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Music Media

Future of Digital Music in Doubt 237

Posted by michael from the ever-since-the-riaa-got-involved dept.
mlknowle writes: "NPR has an excellent article about the growing trend of 'real' radio stations abandoning streaming media due to concerns about advertising, royalties, and (you guessed it) the DMCA. Basically, stations are finding that web streaming isn't increasing their listener base, but is increasing their costs. It's a good read (or listen.)" Meanwhile, there's a study circulating saying that people don't and won't purchase heavily restricted music online at higher prices for a less useful item. This is apparently a revelation to the music industry.
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Future of Digital Music in Doubt More

Future of Digital Music in Doubt

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  • Ludacris (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Uttles ( 324447 ) <(moc.liamg) (ta) (selttu)> on Friday August 31, 2001 @11:10AM (#2239403) Homepage Journal
    I think it's ridiculous that radio stations should be concerned about the DMCA. If they have the rights to broadcast the songs, they should be able to do it on whatever media. People can record things off of the radio onto tapes, and people can record things off of digital radio into mp3 files, that's not the radio station's responsibility.

    • If they have the rights to broadcast the songs, they should be able to do it on whatever media.

      Actually, partitioning of various delivery mode rights goes way back and is essential to media business. Consider that otherwise, a theater owner who legitimately obtains a current movie could turn around and broadcast it over cable...after all, they're both just streaming delivery of the movie, right?


      So the issue is delivery rights and who is owed money for what types of use, and not fear of piracy.


      By the way, I think 'Ludacris' would make a great open-source project name. :)

  • If a radio station broadcast over the air or over TCP/IP -- in what way is it different for them. In fact it is MUCH easier to copy over the air than TCP/IP as the medium is much widely available and accessible. This is just a stupid reaction by the stations.
    • In fact it is MUCH easier to copy over the air than TCP/IP as the medium is much widely available and accessible

      Not only that, you'd probably get better quality that way anyway. Most internet radio stations (at least the ones I've seen) broadcast at rates that are acceptable for streaming, but are incredibly horrid if you wanted to save the stream and listen to it later. 56 kbps, 22 khz at *most*. Or, they broadcast in RealAudio format using more less the same quality.

    • Re:In what way is it different? (Score:4, Informative)

      by davey23sol ( 462701 ) on Friday August 31, 2001 @11:22AM (#2239466) Journal
      I don't think you read the story. This is, in fact, old news. Idiots like Matt Drudge railed against this months ago.

      The problem is that the DMCA has made "normal" media totally different than "analog" media, and given people a lever to get more money. The stations had to bail because they were going to be bled for cash. The DMCA says that commercial actors should get different rates of residuals for over-the-air work and "online" work.

      There should be no difference between broadcasting on TCP/IP and over the air, but it is the DMCA and the law which has caused the difference, not the station programmers.

      The stations are on their way back right now. A company associated with Broadcast (or is it yahoo?) has come up with ways to remove "over the air" spots and put in properly licensed "online" spots.

      So don't blame the broadcasters... they only did what they were forced to do.
    • TCP can't "broadcast"... it's for bidirectional links. I think what you mean is why don't radio stations broadcast digitally - perhaps with some FEC, perhaps MPEG compressed, so that we can all get perfect CD-quality music over the airwaves in our cars, on our cell phones and PDAs, etc. Of course, this new format would require everyone to replace their 1940's style FM radios, but that's hardly an obstacle here - consumers would love it!

      The problem is that the record companies *love* the crappy sound quality of FM radio. Hear a new song you like on radio - go buy the CD if you want to hear it without all the distortion (inherent in analog radio) and "loudness" (deliberately added by the station, as if you don't have a "bass" knob on your radio). It's worked for decades.

      Digital audio over radio to the masses may not happen this century, but it has already happened over the 'net. As storage becomes cheaper and more kinds of players hit the market, people will care less and less what's being played on public radio, and there isn't a damn thing the RIAA or the stations can do about it. They're selling ice in an age of refridgerators.
      • Digital Broadcasting is already in full-effect in many places. All the major radio stations in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver are already broadcasting in digital on the new "L" band using the Eureka DAB standard. Not many people have digital receivers yet, but that's not the point: the signal is there, and we can get it.

        Many european countries have already gone this way as well.

        Anyways, check out this site, DigitalRadio.ca [digitalradio.ca], for more info.

      • TCP can't "broadcast"... it's for bidirectional links.

        Yes it can. It's called Multicasting, RFC 1112 [ohio-state.edu].

        However, multicasting requires cooperation from all the routers between the source and the target audicence, so it doesn't generally work too well over today's internet.

  • People won't pay more for less-usable stuff with arbitrary restrictions. Ain't that a revelation...
    Seems people aren't that dumb after all to automatically prefer somthing just because it's "digital".
    This is good news, isn't it?

  • Digital Music?? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nate1138 ( 325593 ) on Friday August 31, 2001 @11:12AM (#2239416)
    Shouldn't this article be titled something different? AFAIK MP3 is still alive and kicking, and so is the CD, which is certainly digital music. Just because radio stations can't make money streaming doesn't put the future of digital music in doubt.
    • > Shouldn't this article be titled something different? AFAIK MP3 is still alive and kicking, and so is the CD, which is certainly digital music. Just because radio stations can't make money streaming doesn't put the future of digital music

      Yeah. How about "RIAA's vision of digital music still fucked".

      My digital music - $BIGNUM bytes of MP3s archived on ISO-9660 CD-R, with no DRM encumbrance, and playable on damn near anything, and soon to be transferred to an 80G hard drive - is doing just fine.

  • Why use a low quality web broadcast from a radio station when you can get a shoutcast with a 128, or higher bit rate from any joe with a huge MP3 collection and a fat pipe.

  • digital music report on CNN.com (Score:3, Informative)

    by davey23sol ( 462701 ) on Friday August 31, 2001 @11:13AM (#2239421) Journal
    Along these lines, CNN reported about a study that shows a "flat future" for digital music. The story is at [cnn.com]
    http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/08/30/digi ta l.music/index.html. It was done by Gartner technology research.

    The study was of 4000 Internet-using adults. One half of the people surveyed use their PCs to play CDs, but only one quarter have played downloadable music. Only 6 percent, during a study period during the spring, purchased music online (and this seems to be a high figure to me, IMHO).

    The study shows that the record company services are a bust, and that people are not likely to pay for services like Napster since they are used to getting it for free.

    It looks like, for now, the record companies are successful at killing an entire new industry and business model through lawsuits and other DMCA stupidity. I personally don't think its dead forever, but it certainly is on a downhill trail.
    • Seems to be a kinda wierd distrobution to me. Probably 80% of the people I know who have internet access listen to mp3s. 25% just seems like a rediculously low amount.
      • 25% does not seem low to me at all, it actually might be a bit high. In your case, it's probably a sampling difference. You're probably dealing with people that are a little brighter and pay a little more attention.

        For me, I'd say about 10% of the people I know listen to mp3s. The group of people that I work with aren't very curious... hell, only a couple of them even use I.M.s, and I had been using ICQ for different business uses since 1997 or so...
    • I'll bet the 6% 'buying music online', were actually talking about buying CD's online.

      Pay-per-play, watermarked, uncopyable, one-computer-only, etc music will never ever work. People will stop buying music entirely before that. It just isnt worth the hassle.

      The only way I would buy music online would be if I could buy a permanent license to a piece of music. That is, I get a key, they provide me with the music in any form I wish, any time in the future, in a choice of several of the most popular up-to-date formats available.


    • We believe that the $BIG_MARKET industry leader $REALLY_BIG_COMPANY will dominate. Less established $SMALL_BUT_INTERESTING_COMPANY also competing for the $BIG_MARKET market, will flonder and fail making it's sharholders feel really dumb.


