Gabriel and Eno Start Digital Music Artist Union 219
An anonymous reader writes "We have long heard stories about how the record companies cheat their own artists with audit techniques that would make Enron blush. They are already applying the same techniques to the revenues they draw from digital download sites like Apple iTunes, which is one reason many artists have refused to allow their music be sold through them (those who can control it at least). Looking to take a stand in the digital music arena before these practices become status quo Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno are starting a new union the "Magnificent Union of Digitally Downloading Artists" or MUDDA. Gabriel, co-founder of OD2 - an iTunes competitor - has that company as a first source to negotiate terms with the new union."
Peter Gabriel has a conscience (Score:5, Informative)
Simon
Re:Peter Gabriel has a conscience (Score:5, Interesting)
Credibility?
Lets look at OD2 od2 [od2.com]. Aside from the well documented "Damn, we ran out of bandwidth again" incidents every time they try to sign up another brand (msn, coke etc.), its survival has been due to selling shares in the company to the labels in order to gain rights. This has enabled the labels to dictate the DRM rules used, so EMI has different rules to BMG, and so some tracks allow burning and portable play, some don't. You have to carefully examine what you're buying. Then there's the cost, which is not much lower than a CD. So much for cheaper distribution.
Lets not forget it's all Windows Media, I've yet to see one of their branded stores allow MP3.
The BBC quotes him as saying (most musicians) "good at making music and not necessarily good at marketing". I'd suggest these days he's marketing and nothing else.
ODD that there's no OGG support (Score:2, Funny)
Wouldn't ODD be a simpler acronym?
Boo, no OGG support. We welcome the MUDDA initiative though.
Re:Peter Gabriel has a conscience (Score:5, Informative)
Look... there are thousands of independant labels out there putting out music that's just as good as (and often better than) the major labels. Not only that, but there are plenty of sites where you can learn about this independent music. The All Music Guide [allmusic.com] covers quite a few non-RIAA bands with tiny distributions. If you're not sure which bands are part of the RIAA, there's the RIAA Radar [riaaradar.com], which will tell you which bands/albums send money to the RIAA. As far as distribution, Forced Exposure [forcedexposure.com], In Sound [insound.com], and several other outlets (including the music download services) offer tons of RIAA-free music.
Personally, I'm very taken with these labels:
IDEA Records [idearecords.com]
Beta-Lactam Ring [blrrecords.com]
MEGO Records [mego.at]
Drag City Records [dragcity.com]
Here's my issue. The RIAA will die a slow, painful death. This is inevitable. Don't worry about it. Small labels are just as capable of recording, producing, packaging and (to a lesser extent) distributing music as the RIAA. If you, as a consumer, will do a little research, you can find a whole world of underground music -- sure it isn't on the commercial radio stations or MTV, but it will play in the same CD player that all your RIAA CDs play in. Nobody's really being locked out. It is very different in the software industry, but you all know abou that...
Re:Peter Gabriel has a conscience (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Peter Gabriel has a conscience (Score:2)
I wishs I was so optimistic. It does take some work to find the non-RIAA music. We live in a "give me convenience or give me death" culture. The vast majority will follow the path of least resistance. They will listen to ClearChannel radio to find music. Most people will not take the effort to find alternatives.
Re: Correct, but.... (Score:3, Insightful)
This runs counter to what music's all about in the first place. It should simply be heard and enjoyed.
There is lots of great "underground" music out there, and always will be - but it takes a certain amount of effort to dig through it to find what you like. Some people really enjoy the digging part itself. (Many people take
Re: Correct, but.... (Score:3, Funny)
I know! It's so much easier with the RIAA, because you already know it's all going to be absolute crap!
Re: Correct, but.... (Score:2)
Re: Correct, but.... (Score:2)
Re: Peter Gabriel has a conscience (Score:2)
Yes, but unfortunately success doesn't just depend on those things. The important thing, and as far as I can see the RIAA's main function, is promotion. Marketing. Advertising. Letting people know about the music, and making them want it.
