Ask a Music Producer/Publicist About Filesharing and the RIAA 371
Bill Evans is one of those people in the music business who doesn't get a lot of public exposure, but keeps the wheels cranking behind the scenes. He's not just a musician and techie, but a publicist whose clients include Numavox Records artists Kerry Livgren and Michael Gleason as well as progressive rocker Neal Morse; he's produced (among many others) songs for the Burning Annie soundtrack and the Kansas Tribute Project. Naturally, since he makes his living in the music business, Bill is not 100% in favor of unrestricted filesharing. But what might work? And what might not? Let's find out what this music biz insider thinks -- one question per post, of course. Answers to the "Top 10" questions will be published soon after he gets them back to us.
What options are out there? (Score:5, Interesting)
What's wrong with... (Score:3, Insightful)
Weren't concerts (i.e., in-person performances by the artists, whether stadiums or drawing rooms) the primary moneymaker for musicians in the past? Why not consider recordings to be a form of advertising for the concerts? Won't more people be willing to pay more money to see a concert if they have found they like the music they've listened to from that artist? And if that advertising comes at no cost to the artist/record company/whoever, as it is with P2P, isn't that all the better?
(Leavi
It's true (Score:3, Interesting)
That being the case, here is my question:
"Do you think that there is any creedence to the argument that today's multi-billion dollar entertainment industry is an un-natural and p
marketing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:marketing (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:marketing (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, Microsoft gets no free publicity out of piracy, because it has pretty much saturated the market and very few people are now switching from other OSen to Microsoft, certainly not in the home user sector where t
how much (Score:3, Interesting)
do you think there's a future in online self-publishing?
Re:how much (Score:3, Informative)
Erroneous Assumption? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it really the case that making a living in the music business rules out unrestricted filesharing? Might not there exist alternate business models that are fair to the artist and the consumer? What about producing music makes it necessary that selling the music needs to be the primary money-maker?
Re:Erroneous Assumption? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Erroneous Assumption? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Erroneous Assumption? (Score:3, Interesting)
A more common example is an artist who uses full orchestration on their albums but can't afford to take a full orchestra on the road with them. Or how about musicians
Well.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Filesharing services from Apple, MS (Score:5, Interesting)
Should we change copyright? (Score:5, Interesting)
But, copyright is still a control of making a copy, which is getting to be almost farcical in a world where most creative output can be easily and near-freely copied.
Do you think that it would be a good idea to alter copyright so that, instead of selling pubslihers a right to copy works, artists sell consumers the right to have a copy of a work, however that they want to get it and however many redundant copies they want?
(Let's just ignore the privacy and feasability problems for the moment; statistics and security can probably fix them to be "good enough.")
Re:Should we change copyright? (Score:3, Insightful)
Suing listeners? (Score:5, Interesting)
False DMCA complaints. (Score:3, Interesting)
What about the innocent people? Do you feel it is acceptable for the RIAA to spam the internet with tonnes of DMCA complaints, knowing full well a significant amount of these are false and may lead to the loss of internet access and business of innocent people?
Their bots cast a wide net. Any file which has a word containing the same word as a RIAA member's song or artist name has a significant risk of getting a DMCA complaint. How is this fair? How can this be considered acceptable? You don't see retail s
The RIAA's claims (Score:3, Interesting)
According to the RIAA, CD sales dropped by 10% in 2001 and a further 6.8% last year, largely because of file sharing.
The IFPI's Commercial Music Piracy 2003 report, produced in early July, reveals pirate CD sales rose 14% in 2002 and exceeded one billion units for the first time.
My maths therefore concludes that if you deducted the 14% piracy, then CD sales have actually RISEN by around 7% over the last year! Do the RIAA actually know why their figures are falling (pirate cds/crap music...) - or do they choose to blame it all on peer to peer networks?
Umm... lower price point? (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course pirate CDs increase the total *volume* of music around - do you really think people could afford the kazillions of dollars of "free" mp3s (or at a fraction of the cost at a pirate shop) at retail price? Their argument is that pirate sales (which earn neither them nor the artist anything) are replacing normal CD sales, thus lowering their profits.
Kjella
Re:The RIAA's claims (Score:4, Informative)
Your maths are wrong (unless you're basing it on more numbers than you're presenting here.) You're trying to equate [percentage of CD sales] with [percentage of pirate CD sales], two values which aren't equivalent. Trying to add/subtract them like you're doing just leads to nonsense statistics (in this case, the "actually risen by 7% number.")