      Disclaimer: The Garrner Group recives financial support from $REALLY_BIG_COMPANY the leader in $BIG_MARKET. It is a mere coincdence, we assure you.

  • when will they get it? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AugstWest ( 79042 ) on Friday August 31, 2001 @11:14AM (#2239424)
    It amazes me how often "Industry Pundits" refer to the internet as "New Media," and then post dire warnings about the future of the internet when "Old Media" companies discover that their models don't fit.

    So old-school internet radio stations aren't going to continue streaming their broadcasts? This is supposed to spell the end of internet radio?

    People turn to internet radio to avoid the homogeneous crap that they're stuck with from "old school" radio stations. I don't want to have to choose between the latest mass-produced alternative and pop crap, I want to be able to hear, say, reggae, or ska, or funk, or whatever other type of music, out of the billions out there, that I can't hear on the rregular radio because it has become so streamlined that it must appeal to the lowest common denominator.

    Let's face it, radio sucks. Internet radio, on the other hand, with its ability to stream countless different styles of music, holds a lot of promise to me.

    So good riddance to the old school. Let them keep propagating their useless, mindless, repetitive crap for the masses, and lets not waste bandwidth on it.
    • Exactly. I've listened to a local radio station [radiou.com] for several years now that is decidedly different: they play Christian rock/hard-core/dance/pop/rap music. They also play stuff that mainstream stations sometimes pick up like POD, Sixpence None The Richer, and Lifehouse, because it can be also classified as Christian. They also broadcast each day streaming media on the net. In fact, they 'advertise' (with little blurbs from listeners) how many listeners they have via satellite and the net nearly every day. I think they've actually grown a lot from their original size specifically because they embraced 'net and satellite feeds.

      It is quite stupid to say that digital audio is dying. If anything, those of us with any real musical appreciation of good stuff, not boy bands and teen hip-hop models, will be using the net MORE for quality content. Just like Napster, if the 'old media' can't catch up, they'll just try and legislate and litigate it into oblivion, unfortunately. :( how lame.

      • CCM is just the same tired crap all over again, with a few exceptions.

        /me remembers Back in the Day, when DC Talk came out with Jesus Freak, bringing something new and innovative. That was really cool.

        Anyway, please don't assume that just because it's Xtian, it's not disposable pop music. Jaci Velasquez is still Just Another Solo Female, Audio Adrenaline is just another southern rock band, and i won't even mention Michael W Smith (as a side note, the newsboys were doing some really cool stuff at one point in time, and most things with Steve Taylor are worth checking out).

        -jbm, a reformed Xtian fanboy, turned atheist, turned follower-of-the-Christ (reconstructionalist, baby)

        • "CCM is just the same tired crap all over again, with a few exceptions.
          /me remembers Back in the Day, when DC Talk came out with Jesus Freak, bringing something new and innovative. That was really cool. "

          Back in the day? How old are you, 12? :)

          Back in the day is ~30 years ago, when Petra, Daniel Amos Band, and others were pioneering what is now CCM. Back when Keith Green, Phil Keaggy, Randy Stonehill were essentially underground musicians. More recently, back when Steve Taylor was actually performing, and not just performing. That's back in the day :)

          DC Talk is new (and for some old-skool rap, check out there first album).

          And if you want something that was a bit different, but unfortunately unsuccessful, check out "Chagall Guavera" (Steve Taylor signed with a 'secular' label, to try and get more artistic freedom. He learned that the secular labels were no more 'artistic' than the christian ones)
          • i have their first album kicking around here someplace... i can still sing along to some of it, when i hear the music. a friend and i actually just had a "competition" to see who could recite the most DC Talk songs (Nu Thang.. i forget which song). i won. anyway, their old stuff was basically disposable, trendy, and fit the mold of the day. Jesus Freak was like nothing else, which was the point.

            Steve Taylor's Liver was disappointing.

            back on the original off-topic topic.

            i meant in New CCM era. as far as i can see, there was a time when CCM just kind of fell apart.

            and yes, i am a whippersnapper relative to you--my Other Father (i adopted a family... long story) is constantly picking on my music and talking about "back in my day, we listened to Keith Green, and you could understand the words!"

            It is worth noting that those guys _were_ underground musicians, and weren't disposable popular music.

            (btw, if you want a laugh, MxPx did a cover of Keith Green's "You Found Me". i can put up an mp3 of it if you'd like. MxPx also did "I Can Be Friends With You" for that Petra tribute album. Punk covers of Keith Green...)

            -jbm, put in his place by the Old Fart ;^)

            • Sadly (or fortunately, really) I'm not quite that old -- but I DJ'd a CCM show in college in the early 90s, and between that hanging with friends I learned a bit about the CCM history.

              That old Petra stuff is funny, in some ways, how "country" it is.

              And I agree, that the DC Talk album Jesus Freak is really good, but I guess I think of that in terms of new stuff, not old stuff. :)

              I would also say that Jars of Clay first CD was quite good (and refreshing). Phil Keaggy continues to do awesome concerts. Beyond that, I'm totally out of the scene.

              I'll have to check out the Keith Green covers some time.

              Of course, there's One Bad Pig's cover of Petra's "Judas Kiss", and their cover of "Man in Black" with Willy Nelson, I believe it was. Ahh, those were the days... :)
          • Back in the day WAS 30 years ago, when Larry Lujack was the original "shock-jock" (only not resorting to as much vulgarity as they need to today) on WLS *AM* in Chicago - because most people didn't even have FM radios back then.

            People think this shock-jock thing is something new. It is to laugh.
    • So good riddance to the old school. Let them keep propagating their useless, mindless, repetitive crap for the masses, and lets not waste bandwidth on it.

      Lets just hope that the power of the old school hasn't become too big. New technologies that disrupted things in the past usually made it out alive in some form. Perhaps today this might be changing, with a powerful corporate lobby, an apathetic public, and a media who doesn't report on what they should be reporting on.

      I'd love to see the abilities this technology gives us help us break out of the homogenized consumer culture we're in. Give it 15 years or so and we'll find out.
      • just because Napster is dead does not mean that people aren't still sharing MP3s over more private networks.

        The only saving grace for the media companies now is to buy-out all the broadband providers, and prevent people from running ftp servers - oh wait, they're already doing that. . .
    • The point here seems to be that old school is trying to flatten new school. It kind of sucks for me in Louisiana if I can't hear radio stations in the "pilot markets" like New York, L.A., SanFransisco, what not, where there is a modicrum of experimentation. By the same token, it will suck for folks in those places if they can't hear the great music broadcast from Lafayete. The DCMA and new laws regulating internet rebroadcast have had their effect and purchasing from the local record store will be the only way some people can hear interesting or different music. That's the goal, until they can rig some kind of pay for play internet jukebox.

      It's self defeating and stupid and I expect record sales to fall much faster than the much hyped recession we are in. Those old school farts, if anything as new as 1960 can be called old, won't think of the internet as a real medium until they can make money off it. They really might Belive all that BS about Napster ruining their sales. Ha! Napster is dead, where's the sales, you fools? Their altenative to complete dominance of internet distribution is extiction, but who'd have thunk up the current market in 1950?

    • I haven't listened to radio for music in a very long time- every time I hear it, it's always the same. The alternative station is playing Third Eye Blind and the same Sublime song over and over, the hiphop station has succumbed to the DrPuffDoggies of the world. But when I go to the Internet for streaming, and look up shoutcast.com, I can find electronic music of any type, all the goth I can handle before throwing up, and hiphop ranging from old school early 80s to modern faded beats.