Many (most?) people don't buy music for the music. They think they do, but they really buy it for the image, for the coolness value, for the
Re:Peter Gabriel has a conscience (Score:5, Informative)
They're doing it because it's fun, easy, and cheap.
And because they don't like leaving artists with nothing. 10%-odd royalties aren't much, but they sure are better than what the artists get through Kazaa.
Those are my reasons, anyway.
D
Good news.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not bashing it at all, I'd really love to see it succeed.
Re:Good news.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good news.... (Score:2, Funny)
> genre of OS login sounds.)
It certainly is a active, vibrant area of music, so he did well to earn your respect.
Re:Good news.... (Score:2)
Actually, Eno [furious.com] has been an inventor for a long time and made his loop machines himself. He used the loops to let peices build on their own in a chaotic manner. He still does installations [absolutearts.com] like those today. I bet he did get his hands on an old Mello or two occasionally though ;)
Re:Good news.... (Score:2)
Re:Good news.... (Score:2)
It doesn't need to "crush the RIAA" to succeed. It only needs to be profitable, or at least find a way to cover its own expenses.
Everything else follows after that.
-Ben
Seems artist are waking (Score:2, Interesting)
Good (Score:5, Interesting)
Give me quality music that is digitally available, rated through a balanced criticism system like Slashdot, that I can copy onto my systems and play as I like, and I will subscribe tomorrow.
Anyhow, I always liked Gabriel and Eno. Go, guys!
Re:Good (Score:2, Funny)
I ain't the only one laughing.
Re:Good (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Good (Score:2)
Too Many No-Talent Recordings (Score:4, Interesting)
It is the reason that the music industry and record business exists as it does in its present form. Primarily as a filter for junk music. As long as it costs real money to put commit music to an unalterable disk format and distribute these disks to the world, the music business will be needed as a junk filter.
For U-upload music websites, allow me to suggest a game of 'musical chairs'. This refers to a children's game in the USA (possibly other places also) where there are a row of chairs and a number of children who walk or run around the chairs while a piece of music is being played. There is one less chair than the number of children. When the music stops unexpectedly, the children try to sit on one of the empty chairs as quickly as possible. One child is left with chair and the contest begins again. The last child (the fastest child or biggest child) is the winner.
A website would accept only 100 recordings a day as a set. Each day ten would be removed from the set until only ten tracks remain. Those remaining tracks would be added to the permanent downloadable tracks of the website. People would vote as to which tracks would be allowed to remain listed. The junk and vanity noise tracks would quickly disappear.
People visiting the site could download an MP3 'sampler' of ten-second segments sampled from the middle of the hundred tracks.
It's an idea to deal with the problem of the vast amounts of junk music that would be uploaded to an open MP3 website.
Re:Too Many No-Talent Recordings (Score:5, Insightful)
Any filtering based on simple voting will be subject to the problem known as the tyranny of the majority. In fact, we are suffering that exact problem under the RIAA system today where $1 == 1 vote. All the mtv-brainwashed masses have a lot more dollars put together than the rest, which is why the market is dominated by pretty-boy-bands and tits-with-mouths soloists.
The marginal cost of disk space is so small as to make it effectively free. Bandwidth is almost as cheap as disk. So trying to use physical constraints (aka economics of scarcity) as a way to deal with the complexity of the content isn't a very good approach.
First, although you didn't directly comment on funding, let me get that out of the way: Charge the customers an "infrastructure fee" that covers maintaining the company, the basic facility. Then charge a per song fee that accurate reflects the marginal cost of disk space and bandwidth (i.e. really tiny) and then tack on top direct revenue to the band again per song as decided by the band itself. That should cover your costs and scale as large as could ever be needed.
Filtering or how to seperate the wheat from the chaff without throwing the baby out with the bathwater: The solution is collaborative or community filtering. Through player plugins or worst case, manual registration, you can set up a feedback system that makes recommendations by comparing each person's likes and dislikes with all other customers. Kind of like a way more sophisticated version of what Amazon does when you look at product X and at the bottom of the page it says, "People who bought X also looked at or bought A, B and C." There would be a couple of knobs to tweak about how tightly or loosely you want to track other people with similar listening preferences to avoid getting too insular. The more people contributing their playing habits back to the system, the wider ranging and more accurate it will get.