Re:The RIAA's claims (Score:3, Interesting)
Record sales for 'cheap' albums
A record number of albums were sold in the UK in the last year because they are now cheaper than ever, industry figures have revealed.
More than 228 million albums were sold in the 12 months from June 2002 - up 3% on the previous year - according to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).
Declining record sales huh, where?
Re:The RIAA's claims (Score:2)
Re:The RIAA's claims (Score:2)
The record companies are missing the boat completely from the P2P sharing that is making a very minimal impact on th
How about... (Score:5, Interesting)
He shouldn't (Score:5, Interesting)
Then, after the CD is finished, you can try to use technology to bypass traditional marketing, but right now, it's a joke. Selling your music directly isn't a problem for anyone. Marketing your music, that's the rub. Fancy as the internet is, the most effective way to sell music is to force-feed it to the people directly, through radio and MTV. That's not gonna change for a long time.
Re:He shouldn't (Score:3, Insightful)
twist on this question... (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you think that it is likely that we will see a major artist go this route in the near future? And if this became a viable model what could record companies do to continue to add value to music?
Share! (Score:5, Funny)
Subscription models (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Who would you subscribe to? Would you have to subscribe to EMI/BMG/Sony one-by-one, or would there be a number (or one?) blanket subscription for varying genres or labels?
2) How would money be disitributed? By the number of times tracks have been listened to/downloaded?
Opinion of the RIAA and its Tactics? (Score:5, Interesting)
RIAA logic (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:RIAA logic (Score:3, Interesting)
This seems to support the view that declining sales may be due more to the high costs of CDs than to file sharing... ie. lower the price and sales go up.
Ask the music industry about filesharing... (Score:4, Funny)
Where does the RIAA Buy it's Evil? (Score:5, Funny)
-- Bill Gates
Microsoft
Re:Where does the RIAA Buy it's Evil? (Score:5, Funny)
old vs new (Score:5, Interesting)
We (consumer and industry) obviously need each other.
So my question is:
Can you think of (a) profitable business model(s) that would *not* use DRM?
Where does the money go? (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said, my question is (and I hope you can even answer this): when I lay down my $15 for a CD, where does that money go? How much goes directly to the artist? The producers? Publicists and people in your position? Record company CEOs? Charities? Etc etc.
Basically I'm concerned that if I fork over $15 because I really like the music, I think that a big portion of that should go directly to the artists themselves, but in reality $14.95 is ending up making CEOs wallets fatter.
--j
Re:Where does the money go? (Score:4, Informative)
Just in case this one doesn't get answered, here's one answer [wordworx.co.nz].
Reform (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it really all about control? (Score:5, Interesting)
Online distribution undermines this model and forces the record companies to spend more marketing dollars as a percentage of revenue. The success of iTunes seems to support this. While it is successful in terms of the # of songs sold, no handful of artists dominates its sales as with traditional channels.
So my question comes in a couple of parts. First, is all of this stuttering towards an online distribution system really more about control? If so, given that the iTunes experiment seems to bear out the thesis that online distribution costs them in control, how will we ever get to online music distribution that is equitable for everyone involved instead of one weighted towards big record companies or towards music pirates?
Cure cancer by killing the patient (Score:5, Interesting)
Ultimate game plan? (Score:3, Interesting)
P2P vs. Radio (Score:5, Interesting)
the future (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you consider this stealing? (Score:2, Insightful)
But what if I had no intention of ever buying the album. In other words, the probablity of revenue from me from that album was exactly zero. Then I download the tracks off kazaa. How am I hurting the label? How am I stealing?
The labels imply that the Opportunity Cost of an "illegal" download is buying the album. Wh
Financial Impact? (Score:5, Interesting)
In your opinion, what do you feel has caused the greatest financial impact to the music industry? If the answer is not "file sharing," then what is the industry doing to combat the problem?
Options (Score:3, Interesting)
Can it be stopped? (Score:2)
If so, how? If not then how will they survive as online trading becomes more prolific.
Troy.
A few questions (Score:2)
2. Doesn't anyon realized that allowing people to listen to tracks of music they wouldn't otherwise be exposed to *prior to purchase* is a good thing and will actually lead to increased sales?
3. Has anyone discussed the idea of dropping prices of CDs in hopes of curtailing the 'rampant level of piracy'?
Old music of lower commercial value? (Score:5, Interesting)
I decided to see how many of these files were available legally from the Apple store, out of at least two motives: curiosity about the effectiveness of corporate-driven, rather than fan-driven music distribution, and a genuine intention of replacing my unpaid-for files with paid-for versions.