      Why would I ever go back to "radio"? There is just no reason.
  • Why should record labels be suprised that people are not interested in paying for online music? The main reason for Napster being successful was that the music was free. You could burn your own CDs. If someone has to pay for it, they might as well buy it in a useful form.
    • That's exactly the point being made. It seems pefectly natural to us that people aren't going to pay for expensive music. However, it seems like the music industry is just now figuring it out. The article even starts out saying something about how people don't want to pay more for less despite the recording industry's efforts.

  • I'm not sure whom you're trying to deceive, but most Slashdotters wouldn't purchase it even if it had absolutely NO restrictions. As long as there was a no-cost alternative, no matter the ethics, they'd choose that over paying for a product. Go ahead, tell me I'm wrong, I could use a good laugh.

    • ...most Slashdotters wouldn't purchase it even if it had absolutely NO restrictions...

      ...Go ahead, tell me I'm wrong, I could use a good laugh.

      OK. You're wrong. You have no idea what most slashdotters do. Chances are you wouldn't be able to identify one of us as a slashdotter if we mugged you in an alley. All the other posts on slashdot could be the work of a single manical AI program that argues with itself all day long, and you could be the only real human being who reads and posts to this site. Or, conversely, "Zico" could be nothing more a knee-jerk reactionary trolling script, and I'm just responding to thin air for the author's amusement. Regardless of what the true case is, I can definitely say that you personally cannot know the purchasing habits of however many thousand active slashdot users.

  • Internet Broadcasting Rights & BBC (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31, 2001 @11:15AM (#2239431)
    Similar things happended when the BBC cut off [savebbc.org] their World Service shortwave stream to North America and Australia a couple of months ago, their reasoning was that with high Internet proliferation people could tune into the net instead, or listen via XM radio etc.

    However, the BBC doesn't have the Internet rights to most sporting events, so whilst you could listen to a footy match before on shortwave you just get a "sorry we can't bring you this event...." on the net. This is not my idea of progress.
    • Similar things happended when the BBC cut off their World Service shortwave stream to North America and Australia a couple of months ago, their reasoning was that with high Internet proliferation people could tune into the net instead, or listen via XM radio etc.

      Interesting that you say that. Fairly recently, the BBC's World Service was put on as the late-night broadcast for one of the local public radio stations. I believe Public Radio International [pri.org] is handling the syndication. I wonder if there's a causal connection between one and the other.
      • Yeah... the BBC World Service's objective is to get its content on as many platforms at possible, whenever possible, they've linked upto a lot of FM stations for the last couple of years. They reach ~150 million people, I can't see why they shut off their SW feed, nice way to piss off your listenership :/

        However, the overnight streams only usually news and analysis, obviously the FM channels don't have enough time to cover protracted sporting events.

  • The music industry has a long history of trying to get the consumer to pay more for less. Sometimes it works (price premium for CDs), sometimes it doesn't (CD singles).

    I have a feeling that this time it won't work; consumers seem to be getting tired of getting ripped off.

  • I found some pretty cool stations over the years. No surprise the RIAA is asking for more money, though. Personally, I don't see why logistically, royalties should be charged twice, once for broadcast, once for stream. Arn't they both played from the same programming scheduale? What's the rationale behind justifying an additional fee? Do similar copyright fee schemes show up in television broadcast .. where two fees are charged from the same programming if it is broadcast over two 'mediums'?

    I do accept that many of these radio stations wern't getting a bigger listener base because of their online streams, so maybe it just wasn't worth the hassle.
    • Do similar copyright fee schemes show up in television broadcast .. where two fees are charged from the same programming if it is broadcast over two 'mediums'?

      You mean like over-the-air broadcast vs. cable television? Somehow I doubt royalties are paid twice in this case. Seems like a pretty decent precedent IMHO.
  • Listened to the program last night on my way home last night.

    It's a shame that all there are so many rules being imposed on internet broadcasters, but I doubt many of them would have survived for long anyways -- the bandwidth is expensive, and for the listeners, the typically low bit-rate stream is just annoying (well, at least if you're trying to listen to music).

  • Classic example... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Arethan ( 223197 ) on Friday August 31, 2001 @11:17AM (#2239440) Journal
    of why radio stations buy broadcast licenses of music rather than going down to Sam Goody and buying the $15 comsumer version.

    They have no reason to fear prosecution from the DMCA unless their current broadcast licenses specifically state the broadcast medium that the license is good for.

    Essentially, radio stations couldn't park a Van mini-station at public events and play music to all to hear unless their broadcast license allowed it.

    Basically, this tells me that a lot of radio stations need to either hire better lawyers that aren't afraid to exercise their license rights, or they need to negotiate new licenses that include streaming audio as a valid broadcasting medium.

    • Re:Classic example... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by WinDoze ( 52234 )
      The reason they don't just go buy the CD and throw it on the air is that if they do that, they're not going to get the next Britney Shlock single a month before it hits the stores, but the other radio station down the street, who played by the RIAA's rules, will. Eventually all your listeners will be tuning into the station that's getting the early releases, and you'll be last year's news.
      • This, by the way, is how the software companies play the tech journals.

        If the magazine wants an early copy or Beta of some hot new upcoming product to do a review (and the handholding to get it running well enough for a demo) - they'll omit all the critical language in the article, and make the software look like the greatest thing in the world.

        Now, you'd think it would be the other way around, that the software company's would be beholden to the trade rags for publicity and eyeballs. But without the perks from the software companies, they don't have a story. . .
    • of why radio stations buy broadcast licenses of music rather than going down to Sam Goody and buying the $15 comsumer version.

      They have no reason to fear prosecution from the DMCA unless their current broadcast licenses specifically state the broadcast medium that the license is good for.

      Buying a CD and broadcasting it without a license is illegal. It's equivalent of renting a video tape and play it in a movie theatre. For the copyright laws, "broadcasting" is (I think) roughly equivalent to "copying". At least, the effect is the same: allowing more people to listen to the music.

    • Re:Classic example... (Score:2, Informative)

      by M-G ( 44998 )
      ASCAP and BMI are the two big licensing concerns for radio. These companies deal with performance licenses, which provide performance royalties to the composer. Performance, as used in this sense, is rather broad, as it includes radio broadcast, public playing of recordings, and live performances. The bar that has cover bands playing every night is supposed to have paid fees to ASCAP and BMI.

      Most stations have what's called a blanket license with ASCAP and BMI, which allows them to do pretty much anything with the music....play it on the air, set up PA systems at events and play music over them, etc.

      As more stations started streaming their audio on the net, ASCAP and BMI got bitchy and greedy, and thought they should get more money, even though this stream didn't differ from the terrestrial broadcast. At the time this was coming to a head, our attorney told us to stream away - we had a blanket license, and it did not specifically exclude any uses. Until such time as the licenses were up for renewal, and those terms changed, ASCAP and BMI couldn't do a thing about it.

      Now, as far as many "large" radio stations stopping their streams, this isn't such a bad thing. Given the rush to consolidate the radio industry by the major players like Emmis and Clear Channel, you'll always be able to hear pretty much the same thing in every market. I always found it amusing that the homogenized stations used to announce their streaming audio on the air...like I really want to listen to a crackly audio stream instead of the radio.... As long as the smaller, independent stations can get their streams out, things will be good. These stations still have an individual character and personality that is lost in the corporate stations.
  • Meanwhile, there's a study circulating saying that people don't and won't purchase heavily restricted music online at higher prices for a less useful item. This is apparently a revelation to the music industry.