There is already one such system in existence today, for free. I did a quick search of feshmeat and couldn't find it, but if anyone else knows the links to projects like this, please follow-up with them.
Re:Too Many No-Talent Recordings (Score:2)
This is irony, right?
Re:Too Many No-Talent Recordings (Score:2)
Re:Too Many No-Talent Recordings (Score:2)
Why auto purge 10-90% each day though? If the site just deletes the worst 2 or 3% each time the storage gets close to full, whether it ends up purging three times an hour some days, or waiting a week other times, the end result will be almost the same, except you're not penalizing the musician who uploaded what would be a 90%+ on most days, but happened to come in on a day with excep
America's too profit-obsessed for it to work (Score:2)
a) Gives away lots of free music
and b) Treats bands fairly
isn't going to be as profitable as the crooks who run the RIAA (subject to the RIAA members controlling distribution like they do now of couse).
America's an all or nothing country. Record sales that would be considered a smashing success in Europe are considered a flop here. I blame the stock market system. Regardless of who gets the blame, it means stuff like mp3.com tends to break down over time. They
I'm sorry... (Score:2)
Just like Fox News... balanced and fair!
*dons flame-proof suit and ducks*
Just for the records (Score:5, Informative)
<smallprint>
female form. double "d"'s do not change the pronounce
</smallprint>
Re:Just for the records (Score:5, Funny)
Double "D"'s may not change the pronounciation, but it definately increases interest in the female form.
- ducking and covering -
Re:Just for the records (Score:4, Informative)
It could be worse... I bet in Klingon, it means "Eno sucks"
Re:Just for the records (Score:2)
Buck the norm... (Score:5, Insightful)
So where are Prince and Bowie? The four of them are the big names that are getting into this in a very constructive way and I think that they would be a powerhouse of influence.
Re:Buck the norm... (Score:5, Insightful)
He went Christian-Fundamentalist, so he can't make any more money, because he made all his money off of selling sexuality in the first place.
(he's reportedly VERY strongly against women's rights now - too bad, Nation of Islam missed out on another potential convert.)
Re:Buck the norm... (Score:2)
Don't forget Public Enemy... (Score:3, Interesting)
Chuck D was angry over the label telling him he could not post his own music and Polygram even threatened to sue if the tracks were not removed. This was before Mp3s and filesharing were in the press much. Here is a quote from Chuck D on the matter:
itunes at fault? (Score:3, Interesting)
Do I undertand that the problem is that the record companies are NOT passing the low manufacturing costs on to the musician? Or is it that Apple is doing something bad?
Re:itunes at fault? (Score:5, Informative)
With the major labels for instance, the artist might get something like ten cents per song sold. On the other end of the spectrum, an artist selling their music through CDBaby [cdbaby.net] gets something around 60 cents per song sold.
Re:itunes at fault? (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/33850.html
ITunes is really a big adveritisement for their IPod.
Re:itunes at fault? (Score:4, Interesting)
No, Apple doesn't make any PROFIT [bartleby.com] on the iTunes Music Store. However, they do take some money out of each sale to cover stuff like bandwidth costs, equipment costs, personnel, etc. These charges amount to approximately 30 to 35 cents of a 99 cent song.
Those charges are basically keeping Apple's costs for iTMS at near zero, really neither making them a profit or causing them a loss on the venture. Apple justifies this as a loss-leader (free advertising) for iPod sales. It's a good, solid strategy and one which seems to be working well for Apple.
The rest of the money goes to the record label who then gives some money to the artist according to how the contract was written. Some labels, such as CD Baby, give most of the money to the artist. Some labels only give a small percentage to their artists. Apple has nothing to do with how this portion of the money is handled.
Re:itunes at fault? (Score:2)
Global reach (Score:4, Informative)
Open auditability (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds Reasonable (Score:2, Interesting)
people who are selling it for you are crooks, you would find
someone else or do it yourself. The same as if you had
been ripped by a bad accountant or lawyer.
The mafia went straight, maybe there is hope for the RIAA.