It turns out that almost none of the files I'd downloaded were available through the Music Store.
The reason is simple. I am interested in all sorts of old stuff (20's, 30's, 40's, 50's) and weird stuff (novelty records, things like Bernard Cribbins 'Ole in the Ground, etc.)
When fans share files, it makes available almost the entire history of recorded music.
When music companies sell files, the range of what's available is much, much smaller. For example, when it comes to popular music of the fifties, most of what's available on the Apple site comes from one companies single series of CD's entitled "so-and-so's 16 most requested songs."
How do you set up a fair system that pays artists but still allows for the continued preservation and availability of items that are so old or unpopular that their commercial value is very, very small?
How can you avoid the "dog-in-the-manger" phenomenon of companies that will neither make material available nor give permission to others to make them available?
iTunes vs. BuyMusic (Score:5, Interesting)
NOT SENSIBLE (Score:2)
Granted, like I said, I haven't used iTunes to burn. So if this applies ONLY to CDs with iTMS songs o
More business for you? (Score:5, Interesting)
1. The music industry is impacted negatively by file sharing, at least at some level.
2. That his studio is most certainly not harmed by filesharing, but in fact is seeing a rather large increase in business as more bands try to get a decent polish on their work so they can get their MP3s out there.
Do you think this is just annecdotal, or true for most music studios?
Record CD sales? (Score:5, Interesting)
Here in the UK that CD album sales are at an all time high with a 12% rise in sales this year.
Would you like to comment on that, given that
i) there are no similar RIAA anti-piracy actions being taken here,
ii) average prices have fallen to below the psychologically important 10 barrier?
Transfer of rights? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wouldn't it be better for all music creators if an artist got 100% of the song rights, and split the recording rights with the label, 50/50; and this was mandated by law, and couldn't be signed away? Am I missing something? I would think that artists would be banding together in droves for this cause.
Would prices really drop if there was no pirating? (Score:5, Insightful)
Filesize/Quality per price (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Filesize/Quality per price (Score:3, Informative)
Lossy compression means just that. Compression where part of the original information is lost.
Lossless compression means that ALL of the original information is preserved.
Lossless is used for storing information that MUST have completeness, such as programs, documents, source code, etc.
Lossless compression can be used where the missing information is not critical. For instance, the human eye cannot see 16 million individual colours. So a lossy compression
Your new roles (Score:3, Interesting)
...AND...
I am currently in the process of removing my music from buymusic.com [slashdot.org], who acquired it and is selling it illegally. What resources do independent artists have when fighting against the very industry that professes to protect musicians? Is copyright infrigement a one way street leading straight to the bank for large companies?
As a publicist, do you see distribution via p2p as a growing trend for your more/less established artists? I notice that the link to Neil's site only provides small samples of music. Do you encourage making entire songs available at low bitrate samples? Does p2p make this a moot point?
RIAA pay cuts, maybe? (Score:2)
With the RIAA's heavy-handed behavior and random lawsuits, a lot of people who engage in music swapping tend to take on a Robin Hood/Boston Tea Party philosophy about what they're doing. They take from the rich, and give to the poor - and don't feel bad about it either since everyone knows that the artists make about a nickel of that $13 you shell out for a CD, and the RIAA uses the rest to line their pockets, maintain their near-monopoly, hire lawyers and lobby congress.
So as a possible remedy, do you t
Why won't artists support thte alternatives (Score:4, Interesting)
Does the music industry believe in laissez-faire? (Score:2, Insightful)
'Fair use' rights (Score:3, Interesting)
This hypothetical situation has always bugged me: Say I purchase a CD, rip it to my hard drive, and then put it on my MP3 player. I take the MP3 player with me and listen to that music in the car, while (unbeknownst to me) my brother listens to the copy of the music on the computer. Are we breaking the law?
DVD's are priced correclty, CD's are not (Score:4, Interesting)
About getting signed (Score:4, Insightful)
Who cares ? (Score:2)
I'm not really into downloading music, but the stand the RIAA has taken along with their "We don't really care what our customers think" attitude really p**sed me off. If they don't care what I think then I don't care to buy their product.
I'll listen to the radio until they find a way to shut that down too (or make people pay t
The organized crime angle (Score:5, Insightful)
1- Why is the music industry focusing prosecution efforts on poor individual college students who are (a) difficult to track down and (b) not making any money on their endeavors when there are large organizations which are (a) centralized, so stopping them might do some good, and (b) profiting from their activities?