    This is a good point and indeed a revelation to the e-book industry as well. Its sad that all the corporations just don't get it. We are not going to pay more for a less restrictive format just because your marketing execs who use AOL think its cool and "chic". Also, I just got a message from Live365 [live365.com] (huge internet radio broadcasting house) the other day saying they will begin charging for new users in October :(

    Glad they are keeping what they call "founder radio stations" like mine free.. thanks Live365 :)

    JOhn

  • The distribution chain will shake out eventually (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NullAndVoid ( 181397 ) on Friday August 31, 2001 @11:19AM (#2239450)
    My guess is the Net as we know it will end up near the bottom of the staggered release cycle for new products. Just as movies generally go from 1) first run theatres 2) dollar houses 3) pay per view 4) DVD 5) VHS 6) Cable 7) broadcast, and books go from hardcover to paperback, songs as well as movies will end up on the Net after the other, more easily limitable distribution methods are milked. Broadcast radio traditionally hasn't fallen into this because it's used as a promotional tool to sell packages, and streaming music *should* also be used the same way. But it will eventually find its position somewhere.

  • Consumers won't pay more for a product that's less useful and harder to use.


    We really needed a study and a Slashdot article to figure that one out? I wish the RIAA would get their heads out of their asses and realize that the more they lock down their product and the more they restrict it, the less someone's going to buy it.


    No wait, I hope they don't, and they run their little organization right into the ground.

  • Put a fork in 'em (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FatRatBastard ( 7583 ) on Friday August 31, 2001 @11:21AM (#2239462) Homepage
    I've been saying this ever since the "Big 5" laid out thier plans. Who's going to pay money to "rent" a finite amount of music (lossy compressed at that) for a flat fee each month? Someone did a study (that I can't find right now) showing that the average music fan would pay more to "rent" the music then they would to just buy it on CD. Plus, with a CD I'm free to rip it, make a compilation CD out of it, put it on tape, etc.

    The only way digital music will take off is if a) the record companies make it the only avenue of delivery (they're dumb, but they're not that dumb) or b) add value or make it cheaper. Since they're taking away value (compressed, timebombed and player restricted) they better damn well make it cheap.

    For the near future I think (legitimate) digital music will only succeed as a promotional item. I.e. free streaming of upcoming albums for a day, free b-sides, etc.

  • If I understand it correctly, this is essentially an issue of licensing. Any syndicated content they recieve is licensed to them to play in their geographical market. However if they stream it over the internet, they aren't just playing it in their market anymore. This opens them up to a possible lawsuit from the content providers should they want to make it.

    This wasn't a problem for a long time, but now a lot of these syndicators want to stream their content live over the internet themselves and cut out the radio station middle men. So they are now using their previously neglected rights to a monopoly on Rush Limbaugh or Dr. Laura, or whomever else. They are also backing it up with lawsuits for people who don't comply.

    It sucks for me because the only decent traffic station in northern Delaware is WDEL and they have now stopped real audio streaming over these legal issues. Hence I am getting caught in huge traffic jams on I95 I would have previously driven around on alternate routes.

  • No surprise... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cornice ( 9801 ) on Friday August 31, 2001 @11:25AM (#2239476)
    Meanwhile, there's a study circulating saying that people don't and won't purchase heavily restricted music online at higher prices for a less useful item. This is apparently a revelation to the music industry.

    This has been understood by the music industry all along. They are just playing dumb to the matter. The music industry is starving off as much online activity as possible and why not? They have an extremely lucrative monopoly on music distribution and broadcast. Any change from the norm, no matter how positive for the consumer, is nothing but a threat to this money machine.

    Since IANAMIG (I am not a music industry guru) I sit back and wonder why more independant music isn't free on the Internet. Like free software it may be the best way to get noticed when another product dominates the commercial market eg. Gimp. I don't know if current laws prevent such distribution or if there are too few artists unwilling to give their work away or if I just haven't been looking in the right places. I have to look at the Grateful Dead policy toward recording concerts (you can record and distribute but you can't profit from the music - you can charge for media, shipping etc.) and wonder why this isn't more prevalent. Are most like my musician friends from high school - just waiting to make millions when they are discovered by a big recording label?

  • Old -vs- New. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mindstrm ( 20013 ) on Friday August 31, 2001 @11:26AM (#2239483)
    Come on. We hear this constantly. The 'Old-world' media and news organizations telling us how the 'New-world' internet has no future, or how (insert threatened business model here) won't work on the internet, blah blah blah.

    SO WHAT?

    It's not going away; digital music WILL stay, whether the 'old-school' industries like it or not. Same for most other aspects of the net. Just because your old business models don't fit doesn't mean society won't use or accept it.

  • Tactile response (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mcelli ( 518034 ) on Friday August 31, 2001 @11:27AM (#2239486)
    I just coud never bring myself to pay for online music for one reason: I can't touch it. Music for me is almost a ritual. I love taking the CD out of the case, admiring cover art, and putting it in the player. I take it to the extreme that I don't even want a 5 disc changer as it would erode the ritual. Records are like the Cigars of music.

    Mp3's don't sit on your shelf. It's a bit vain, but music defines your personality, and having CDs on your shelf puts your personality on display. No one ever comes to visit and looks through your mp3 collection.

    I know that people agree with this, not everyone of course, but in general, people like the ritual of listening to music. I only ever downloaded mp3s because it was free. Rituals are great but free is free. If I liked enough mp3s from an artist, I bought the CD. An mp3 was never a substitute for the Real Thing.

    Take all this away from someone, and then restrict it to hell and it just won't work. Mp3s are just not as highly regarded as CDs. How many audiophiles listen to mp3s over CDs? This will fall by the wayside like eBooks for sale. Mp3s will be pirated and the consumers will save their dollars for CDs.

    • >Mp3's don't sit on your shelf. It's a bit vain, but music defines your personality, and having CDs on your shelf puts your personality on display. No one ever comes to visit and looks through your mp3 collection.

      Interesting - I see it the other way around.

      Q: "What's this CD, man, it's great! No filler tracks!"
      A: "The 80s."
      Q: "No, seriously, man?"
      A: "Yes, seriously, man."

      A screen, a "sort-by" icon, and drag-and-drop playlist organization allows far more flexibility and "whoa, cool!" factor, at least among those with whom I hang out.

      For some of us, the "ritual" of music is being able to hear whatever we want, on a whim. Having to spend 2 minutes searching for one of 100 CDs to play a 5-minute track... (or worse, 10 minutes of searching to find 5 CDs that contain a sequence of tracks that go well together...)... is just a pain in the ass.

      I'm in the process of transferring my CD-R-burned MP3s over to hard drives. The CD-Rs will be the archival copies, stored offsite. Even with a wrapper around "grep", it got to be too much of a pain in the ass to have to type in part of an artist/title and then go get the right CD-R. When I wanna listen to something, I want it now.

      > How many audiophiles listen to mp3s over CDs?

      (OK, this may be a bit trollish, but indulge me ;-)

      Yeah, but how many audiophiles listen to CDs over vinyl? (I paid $50,000 for this hydrodynamic-bearing-stabilized turntable, and I will not have some $1.00 piece of plastic outperform it for wow and flutter!)

      • Re:Tactile response (Score:2, Interesting)

        by mcelli ( 518034 )
        I think your reply makes some good points. I don't agree, but I mentioned in my post that my view of the ritual of music is not shared by everyone. I still have to correct one of your comments:

        Yeah, but how many audiophiles listen to CDs over vinyl? (I paid $50,000 for this hydrodynamic-bearing-stabilized turntable, and I will not have some $1.00 piece of plastic outperform it for wow and flutter!)

        You've obviously never seen how much an audiophile will pay for a good CD player. They get these CD players with heavy weights that stabilize the spin to prevent from any errors being read off the CD (I don't understand how that makes sense, but it's true). The electronics are extremely streamlined for perfect audio reproduction. There also exists high fidelity CDs, as there are high fidelity vinyl. Slashdot had an article on the ones Sony makes. They're rare but you can find a lot of jazz recordings on that format.