And as an aside, I wouldn't pay a dollar for a song with
no physical medium when the artist is only getting a few
pennies of it. No way.
Re:Sounds Reasonable (Score:3, Interesting)
I hope these particular mainstream artists m
Need more "current" and "pop" artists involved (Score:5, Insightful)
The former provides more financial clout and the latter more name recognition and clout. Of course it stands to reason that wildly popular pop musicians are likely to think that the current system works since they're benefitting from it (despite the longer-term consequences) or lack the business savvy or "political" interest to do so.
But I don't think a poorly named initiative by two musicians whose careers, however successful, are largely over and done, is going to do much, since these artists aren't as much of a PR or business influence on the industry. But I do applaud the idea behind it, and think that they'd probably be better off funding a PR campaign hilighting the RIAAs bullshit accounting and police-state tacticts towards old ladies with iMacs.
MUDDA, Home of the Has-Beens (Score:2)
Could be worse. Joan Baez is working at a dinner theater in San Francisco. [zinzanni.org] Cher does infomercials.
Re:MUDDA, Home of the Has-Beens (Score:2)
That's odd. I figured they'd want to enlist the support of musicians, not media trainwrecks. What's she going to do, keep getting nose jobs until the RIAA sees the error of its ways?
Rhinoplasty for indie rock!
Re:Need more "current" and "pop" artists involved (Score:3, Insightful)
I like the music I like because I do. You like the music you like because you do. Don't start bashing people's tastes, even if they do like something you don't.
Elitism gets you nowhere in my book.
Re:Need more "current" and "pop" artists involved (Score:2)
--
In London? Need a Physics Tutor? [colingregorypalmer.net]
American Weblog in London [colingregorypalmer.net]
Is Britney Spears the new Brigitte Bardot? (Score:3, Insightful)
Every year Britney looks more and more like Bardot.
It brings to mind the observation by Camille Paglia that the entertainment and movie industry recycles the same 'personae' every generation. The same faces, bodies, character types keep reappearing in mass media with different names.
Re:Is Britney Spears the new Brigitte Bardot? (Score:2)
Perhaps the movie industry isn't really recycling personae, but just reflecting the variance of this basic reprod
Re:Is Britney Spears the new Brigitte Bardot? (Score:2)
--
Re:Need more "current" and "pop" artists involved (Score:2, Funny)
economics (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:economics (Score:2)
I think we are getting pretty close to the distribution channels they provide no longer being necessary. The internet has done a lot to help solve that problem. It's a lot easier to do with music, than many other things, say books for example. There is no (practicle) iPod for book.
Advertising, on the other hand, will always require a lot o
Re:economics (Score:2)
I agree with you there; Collaborative Filtering [shirky.com] and "smart mobs" are the way things will increasingly be done. It will take a while to get there though because it conflicts with the current money being made in top-down Command & Control mode vs. bottom-up, self-organizing emergence mode.
iRATE radio [sourceforge.net] is a great example of this. It adapts to your tastes in music over time, with no ClearChannel dictating the flavor of the month.
--
I suspect calls to MUDDA will be quite popular... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I suspect calls to MUDDA will be quite popular. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I suspect calls to MUDDA will be quite popular. (Score:3, Funny)
Fraternity of Artists of Digitally Downloaded Electronic Recordings
aka FADDER. Then in a joing assembly with both groups, the MC could start off by saying:
Hello MUDDER, Hello FADDER
Re:I suspect calls to MUDDA will be quite popular. (Score:2)
He got eatten, by a RIAA lawyer...
Artist Control vs. Consumer Control (Score:5, Interesting)
This MUDDA is an attempt to shift some control back to artists, particularly in the album vs. single arena. I understand the motivation, but I question the implementation. If artists really want that kind of control, let them either produce albums that are good enough induce consumers to purchase and consume them as whole ablums, or let them distribute a whole ablum as a single mp3 file, and let me decide whether or not to purchase it as such.