2- If free file swapping is so damaging to music CD sales, then why aren't mafia types trying to stop this phenomenon as well, given they have so much to lose?
Question: (Score:3, Insightful)
cost v sell (Score:2, Insightful)
same question for DVDs.
Singles vs. albums (Score:2)
How much has really been lost? (Score:2)
CD Sales are up in Britain. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that this disproves the allegation that swapping is killing music and that the real culprit is a CD price that has stayed high while production costs have gone through the floor. Do you agree? If not, why not?
Justin.
RIAA obsolete? (Score:2)
wait (Score:3, Informative)
Re:wait (Score:3, Informative)
While many never have heard of Spock's, they are pretty big in the Progressive Rock scene.
Why can't we buy MP3's? (Score:4, Informative)
Again, MP3 technology is not that new. I can recall using it at least as far back as 1997. 6 years have gone by. The consumers and the CD/DVD-players all want to have MP3's, and yet there is (for all intent and purpose) no way to buy them.
As John Dvorak said in his PC Magazine column, around 1997, no one would want to buy 10 rock-a-billy CD's for $100, but there might be a market for one MP3 CD with 12 hours of rock-a-billy hits for $10-$20. Why hasn't this happened?
Post-RIAA world (Score:3, Insightful)
But your skills such as yours are valuable, and I don't see the need for them going away. However, instead of working for a record company in the future, I wonder if you won't work for musicians themselves in much the same way that a band probably currently hires an accountant, lawyer, or agent.
Have you and your colleagues thought about this sort of scenario, and have any of you talked about forming an agency/consultancy in this way that would work for artists instead of the other way around?
It seems to me that you folk have a golden opportunity to help artists avoid the tyranny of the record labels and capture the money that currently goes to Mottola and Rosen. It would also do the world a great service by putting the final nail in the coffin of the content companies, but that's only if you care about the rest of us.
Laws and tariffs (Score:5, Interesting)
My question is that why does the RIAA need more legislation to go after filesharers or pirates to stop losses that no independent auditing company has been able to find, and with all the income they're getting from DAT and CD-R Music blanks, and lawsuits against filesharers, pirates and bootleggers, how much of this goes back to the artists, producers, engineers, etc? instead of simply in the RIAA and its labels' pockets?
And on a side note, why should the US or any other country continue listening to the RIAA talk about its losses, when no independent label or artist or distribution channel are getting any of these taxes or tariffs? Shouldn't we also be giving money to these labels, or should we start repealing these one-sided decisions?
What about treating file-sharing like radio? (Score:5, Interesting)
When a radio station plays a song, it pays one of the agencies like ASCAP (forgive me if I've got it wrong; it's been a while since I was a musician), and at least in theory the writer of the song (usually the musician) gets a small royalty assuming they've set up a publishing company to collect those royalties. From what I've heard, this can end up being a significant part of a musician's income. As I understand it, there are problems with tracking radio play -- you can't listen to everything at once, so you depend on random sampling and reports from radio stations -- but the idea is good.
So how about treating filesharing the same way? Track which files go where; every time a Metallica song, say, is copied, Metallica gets a nickel. It might not be as practical now that there's not One Big Place (Napster) where everyone goes, but there are still lots of centralized file-trading services (I think Kazaa and the like apply...I haven't been into this for a long time) where copying could be tracked. The services get charged based on volume, presumably like radio stations are, and they can pass those charges on to subscribers or advertisers. Musicians get paid, people get music, and a new millenium of peace and happiness dawns upon the earth. :-)
Is this a good idea, or have I taken some massive, secret dose of crack somewhere along the way?
Digital perfromance vs. digital distribution... (Score:4, Interesting)
Free Music as Advertising? (Score:5, Interesting)
Assuming the worst (Score:5, Interesting)
Many of the items I have downloaded are old or obscure and do not fit in their libraries. There are many like me. Will they try to force us to only select the items they control, or have they addressed the issue of out of print/free stuff another way. A beer band in Cleveland may be the best thing going, but if they silence this band's offerings because they are not "signed with the label" they really are only forcing their control over what the listener can hear. They are offering a less robust product but charging more for it.
Will there be any free venues available if RIAA wins?
Sharing unavailable music (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you see a reason why the record industry has not created such a system for older recordings from which they are no longer making money? Are there legal hurdles you are aware of, or is it simply that the record industry has not realized this potential is there?
