up with it, and they're saying "No"in perhaps the best way that they can. With their wallets.
Napster Billboard 100 (Score:5)
Then, you can publish a list of the 100 most requested songs on napster!
That would be a much better indicator of what songs and people are popular than album sales, because certain types of music does not lend itself to sales of albums, though it may be popular.
Im sure you would find that some songs and bands become popular only on the internet that are not popular on the radio (yet).
It would be interesting to see proof of smaller name bands becoming popular due to Mp3 distribution. It would be a good demonstration to those who have doubts as to Mp3's power to make your band more popular.
I know of many bands that I had never heard of that I discovered due to napster and now I love. I have gone to see several of them live. (they probably make more money from me paying for tickets to see them live than from me buying any album of theirs)
Distributed File Sharing Problems (Score:5)
What happens if we attempt to produce a new file sharing system for things like free software, patches, and all the other things currently distributed via anon FTP, HTTP, etc. Are we going to have problems with the RIAA and other copyright owners attempting to block this? A system that allows non-centralised mirroring with signing to ensure file validity and integrity would be a Good Thing. It would make Internet resources more accessable and more fault tolerant. There would be more mirrors, which would tend to be more local and less loaded.
The problem is that if this system is built and then flooded with illegally copied material then copyright holders are going to start throwing lawsuits about. This is likely to stifle innovation. Is there a way we can come up with a distributed file sharing system and make it explicitly clear that it's for the distribution of legal material, without getting sued, resorting to the "it's not our fault what people do with" argument, all without resticting peoples freedom to use it, and hence it's use?
Colin Scott
Yes, and No..... (Score:5)
The fact of the matter is that Napster is the first method of trading mp3s in a way that is sufficiently convenient to allow for average (and even highly capable individuals such as myself) computer users to download mp3s. Being a long time mp3 user and one of the original founders of #mp3 (undernet, amongst others), I can tell you that IRC, FTP, HTTP, and other decentralized systems are highly flawed, too much so for the vast majority of mp3 users today. The problem with these services is that they're either merely providing indexing, or they're archiving. Archiving clearly exposes them to liability, and thus will never withstand an all out legal attack. Indexing (although likely not immune from litigation) is plagued with problems of broken links, full ftp servers, slow systems, etc.
In other words, given the nature of the internet (human nature, of course, being contained within), there IS a need for psuedo-centralization such as napster (indexing is definetly centralized, and mp3s are effectively centralized and assured in that the listing, downloading, uploading, etc is controlled by the software). Furthermore, any service/software which is sufficiently effective is apt to be sufficiently centralized to be held accountable and to be sued. I, also, highly doubt that services like napster will stand up in the legal system. Thus, I would not say it is "impossible" for artists/labels to effectively control their music.
Artists need some way to profit from their work. Even if only a small fraction goes to the artist, it's better than none. By freeloading you're doing nothing to encourage the production or distribution of "quality" music. While the system may be "unfair", and while you're free to disagree with it, it does not make intellectual property null and void. It exists for a reason, you, as a consumer, have a simple choice: Accept conditions and buy it, or not.
That being said, I'm (obviously) not completely innocent of downloading non-free mp3s myself. However, I've never attempted to justify outright freeloading in the name of "fairness" (nor anything else for that matter). Furthermore, I tend to restrict my mp3s downloads (or ripping) to CDs that I either already own (so I can listen to them exclusively at home on my computer plugged into my hi-fi--I find this the best way to browse and listen while doing computer work), or songs that I likely would never buy in a store (allows me to sample and discover songs, if I find something I really like, I will generally purchase it). In other words, on songs that I do not yet "own", mp3 enables me to listen to a diverse swath of music, which i'd _never_ buy if I had to purchase the CD on which each song belogs. Once i discover something I really like, I will buy it, for the sake of convenience if nothing else (so I can listen to it elsewhere besides my computer), and to get all the other songs (which even napster frequently lacks--one other reason to keep up enforcement).
None the less, intellectual property is intellectual property--I do not have a right to do so. They are perfectly entitled to make reasonable efforts to enforce their rights, especially since they can't trust the general public to go out and buy their CDs in a way that does not discourage future production.
Some of those quotes are great... (Score:5)
I can tell you exactly which artists will be most against napster, and that Creed guy is a perfect example. They are in a class affectionately known as One-Hit-Wonders. There is no doubt they would be against, or at least their agents would be against, Napster, since their entire body of useful work consists of about 3 minutes of music (coupled with 15 of fame).
Now before I get into long, winding arguments again, let me make this clear, I think we do need some form of intellectual copyright protection. HOWEVER, given the nature of the Internet and the nature of digital media, our current model for IP is laughable. The only way to enforce it would be to make what I do about once a week, (surf Napster for bands I just heard of), illegal. I am not a big fan of making ridiculously simple and common actions illegal. You shouldn't be forced to limit your choices in a "free" country.
The RIAA is running scared, expect FUD in large helpings, be prepared to see the word pirate thrown around like it's assumed to be the correct word. . It's not. I am not a pirate. Pirates steal things. Listening is not stealing. This is what happens in a capitalistic society when a billion dollar industry is made obsolete overnight. They don't wanna believe it, they don't wanna change, and dammit all the people that are taking their money are "evil pirates" (since they have a *right* to that money, since they convinced a generation of artists to sign over their life's work (for life+50 years, no less))
Copyright should protect the authors of original works to profit from them. If you want to look at it realisticaly, Napster TOTALLY DESTROYS the *real* pirates, those that SELL other artists works. Laws won't be enough to convince people that having 982,345 songs at your fingertips is somehow wrong. But what we can do, if we can keep this argument objective, is create an environment where people respect the copyrights of another because of the willingness of the original author to share. By enforcing these types of values, we can make it a moral decision that the only person who should be paid for a CD is the artist, not some pirater (be they corporate or independant). Personally I prefer a society that uses values to protect the rights or artists, rather than a government that enforces the rights of corporations at the point of a gun.
We are not immoral pirates, dammit, we like music!!
--
No guilt about burning CD's (Score:5)
Canadian law has put a Tax on blank CD's and tapes (here at
I wouldn't be surprised if sales go down in canada this next year. It's not because of the mp3 distributer software, but because of the government's actions have encouraged pirating.
People forget that napster isn't the only way to get mp3's, therefore I don't think it's a direct cause from napster or these kinds of software.