CDs (and LPs) have track segmentation and track listing to facilitate track-based consumption. A shift away from that consumer empowerment is nothing more than ceding power to artists. I am agnostic on whether this is overall good or bad, as certain albums are much better when consumed as such and not as discrete singles. I am reluctant however, to allow the artist to make that determination ex-ante. I'd rather do it myself.
Re:Artist Control vs. Consumer Control (Score:3, Interesting)
actually, artist and the good of the country.
the issues at hand is the the artisit loses control of hs/her work when they sign an agreement with label.
so the current issue is between the copyright holder, and the good of the country.
the original copyright was a good and fair deal.
I think only living entities should be able to own copyrights. Not representitves of something else.
I also think the should be extinguished After 14 year.
No man is an island.
Re:Artist Control vs. Consumer Control (Score:3, Interesting)
And that balance has been broken for quite a while now in the "IP Owners'" favor, which is why so few people respect it.
It's not all doom and gloom, though - I'm running across more and more websites that proudly proclaim that their stuff is licensed more fairly under CreativeCommons [creativecommons.org] (GPL-ish) licenses.
For someone to reject the status quo mindset of "All Rights Reserved! Perpetually MineMineMine!" in favor of the
Where's the OSS project? (Score:3, Insightful)
The ideal for a music label should be that someone with well-defined taste in music finds artists they like and tells consumers with similar tastes about them. Being a good person to run a label doesn't have anything to do with being good at programming or interface design.
Paying for the missing middle... (Score:3, Insightful)
(rant-on)
I'm reminded of my chain-smoking friend who insists he's a Democrat, yet with every pack he smokes he's contributing to the success of the Republicans he so despises. Say what you will, but in a corporate plutocracy (i.e., the new USA) you vote with your purchases, not your ballot. Organizations such as the RIAA are also behind the continuing assault on the public domain and the further restriction of your rights of ownership. The only way to stop such people from acquiring more power over your life is for you to *stop giving it to them* !
(rant-off)
Btw, I'm obviously not very savvy re: iTunes so I welcome any and all civil corrections to my assumptions.
Re:Paying for the missing middle... (Score:2)
I larger piece of the proceded goes to the artist when you buy through iTunes.
The format is very good. You can't tell the difference without special equipment.
I used it to get a hard to find album that would have cost me 18 bucks. so I saved 8 bucks, and this particular album didn't have mch in the way of 'extras'
I do wish I could download the cover of the CD, but that is certianly not worth 8 bucks. to me.
"...you vote with your purchases, not yo
Re:Paying for the missing middle... (Score:3, Funny)
Re: you don't have it straight, actually (Score:2)
But this aside, as people move to using digital music players more and more, purchasing music on CD becomes more inconvenient than useful. (You have to "rip" it to another format like MP3 before you can even use it.) I'm already to the point whrere my music CD collection exists merely as backup archives.
RIAA Making Their own Coffin (Score:4, Insightful)
A musicians union (Score:2, Interesting)
Time for Factory Again (Score:3, Interesting)
- Allow people to music music and make a buck.
- Don't tie artists into involuntary servititude contracts
In the end it killed Factory and the Hacienda, but at least they made some very good, and important, music before it died.
Who is the union... (Score:4, Funny)
Shut yo' mouth!
They just don't want the shaft.
Then we can dig it.
With appologies to everyone. Bye bye Karma.
Resaons to thank Peter Gabriel, in order (Score:5, Funny)
Good for musicians, are we still left out? (Score:2)
UDDA (Score:3, Funny)
cdBaby gets major digital distro 4 indie artists (Score:5, Informative)
If the artist so requests, CDBaby will also shop the CD to download services [cdbaby.net] like Rhapsody, BuyMusic, Emusic, the new Napster, AOL's MusicNet, and MusicMatch (no iTunes yet). The cool part is that CDBaby only takes 5% of what the download services pay them, passing on the rest, which is about 60 cents per track, to the artist, and when they do that [cdbaby.net] they forward the detailed accounting report to the artist.