        Audiophiles tend to prefer vinyl. Honestly, I prefer vinyl, but they do use CDs quite a bit as well.

    • yup - you hit the nail on the head. Spending money is all about vanity.

      If only the record companies could figure this out, they would know that they could give away the tracks for free, and still make zillions selling CD's.

  • no useful product (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Proud Geek ( 260376 )
    So digital music is being pushed out of the marketplace until someone can make a useful product out of it? Makes sense to me. Why should I listen to streaming radio when I can listen to a real station that has better quality and ads for places that are at least in my vicinity. And no, I don't particularly want to listen to the BBC.

    As for digital music sales, someone has to make money there. No one makes money off mp3, so all they will do is fight it. For legitimate sales, they'll have to wait until someone comes out with a product that gives consumers more of what they want. As you mention, that isn't higher prices or more restrictions.

  • I don't listen to the radio at all anymore (Score:4, Informative)

    by Bonker ( 243350 ) on Friday August 31, 2001 @11:27AM (#2239489)
    I scrounge Usenet and P2P networks for MP3's. If I find one that's interesting, I download (or even buy , if it's really good) the rest of the album.

    Cons: Occasional MP3 distortion from a poorly encoded MP3

    Benefits: No FM Station audio 'loudness' compression. Never wait for a song to come on. With my trusty CD-RW, I can listen to a song anywhere... Home, Work, Car. More variety: I had never seriously considered most tencho and electronica before downloading MP3's.

    Radio stations, especially those who play top 40, distort music and play what the record companies want to be popular instead of what the listeners like. Most are owned by only a few companies. Hear of Cirrus Broadcasting? Before they deregulated broadcasting, there were several pop and rock stations in Amarillo. Now there is one rock, one pop, one r&b, and about 50 country and Tejano stations. Thanks, but I'll stick to Gnutella and Usenet!

    "Don't be alarmed by the tone of my voice. Check out my new weapon, a weapon of choice" - Fatboy Slim.

  • I listened to this report when it was broadcast yesterday, via WUNC's ShoutCast web stream. The radio piece is not as negative as the written article; in fact it ends on an upbeat. It really is worth a listen.
  • Basically, stations are finding that web streaming isn't increasing their listener base, but is increasing their costs.

    It's like streaming video, Internet movies, all that stuff -- it's simply not practical with the bandwidth and hardware normal people have. If you're a college student on a Napster-free network, network multimedia is barely worthwhile. For a typical user on a 56K dial-up, playing music on an eMachine speaker, it's just not happening.

    It will happen, of course.

    Another factor is 1998's Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which requires Webcasters to pay an additional fee for music over the Internet. Broadcasters sued the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) over the fee, and lost. Now the argument is over the amount of the fee -- the RIAA wants Webcasters to pay up to 15 percent of their revenues, but Webcasters argue for a rate that's about 30 times lower than that.

    This isn't the sort of attack on fair-use that makes the DMCA evil. It's something the market will sort out, when there's money to be made. Right now, there isn't.

    • This isn't the sort of attack on fair-use that makes the DMCA evil. It's something the market will sort out, when there's money to be made.

      The market can't sort it out, because to do so is against the law (DMCA). The market is defined by that law, which was tweaked by the recording industry to define the market. The market could sort it out (*coughNapster*) if that were legal, which it turns out it wasn't. There's your "free market" in a "free country", it turns out it isn't that hard to buy.

  • We've done this kind of thing before. When CDs came out we payed more for them than for records, yet records actually cost the record companies more to produce.

    Why did we pay more? Because CDs were generally better than records, more durable, smaller, etc. You could argue that digitially distributed music is better because it's eaiser to acquire, you just download it rather than having to trot down to the store or wait three days for the order to arrive via the mail. So you could argue that there's more value in digitally distributed musice, therefore we should pay more for it.


    Of course, I don't buy this argument. I still buy very few CDs because I hate being ripped off and I doubt I'd buy digially distributed music. I'm not sure about the renting idea, but if you they could sell music (instead of renting it) I'd bet this would catch on.

  • Some technologies come out too soon. The broadband and wireless markets aren't what they need to allow companies to make enough money for net-radio to be profitable.

    Compares this to the wearable computer market. I think xybernaut nearly went out of business ... everybody (read : every geek) wants a wearable, but not many people want to pay 2-4k for one.

    It isn't like these technologies are dead (like internet retail was said to be in 94-97). Everybody jumped on it before it really became a good idea. Five years down the road when we have better wireless and more broadband, everybody will be surprised by the 'rebirth' of net-radio. :)

    • sorry, submitted early.

      About the wearables ... like PC's are now, they'll be really hot sellers when they cost 500 bucks. But being in the business right now is not nearly as profitable as it will be when wearables do cost $500.

  • the new radio... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by kid_wonder ( 21480 )
    i am not sure how well known this is - none of the people i work with or know knew about it - but there is a new 'radio' service coming out pretty soon. its called 'xm radio'. they are throwing two geosynchronous (i think thats the term) satellites up - one over the west, the other over the east - that will broadcast content.

    from what i can gather it's $10 a month for 100 'stations' - some of the programming looks pretty sweet. plus the devices can move from car to home - sony makes one (thats always a good sign).

    the major drawback is probably reception in areas with lots of tall buildings and having to have a view of a particular 'horizon' a la DirecTV.

    i read some of their legal-ese and it mentions reverse-engineering along with the other normal stuff. but i am sure that the hardware hackers are going to have a blast with this.

    • The birds are already in the air, they are called, oddly enough, roll and rock (that is in order of launch). For more information check out this link [xmradio.com] (flash heavy site).

      The service launches in San Diego and Dallas Fort Worth on 12 SEP 01. Most of the stations will be commercial free, some (I suspect the top-40 and biggie news stations) will have less than 6 min of commercials/hour.
      I'm quite excited about this. Could be very cool.

  • Suppose I wanted to run my own internet radio station. Suppose also, that I have a collection of music that I purchase legally on CD. If I play an R.E.M. song, I guess some amount of $$$ is supposed to go to the recording label. Does anyone know the approximate cost of playing a single song on the radio?

    Can anyone detail how a "real" radio station operates?

    SuperID
    Free Database Hosting for Developers

    • If it's broadcast over the radio, you pay nothing to the recording label. You pay money to the owner of the song, not the recording, which is usually the artist through ASCAP or BMI. See www.ascap.com for more information.


      "Broadcasting" over the internet is a completely different story, and I'm not sure about the legal details since they have been changing and still aren't ironed out.


      Another interesting point is that compulsory licenses only apply to music. They do not apply to radio shows (such as Howard Stern) or commercials. One expense which must be specifically negotiated is the rights to rebroadcast the commercials. Again I'm not sure exactly what became of that, but the whole industry is going through an important stage where all these details are being negotiated right now.

    • Typically radio stations subscribe to a service that holds a rebroadcast copywrite to a large collection of music. There are a few of them out there, but one I can think of off the top of my head is seasac [sesac.com].

      Stations pay a flat fee depending on type of broadcast/range and (supposedly) the artists are compinsated indirectly via the service.

      There are some Internet streaming services that have already made blanket agreements with these copywrite repositories, so it's best to read the fine print.

  • The Future of Digital Music (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jahjeremy ( 323931 ) on Friday August 31, 2001 @11:44AM (#2239550)
    The record companies achieved their dominance through the exploitation of solid media, including tapes, records, CD's and eight-tracks. The digitization of music formats has now turned against them, as a copies are no longer second-rate, like a cassette of an LP, but replications of bit-level information with little to no signal degradation.