What do the artists think? (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you find that indie artists are more likely to embrace file trading for marketing/name-recognition purposes than well-known artists?
Justifying the price (Score:5, Insightful)
So, how does the record industry justify the current price of CDs? Doesn't it seem obvious, given the lessons of history, that the inflated price is the root cause of piracy?
I should note, perhaps, that I neither pirate nor buy CDs at this point. Why should I buy a CD when I can get a DVD of a major film, with all kinds of extras, for the same price? It seems to me that this has far more to do with the decline of CD sales than online filesharing.
Finally, I understand that CD prices were supposed to have dropped as a result of the recent lawsuit, but I haven't seen a difference in either record stores or mail-order record clubs, such as Columbia House. In fact, the prices seem to have gone up slightly.
Singles vs Albums (Score:3, Interesting)
What is your take on this situation? Should people be forced to buy a full album just to get one song (or ocasionally two) they like, or should they be buying the album with the theory that they liked the single, they'll like the rest?
Has "the album" been ruined by the filler that so many of the top40 one-hit-wonder bands put on their albums? What needs to be done to make people willing to try entire albums (ratings, reccomendations, better music..)?
Worst case scenario (Score:4, Interesting)
Suppose the government declared that it would no longer protect copyrights on music. People begin using the internet to share music on a massive scale, all done legally.
What you think are the negative consequences of this scenario? What would happen and what are all the ways in which it would be harmful?
From a musician, a boycotter, and a non-filesharer (Score:4, Interesting)
I have not purchased one single CD in over two years. Why? Because I am tired of spending $18 on a CD with only one good song and the rest disposable rubbish. I am tired of reading that the cost of CDs has fallen below $0.50 in the last twenty years while the retail price has not. I am not happy that the industry has been convicted of price-fixing by the federal government. I see no reason to support RIAA labels until the retail price of a CD is more realistic.
I also do not participate in filesharing. Why? Because I am a working musician who believes that artists should be reimbursed for their hard work. My ethics don't agree with filesharing and they don't agree with the heavy handed tactics that the RIAA is raining down on filesharers.
Do I have your attention? That means I do not fit the argument that the RIAA has attributed fallen CD sales to piracy. I am the exception and I am not alone.
As a working musician, here is the root of the problem as I see it: musicians are being exploited and are being cheated out of their earnings through endentured slavery and corrupt accounting methods.
As a business man, the other root of the problem is that the RIAA wants to perpetuate a business model that doomed to oblivion and refuses to embrace the internet as a distribution channel.
Why? Bill, the major labels OWN the brick-and-mortar distribution channels, but they CAN'T own the internet distribution channel. It's not possible. They want a mafia-style death grip on their distribution and they would rather litigate and legislate away the "illegal" distribution channels on the internet.
My question is: when are the members of the RIAA going to drop their self-defeating barratry and focus on offering quality product?
bootleggers on the street (Score:3, Insightful)
Exposure (Score:5, Interesting)
What are the major differences between radio and file sharing?
If musical artists dream of getting played on the radio (because of the wonderful effects exposure has on an artist), why would an artist not also dream of having his/her songs being shared by millions of people around the world? Isn't the Internet just a vastly improved distribution and exposure mechanism?
Would the same concerns arise if radio was able to achieve the same quality as MP3?
To many of us, file sharing is more ethical than many traditional aspects of the music industry.
Licensing Fees and Lesser Known Artists (Score:3, Interesting)
This is relevant to recorded music as well; we know, for example, that we're already paying blank media taxes, whose proceeds are distributed in this way, and I think it's likely that schemes will be proposed for online distribution and peer-to-peer apps that mirror it.
Re:Never heard of you. (Score:2, Funny)
"Who are you? And why should I care? I mean, it's one thing to be a nerd who reads Slashdot all day, but are you known outside of your parent's house?"
Re:Never heard of you. (Score:2)
Re:Never heard of you. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Go Away (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Go Away (Score:2)
(Some|Most|All) of the music coming out these days has been destroyed in the mixing process to produce a louder radio sound... there was an article that about it recently: link [slashdot.org]
Re:ummm... (Score:2, Informative)
He is going to take one of two stances:
1) He likes file sharing but there needs to be a way to protect digital rights so record companies can make money.
2) He is againt file sharing.
At the end of this exercise what is he going to bring to the table?
I guess I was unaware of the ask a question so long as it's a sugar coated fluffy soft pitch of a question policy.
Slashdot (Score: -1, Censorship)
Re:Get The Lead Out (Score:2)