This is great, CDBaby has an impeccable track record of honesty and fair dealing with the artists, and 60 cents is more per track than what the vast majority of signed artists get per entire CD. But the potential for accounting shenanigans perpetrated by the download services themselves is high. They could simply lie, or fail to correct some error in their accounting software, and the artist would be none the wiser. CDBaby already helps independant artists by harnessing the collective bargaining power of all its members, but the additional pressure and oversight of a union like Mudda could help keep the pressure on.
Re:cdBaby gets major digital distro 4 indie artist (Score:3, Interesting)
Artist Management Associations (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, there are two important things that need to be considered first. The main point - which addresses MUDDA is the idea of "artist management".
For the most part, in this country we have seen examples over and over again of artists "making it big" and either through their own mismanagement or being taken by others end up with nothing. The artists that can both perform and manage their business effectively are few and far between. I believe there are fundamentally different skills required, so a good business manager may not make a very good singer/songwriter/performer/etc.
The primary thing that the "record label" does isn't so much personal finance management for the artist, but manages the "business" of being a performer. This involves promotion, booking venues, sponsors and so on. One of the main reasons the "label" takes so much is that a lot of this activity is done before the first "big hit". If it never comes, then a lot was spent without anything in return.
Eliminating the "label" is certainly possible - you end up with lots of greedy business managers instead of having them all under one roof. Also, the promotional model changes a bit. Instead of signing on a number of artists with the hope that 1 in 5 or 1 in 10 makes it big, a manager basically says to come back when you have some money to pay. Today, this is how a lot of authors end up. Steven King doesn't have a lot of trouble finding a manager, but if you aren't known you aren't going to get someone to take your book to a publisher. You try yourself and maybe it gets published, maybe not.
Of course, this means that artists that have wads of money to start with can promote their stuff. We have all seen this in other areas, where some rich guy buys a magazine and can publish whatever he wants to. Usually goes bust in a while, but not always. It transforms it into an elitist club that only the wealthy can play at. I'm sure you know of at least one magazine like this.
Now MUDDA could provide promotional services for "their" artists. How does this make them any different from a record label? The big different 50 years ago was the ability to produce and ship records. Now, I am not sure I see the difference at all. Both fulfill the same function.
Then there is the second point. Why do artists need promotion at all? Isn't all this advertising just a waste of time because people will eventually find out about new artists on the Internet?
Yeah. Sure. At some point in the future where the words "digital divide" have passed into history. Important clue - not everybody that buys music is online. More importantly, not everyone is able to be online. For one reason or another, lots of folks don't have a full-time broadband connection at home or office. How do you reach these people? Offline promotion.
A lot of music is bought "on impulse", maybe after hearing it on the radio or playing in a mall. How did that happen? Promotion. Radio stations play what they are paid to play.
So, somebody has to continue to do the promotion of music. If an artist doesn't, their market penetration will be that of Gentoo vs. Windows. Will it be the artist doing that promotion directly? I doubt it very much.
Interesting start (Score:5, Interesting)
He also talks about artists giving away their product not making any sense and DRM almost in the same breath.
Not a promising start imho.
Labels Do Provide Important Services To Artists (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're talking about being a truly successful act, making the music is the easy part. It's getting people to buy it that's hard. It's great to have alternative methods to get your music out to people, but really, if there are ~54,000 bands on CDBaby, what are your chances of significantly increasing your sales simply by having your music there. It helps, but nothing like signing with a label.
Maybe, with critical mass online distribution will be able to have the exposure and clout the labels currently possess, but be careful, that's just putting the power of king-makers into different hands, that hopefully are more benevolent to the artist, but there is no guarantee they will be.
Re:Labels Do Provide Important Services To Artists (Score:2)
Stop giving up all right to your music ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Check out what Robert Fripp has to say and the DiciplineGlobalMobile label.
Chekc out http://www.disciplineglobalmobile.com/diary/
an excerpt:
Business imposes limitations and restrictions upon music and musicians. This is inevitable. But the mainstream music industry often, even mostly, determines and directs the music which is available to the public. Business may legitimately recognise areas of public interest which are not being addressed, but should not make musical choices for musicians. Neither should business apply pressure to make musicians conform to industry "common practices" and concerns. Industry agencies do this in a number of ways, some of which are honest and some of which involve lying, misrepresentation and threats, even corruption of the musician's better nature. Some are subtle and invidious. Some are blatant. Some are the result of an inexorable and ongoing embrace. They are rarely innocent.