    Even the implementation of schemes to scramble or degrade the signal for copies is ultimately futile. To paraphrase the opinion of Emmanuel Goldstein from his WBAI show, "If you can play it back, it is decoded, and you can copy it." It does not matter what level of encryption is implemented for digital music. The playback necessitates a conversion to an easily copyable form, i.e. sound waves, which can be reencoded in various ways, from placing a microphone next to the playback advice to copying the signal through some kind of analog receiver.

    It is a similar situation for e-books. Once the content is viewable, it can be copied, even by retyping or photographing the resultant output. And as soon as a single "pirated" copy is made available, those with access can acquire it for free.

    The size and scope of the music industry is a recent phenomenom. Only since the early 1950's were saleable recording considered a lucrative pursuit. The modern behemoths have only existed as such since the late 1960's. Now that they have lost control, we see them flailing about to prevent a loss in market-share and income that will inevitably increase with consumer broadband access and the power of the average desktop computer. After all, who would pay for "intellectual property" when they can receive an exact copy for free over a relatively anonymous file-sharing network?

    Copyright and music industry pundits see this trend as an ominous sign of disrespect for music, capitalism, creativity and the hard-work of the creators. Recent trends are likely to improve the situation of the individual artists, who, with cheap, good audio software and fatpipe connections, will be able to distribute directly to consumers and bypass the whole music-industrial complex completely. For a few thousand dollars, a musician can have a decent home studio comprised of professional-level gear, VST audio software and sequencing/sampling packages such as Cubase, ProTools and Logic.

    A modern musical group or musician sees something like 10-15% of their profits after all the industry-types take a cut. While some of this is due to the high cost of touring, much of it is for usage of company recording studios, garnering media attention and the production of saleable units such as CD's. Now that each musician or band can be their own cottage industry, we should see an increase in individual musicians' "paychecks" and a decrease in control by corporations. Especially once on-line cash schemes start to proliferate, the market for grassroots types to create their own individual music industries, channels and styles should become easier over time.

    I see the current situation as one with vast opportunities. The current "troubles" will be followed by a huge proliferation in both the number and diversity of musical acts eager to distribute their products throughout the world, and I am all for it. If the dominance of the huge mega-bands and stars fades due to copyright-infringement and piracy and a leveling of the current "playing field," so be it. For me, these musical types are more a manifestation of the capitalist and image-oriented facets of popular culture than the expression of any genuine musical artistry or feeling.

    • Great post! If I had any moderator points left I'd mod it up that last little bit so more people could read it, but I don't think you'll have that problem anyway.

      You outlined a number of things that have been on my mind in recent months. For one, if I can hear it, see it, feel it, etc., I can copy it. Finding clever ways to stop that will only delay the inevitable, you are building sand walls against the tide.

      Also, the current music industry is not the way it has always been. It was only practical to make recordings of singers after microphone and recording technology was able to make a reasonable copy of the way it sounded originally.

      At this point, it is still necessary to have a few thousand dollars to make a quality home studio, but I think even that price will continue to plummet in coming years. Look at Demudi [demudi.org] [demudi.org]. It is obvious that at this point the whole Linux side of the recording/editing/sequencing field is fairly weak. It will not stay that way. Also, look at the extrememly low cost of programs like Acid Music, right off the shelf. These give Pro Tools type functionality without Pro Tools cost.

      I think soon we will be living William Gibson's vision of the Garage Kubrick. Very soon the line in quality between talented amateur and seasoned pro will be very much blurrier. I can't wait to see that day.
      • But the media companies (well, AOL/TW, anyway) are making an end-run around the intenet. At the access point.

        Your "garage band" will also need to spend what will probably end up being $1000/month for a T1 line to serve their content (music) to the internet. This is because OUTBOUND bandwidth is showing to be a lot more valuable than originally thought. This is why broadband is dead or dying. As Cringely says, it's no longer a viable industry.

        Watch it fall under control of the most dominant media players, and watch them prevent anybody from serving "competing content" for any reasonable price. Sure, consumers will have DSL and Cable, but they'll strangle the outbound bandwidth either technologically, or using restrictive service agreements. And if you want to host a server, you'll be forced to go the T1 route. That alone raises the bar in terms of cost of doing business, for your average "garage band".

        Then look at it from the enduser's point of view. The vast majority of people are going to be accessing the internet via large media company-owned ISP's. Namely AOL/TW, and others which will undoubtedly jump in in the next 5 years. Those internet users will be focussed and steered to corporate-dominated content - and will likely never be aware of the "free" side of the internet. The seamy underbelly of HaX0rz and conspiracy theorists, and open source communists. Most people will be fed all their news, and neat places to see on the internet by the big corporate teat that appears in their browser when they log on. So your "garage band" will have a serious marketing problem. The only way the majority of net users will ever hear about them is if they go crawling to AOL/TW begging for ad space. And they'll be offered a deal they can't refuse. Just as musicians are today.

        The only problem with this theory, is - I can't for the life of me understand why in hell Sony and others have not jumped on to this already. I mean, the two biggest ISPs, AOL and MSN are media-dominated (TW and NBC/Disney) - but there's a lot of other media companies out there that are missing out, and it's got to be obvious to them that they're behind the curve by now - and if AOL/TW doesn't scare the shit out of them, MS sure as hell should, - unless they're all holding their breaths to see how DOJ/.NET/Hailstorm all shakes out. Unfortunately, I don't see MS coming out of this in too bad a shape. And the future of the net, as far as I can tell, seems pretty much a done deal to me.

        The rest of us, will be a "cool" minority, gradually getting edged out by a corporate-brainwashed majority, and the technology they're fed. Will it be very much longer before web browsers themselves become obsolete, and we'll be showing our children how to use this awesome tool called "Netscape" just as today, the old gurus show us this neat tool called "gopher"?

        And how will we access the net. I'm guessing that Linux will probably be the only OS choice in the future not overridden by corporate marketing influence and technological hobbles. Run on roll-your-own hardware. And I'm guessing that the only ISPs that remain in business that would offer access to Linux users will probably be dial-up only. Or T1. (or hopefully Wireless-parasite).

        Sorry, I just see a very grim future ahead, and I'm going to go drink myself into oblivion now.

  • The Economics of Streaming (Score:3, Insightful)

    by GPS Pilot ( 3683 ) on Friday August 31, 2001 @11:48AM (#2239569)
    Not enough people have broadband yet. That's why the radio stations aren't seeing the increase in listenership they were expecting. They are giving up on their streams too soon. Come back in 5, 3, maybe 2 years and the economics of this will be completely different. Problem is, this has left them with a bad taste in their mouths and they may be disinclined to try streaming again even though the economics would support it.

    AFTRA members deserve a somewhat larger fee when their work is streamed -- but not so much larger that it makes streaming unviable. They are just shooting themselves in the foot in that case. Same goes for the RIAA's streaming fee. What do you want to bet those fees were negotiate near the peak of the dot com bubble? Now that the bubble has burst, they should certainly be renegotiated. Better yet, the fee structure should be made a dynamic function of online listenership, so that streaming remains viable whether the online listenership grows as expected or not.
  • for many radio stations (like, for example, ABC affilliate WLS AM [wlsam.com], newstalk out of Chicago), the problem had little or nothing to do with music royalties and everything to do with advertising. If you pay the voice talent for a local ad because yours is a local radio station, but then you stream the advertising over the internet, how does the voice talent get reimbursed for the increased potential audience? Do you base the new royalty structure on number of listeners, or is it de facto an international audience? How do you determine "prime time" vs. off hours when your potential audience is global? Additionally, how do you justify this increased ad cost to Bob's Mattress Shoppe, who's not likely to benefit from advertising in Japan?