We as a community have many freedoms because we are all willing to fight for them. Love him or not Richard Stallman has done a lot for this community and others like it. Someone needs to champion the music community in the same way
"a saviour coming out of the mud" (Score:3, Insightful)
[...]
"Gabriel said he could not understand big music stars that advocated free music downloads while accepting big cheques from record companies at the same time.
"After all, most artists depended on record sales for up to 60% of their income, he said.
"Only superstars could afford to give away their music for free, because they had other opportunities for making money."
MUDDA is doing their members a disservice by entrenching them in the 20th Century model. DRM and paid-only downloads just simulate the bottlenecks of distrubtion on physical media, with somewhat lower costs. The artists with "other opportunities for making money" need to be superstars to succeed in that model. But with free ($ & liberty) downloads, artists can achieve that status by aggregating widely distributed niches around the Net, at any time after the release (not just in the first few weeks). And the same infrastructure offers a level playing field for selling into those "other opportunities", to fairly compete with the superstars. The music consumer culture is changing with P2P and Net community/distribution - wearing the same T-shirt as every other metalhead is out, and obscure references to flashes in the video pan are in. MUDDA is better positioned than the old record weasels to ride that zeitgeist - if they squander it, they'll drag down their member artists while they fiddle on the deck with the rest of their Titanic industry, as their fans race for the lifeboats.
"The time I like is the rush hour, cos I like the rush
The pushing of the people - I like it all so much
Such a mass of motion - do not know where it goes
I move with the movement and
- Peter Gabriel: "I Have the Touch" [lyricsspot.com], _Security_
Gabriel mistaken? (Score:4, Insightful)
He seems to be talking about some "mid-level" artists or something. Most "unknowns" make almost nothing off record sales -- they make far more on live shows. Many of them can give the music away for free because it increases their listening audience, who go to their concerts and/or buy their merchandise (including paying for a better quality CD than downloaded mp3s). There's also the "older artist" category like Janis Ian [janisian.com] who also get the same increase in audience & sales by giving music away. So it's not just big stars.
Only the top .1% make money playing live (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Only the top .1% make money playing live (Score:2)
Put another way, suppose you can even sell a thousand CDs a year, making $1200. Then you must be
The iTunes Quandry: 13% v. 50% (Score:5, Informative)
For a CD sale the label pays the artist about 13% of wholesale, minus various charges like packaging deductions, to recoup against all advances. In a licensing scenario where, for example, a recording is synchronized in a movie or TV show, the labels pays 50% of revenue without any deductions.
The labels licensed some of their catalogs to Apple but want to treat that revenue like a CD sale at 13% and not as licensing revenue at 50%. That is why in large part some of the more popular artists with more leverage have been holding back on granting permission. It is also probably the major obstacle to record labels licensing for P2P sharing.
The whole thing will come to a head later this year when the record labels must issue royalty statements to the artists showing how they treated the iTunes revenue. Gabriel and Eno are organizing artists for that battle.
Music fans should be organzing too [clickthevote.org] .
A new meme on the way... (Score:2)
I forsee an explosion on the phrase "how can you compete with free"
23 listings on google right now for that EXACT quoted phrase.. I wager by years end it'll be on t-shirts...
When bands do it themselves...RIAA dies (Score:4, Interesting)
This is going to be the actual salvation of bands from the RIAA. Eventually, all the tools they need will be place so that they wont need the RIAA's "help".....they will be able to write, produce, distribute, (and this is the only part not yet complete: get PAID ) for everything they do. Shit, you dont even need actual musicians anymore for some types of music.
Think of enabling tech like GarageBand to be the beginning of the open source of music movement. Now, if Apple REALLY wanted to control the entire industry, he would invent a way for the indies to get paid going thru iTMS without the RIAA taxes. I'm sure that's going to get threatened in the next round of negotations between Apple and the RIAA as leverage for giving Apple more of a cut.