    For WLS AM, apparently, the advertising royalty issue was the driving factor to their taking down the stream. I can't help but assume this was a major factor for most other radio stations, music-oriented or not, albeit one they might not want to discuss. Labor relations are always a sticky wicket, whereas music royalties for digital media is already such a widely discussed topic that it's easy for them to point the finger that way without seeming like a heartless employer.

  • It's the content stupid! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wumingzi ( 67100 ) on Friday August 31, 2001 @11:52AM (#2239582) Homepage Journal
    I'll weep about the DMCA and those additional royalties in a second.

    Commercial (and even non-commercial) radio in the United States has an extremely serious problem: It all sounds the same.

    Where I live (Seattle) has a few stations which are worth listening to. The classical music station [king.org], The underground/rock music station [kexp.org], The folk music station [ctc.edu], and of course The extremely annoying dance music station. [c895fm.com] (I'm not a big dance music fan, but if you want to feel like you're in a disco, even when you're not, it's a good thing).

    The other 30 stations on the dial are utterly, completely interchangable. There's a station which plays all the hits from 1968-1972. Over and over. Just like every other big city in the US. Imagine that! There's three "alternative" music stations which alternate between K0RN, the Beastie Boys, and Shania Twain (there must be something alternative about her, but God knows what). Even NPR, which I wake up to every morning, does not sound a bit different if I listen in NYC, Atlanta, or San Francisco. They have All Things Considered, they have Car Talk on Saturdays, they have a mid-day call in program to talk about local politics. Who woulda thunk it?

    So, if I want to listen to K0RN, or Stairway to Heaven (for the 6.02x10^23rd time!), or even listen to Fresh Air, I have this highly sophisticated device to do that. I call it a "radio". There is no imaginable reason why I would waste bandwidth and hassle to get a streaming media connection to do that.

    For Internet Radio to be a success, you must first put out product which is different enough to provide value added. In this way, content is just like every other business.

    j.

    • Yep, believe it or not the USA is not the only country with online radio stations. If you don't mind the fact that you don't understand what the DJ is saying, there are plenty of other radio stations streaming over the internet and playing a much different variety of music. If you get bored of one radio station tune in to something from another country.
    • The vast majority are owned by Clear Channel Communications.
    • Even NPR, which I wake up to every morning, does not sound a bit different if I listen in NYC, Atlanta, or San Francisco. They have All Things Considered, they have Car Talk on Saturdays, they have a mid-day call in program to talk about local politics.

      All Things Considered is produced in a very peculiar way for most large NPR stations. When the feed comes in from National Public Radio, the affiliate mixes in local news with the national news. My cousin produces ATC in the Twin Cities and it is actually a very complicated threading of segments, which are mixed together differently depending on how that day's news has been. (Literally "mixed," too. NPR gives background music for local anchors to read the news by, and the levels are mixed. :) You have to admit, besides, that ATC and NPR beat the hell out of almost any other cable, TV or radio news source.

  • Fighting for a fist full of dollars (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hrieke ( 126185 ) on Friday August 31, 2001 @11:54AM (#2239592) Homepage
    Basically it comes down to who gets paided what.
    What I really find intresting is in the RIAA's faq (http://www.riaa.com/Licensing-Licen-3a.cfm [riaa.com]) and read the section on "What are the conditions that a webcaster has to meet in order to qualify for the statutory license?".

    Makes you wanna go start your own country.

  • One day RIAA will stop fighting their customers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by YouAreFatMan ( 470882 ) on Friday August 31, 2001 @11:55AM (#2239601) Homepage
    The RIAA is so scared that they refuse to listen to their customers, whom they also view as criminals and their enemies. All of these digital-music initiatives address only their own concerns, and do not address customer wants/needs. Sony likes to include digital rights management as a "feature" on it's devices -- as if it is something customers want. Sure, its a lovely feature that I can't connect a DVD player to my Sony camcorder.

    What do customers want? Ask Napster.

    Fast, accurate searching

    Comprehensive database of content

    Fast download

    Fair price -- and only pay for what you use

    Compatibility with customer's player of choice

    Ease of use

    Napster and mp3 set the standard for these things. People often won't pay where a free alternative exists, but they will pay if an alternative is (perceived) better.

    You can't have significantly less compatibility than mp3 and expect consumers to embrace it. I'm not going to open Winamp for my personal collection of ripped mp3's and some other player for "secure" music. You can't make it harder to play, where you have to have a key to open, blah, blah. What if I want to play the song somewhere other than my desktop PC? <sarcasm>Oh, it's less portable than mp3 or even a physical CD? Count me in!</sarcasm>

    One day, the record companies will start developing a solution around customer needs, not their own. Until then, they'll try to spoon-feed us DivX for music. And fail.

  • I used to work for a couple of radio stations. Our formats ranged from 'rock' to county to sports-talk. The rock station was all local. The country was all canned from a satellite network. The sports talk had some local programming plus programming from a couple other networks, including a sports team or two. Well, hell...we damned the torpedoes and streamed 'em all 24-7 when I was there. However, soon after I left (and I knew this was coming) that the networks were going to start bitching. They want people to listen from their own sites...not from yours. Problem is, most of the non-do-it-yourself streaming services had the ability to automate turning off and on the streaming or providing a way that the streaming would automatically switch over to the network's stream. There's tons of these companies out there that think they can make money on a model of providing streaming services for radio stations. I had 2 of them go bellyup on me while I was there. Pretty expensive for a radio station to do it on their own. Remember...this is radio where nobody makes money. You sell ads to the autoparts store and they give the GM 4 snow tires for his car. It's only going to get worse. I hope MLB doesn't find out about this station, 'cause I think they still stream the games that their an affiliate for. Which rocks now that you have to PAY to listen to MLB on the internet. The commercialization is beginning as the networks are also jumping on the bandwagon. They see potential profits. Yet, I contend, someone's going to find ways to do it and make money and make people like AFTRA, the RIAA, etc. happy.
  • "Meanwhile, there's a study circulating saying that people don't and won't purchase heavily restricted music online at higher prices for a less useful item. This is apparently a revelation to the music industry."

    (Meanwhile, back in the RIAA-cave...)
    Holy Over-Prosecuted Russians, Ms. Rosen! People don't want to pay more for less?!?! Since when?

    We never saw this coming!

    Quick, gather your finest demographers and statisticians to study this. The fate of Gotham depends on it!
  • A lot of supporting points have been made regarding these doubts, but I believe that XM Radio [xmradio.com] (or something like it) has a good chance of putting digital music into ever home, car, and office.

  • Net media should be more profitable (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Geoff ( 968 ) on Friday August 31, 2001 @12:32PM (#2239767) Homepage
    ... at least in some cases.

    I live in a small market (Moscow, Idaho/Pullman, WA). Other than Top 40 and Country, it's pretty tough for anything to be profitable. Because of two universities, there are some "alternative" radio stations, but they aren't playing anything I'm interested in.

    But I like jazz. And bluegrass. Neither of those gets played on the radio, and it wouldn't make any sense for anyone to do it. I'm just out of the range of a jazz station run by Eastern Washington University in Cheney, WA.

    There aren't enough jazz or bluegrass listeners in my area to make for a profitable venture. But on the internet? You better believe it.

    The trick, of course, is to come up with a viable revenue model.

    Also, I can't listen to internet radio at work, because of "no personal use" rules. That certainly limits my availablity as a customer/listener.

    It's a tough market, and there are definitely some obstacles, but the potential is there.
  • The music industry tried something like this when AM radio was starting up. Record companies didn't permit airplay of their records. The result was that Tin Pan Alley died and was replaced by jazz and rock.

    I don't see that happening, though. Listening to random new stuff on MP3.com makes it clear that most of those bands are going to stay in the garage. There hasn't been a major "Internet band", and it's probably too late for one. Back in 1999, a good band with enough page hits could have done an IPO. Didn't happen.

    • Everytime the entertainment industry fights a new medium and looses, they prosper and we prosper. Cassete tapes, VCRs, CD-burners....

      Everytime the entertainment industry fights a new medium and wins, they loose out and we loose out. Screwy DAT copy protection ruined the format for consumer use, or AM radio as an example. They can either chose not to particpate or try to fight it in court. Either way, when they get their way, they get hurt.

      (Funny how much money they were making on VCR tape sales/rentals even before copy-protection was used).

      No matter what, consumers will always go to the theatres. They will always go to rock shows and buy physical recordings.
  • Happy now? Ya killed off online music. Well thank fucking god that all the starving artists will get to ride around in limo hottubs filled with Crystal and getting head from bootie Ho's. Wasn't that the argument?

    I hope all you toadies and buttsuckers for the record industry are satisfied with lower volume sales and buyer apathy. All hail the muthafuckin RIAA !

  • is probably not going to be Internet radio. While personalized radio stations will continue to exist and are attractive to people. The future of digital music (at least the future the labels envision), revolves around subscription services empowered by a huge catalog.

    To this end, two major groups have been formed. MusicNet [musicnet.com] and pressplay [pressplay.com]. MusicNet has support from RealNetworks, AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann AG, EMI Group plc, and Zomba. Pressplay is supported by Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group.

    MusicNet says: Our record label partners, BMG, EMI, Warner, and Zomba provide the music that the platform delivers, and RealNetworks, America Online, and Napster will distribute the platform to their subscribers nationwide. MusicNet plans to expand its offerings and is in ongoing discussions with both major and independent labels.

    While pressplay claims: The service, which will be available in the U.S. by late summer through a broad array of affiliates, announced its first affiliate relationship in April of this year, joining together with Yahoo! Inc. to form an alliance through which the pressplay service will be marketed to users of Yahoo! network and Yahoo! Music. pressplay is a stand-alone joint venture equally held by Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group.

    It's clear that the "future of digital music", will most likely start with the subscription services offered by these two groups. Of course it may take some time for them to refine their business model into something people are eager to pay money for. None the less, the potential is staggering. In the future people are apt to get exactly what they want for a price that's reasonable.

    With digital music you can be a lot more flexible in your product offerings. You can sell things on a track level, and you can group these tracks in any way you want. It's not clear what the pricing model for this would be, but what if you only had to pay $0.5 for a digital track. You could get the latest music you actually listen to, instead of getting the latest CD and skipping the tracks that suck. What if you could play a 30 second sound sample of every track in the Sony catalog? This could be huge for music discovery (possibly even more so than radio). What if you belonged to a record club and every piece of music you bought from them was available in digital form for $5/mo. How much would you pay for a subscription to the Pop Top 40?

    These are all possibilites for the future, and IMHO show tremendous potential. It's up to them to provide these services at a reasonable price. The problem with Internet radio is that they haven't been able to figure out an attractive pricing model (for users, or advertisers). So while Internet radio may have problems, the future of digital music is very bright indeed.

  • Selling kitty litter online is a better idea (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MillionthMonkey ( 240664 ) on Friday August 31, 2001 @01:11PM (#2240030)
    We've all heard of that dumb dotcom that went broke after they found people would not buy kitty litter over the web. Now music is definitely easier to deliver over the internet than a 20 pound bag of kitty litter, which cannot be sent using TCP/IP. With kitty litter, your cat continues to make a mess while the UPS guy leaves little yellow notes on your door after not ringing the doorbell. This is the biggest advantage that online music has over online kitty litter. Is that enough to save online music from suffering the same fate?

    Well, maybe. The kitty litter doesn't suddenly refuse to clump up if you move it to another litterbox. It doesn't "lock up" and cease to cover odors if you get a new cat. You can use a batch of kitty litter for about twice the amount of time that you're "supposed" to (if there are no women in your household). And, you can stock up on kitty litter- getting 5 or 6 bags- without having to worry about the last few bags not working by the time you need them because of some stupid preprogrammed time limit that is backed up by the force of law. And you need kitty litter if you have a cat. Nobody really needs Britney Spears.

    What makes them think they're going to pull this off?

    I'm not going to pay money for anything that is more crippled than an MP3. (And if I find that I've bought a crippled CD, I will return it and give up on buying newly released CDs from then on unless I know it's a real Redbook CD.) I have enough crap to deal with in my life. I don't want to have to worry about timebombs and player restrictions on each of a thousand songs in a collection. Are they nuts? I'd have to hire someone to keep track of my frigging music collection! Can you imagine planning a party, or an outing to the beach, and having to worry about how many players each of your CDs has been played in, and whether or not it will refuse to play in your new Walkman CD player that you just bought? CDs would go the way of the laserdisc if they worked like that.

    I predict these greedy bozos will lose billions in their own version of a dotcom meltdown before they realize that people will simply not allow themselves to be sodomized for the privilege of buying music online.
    • I just thought I'd tell you how funny I found your kitty litter // online music comparison. Great! As a cat owner I would be appalled if litter "locked up" if you added an extra cat. Hell, that's when you need it most! Oddly enough, the first CD I bought over the internet was Spit, by Kittie. So Kittie, yes, kitty litter, no.
  • A local talk radio station (WGOW 102.3 [wgow.com]) had tremendous success via streaming over the Internet. They had people calling constantly who had moved out of the area and listened to keep up with the hometown news, and people calling in that had just come across it. As a matter of fact one day they recieved a call from an English pub that apparently listened daily to one of the programs. (And considering I live in Chattanooga, TN that's a heck of a stretch.) One of the best known callers was a guy from Boston, who always called on their 1-800 line.

    Of course that was before the great 'Radio Blackout of 2K1.' They've recently come back up via streaming, but in the time they were down they literally recieved hundreds of messages from people asking where they went. And slowly they're building their streaming base back.

    Somehow I imagine that's not an isolated phenomena. However seeing as that most stations aren't as 'interactive' as talk radio is I would imagine that those listeners just wouldn't make their voices heard to the programming directors. And when they went down? The listeners probably just pulled up another station. (Heck I channel-hop in my car, why not on the net)

    The listeners are there, just there silently.

  • The RIAA is not what halted net-streamed radio, it was the AFTRA issue where the "actors" in the commercials wanted additional compensation for their internet ads. The statement in the article that said "radio companies bet on Internet streaming to boost their listening audience, allowing them to charge more for advertising. When that didn't happen, stations simply pulled the plug." only really shows part of the issue. It is true that the radio stations were not able to charge additional money for the ads just because the ads were going out via multiple mediums. However, the radio stations discovered they COULD generate additional revenue by charging for two sets of ads. The ads that would run on the internet would be independant of the ads that ran on the air. As is typically the case with banner ads, the ads would also be targeted.
    The problem is that the technology to do this doesn't really exist. Neither Real nor Windows Media have had, up until essentially right now, even a technology demo of the insertion of targeted interstitial ads into live streams. Clear Channel and Real did a technology demo on the non-targeted insertion of interstitial ads just a couple of months back. Some of this I probably "cant say" but "I am guessing" that Real is working on the targeted insertion of interstitial ads and that it is a client-side issue that "theoretically would be" addressed through a new version of the client software. I would "theorize" that this client would come out very soon.
    Once this is out and the broadcasters can have separate ads for the internet, then I suspect we will see an almost-immediate resumption of net broadcasting of radio.

    maru
    www.mp3.com/pixal

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