Cut off all the new bands all over the world from the RIAA's grip, using tools like iTMS and GarageBand like apps in the future - thats the way to kill a beast. Go, Go, Gadget Apple.
Is Gabriel Schizo or What? (Score:4, Interesting)
After all, most artists depended on record sales for up to 60% of their income, he said.
On the other hand...
Apart from being a successful musician, running his own record studio and the Real World record label, he is also active in the field of digital downloading.
So Gabriel can't understand other musicians doing the same thing he does? Mmmm-okay. I also don't know where he gets the idea that most artists get 60% of their income from record sales. Maybe a business-savvy few like himself and Madonna have recording contracts that don't eat up their royalties with expenses.
My issue is with this statement:
In the age of digital downloads musicians and the music industry have had to find a way of giving consumers what they want while securing revenue streams.
NO THEY DON'T have to secure their revenue streams. It would be perfectly fine if our culture changed so that musicians treated downloads as free advertising, rather than try to perpetuate the record company business model of getting money for each copy. We don't need the copy police and all the technical and legal restrictions being imposed on us for the benefit of a business model, no matter who is making the money.
Anyone else so geeky that... (Score:2)
Re:Just a bit.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Unions aren't good (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a couple of disadvantages to unions:
1) like any center of power, they tend to become controlled by those more interested in power than anything else.
2) maintaining a union isn't a cost-free activity. There is significant overhead.
3) unions get their power by uniting the labor force, so people who don't feel that the union is fairly representing them tend to be abused
OTOH:
1) the center of power that the union represents is generally less than that of the company, so it tends to be less corrupt
2) every action in a system has it's costs. Unions create a focus of power intended to balance against an alternate center of power, but most of the participants aren't interested in balance, they want to win. This creates excess cost above the minimum necessary.
3) the classes of people who are abused by the union were abused more by the company powers before the union existed. (A sour truth to the people the unions doesn't adequately support, but a truth.)
Now my sources are personal, so I can't share them with you. But they are from people who lived through the period that the unions were being formed. And they weren't pro-union groups. My grandfather was an independant contractor, an unsuccessful farmer (he wasn't a good farmer, so he kept earning money as an electrician, returning to his farm, and loosing it, etc.)
If there's a lot of free space, then there are (moderately) good arguments against unions, and against welfare for the non-handicapped. People can homestead and work the land. (You have to grow up with the right skills, but that's part of the environment.) OTOH, when everything is owned by someone else, the only thing you have is power politics, and you are at the low end of the pole. This means you organize legally to ensure a decent life, or you act illegally to do the same thing. You figure the costs, and act on that. Unions are one way of society making it reasonable to choose the legal path.
Actually, there is evidence, though hardly conclusive it's slightly stronger than merely suggestive, that this is well understood by the government. Before the recent decades of "crackdown" on "crime" they took steps to make the slave labor of prisoners profitable to certain manufacturers. (I suppose it's one way to compete against jobs being outsourced overseas.) And in California, at least, the Prison Guards' Union has one of the strongest lobbying groups in the state. Considerably stronger than the Teachers' Union.
Simple pronouncements in this area bespeak ignorance, so I'll avoid one. It sure would be nice to come up with an answer that didn't, by creating a new centralization of power, start the cycle of problems all over again. But merely noticing that there are problems doesn't qualify as a solution. And clearly there isn't a good side, as every group is madly struggling to win on it's own terms. For some it's for survival, for others it's due to greed, but it's the struggle that's most destructive, and to me this appears due to the existence of large centralizations of power. (Lesser centralizations cause lesser problems, and at that point other problems begin to dominate.)
Re:Unions aren't good (Score:2)
And thank fuck for that, from my POV. Had
Re:Unions aren't good (Score:2)
Sweden has something like 90% unionized workers. They also have 5 weeks of paid vacation.
The USA has less than 15% unionization, they have 2 weeks of paid vacation.
I think most workers would prefer the former.
Say whatever you want about employer conditions, but Sweden hasn't exactly degenerated into a third-world nation, has it?
Re:Unions aren't good (Score:2)
Re:Once it was written on the subway wall: (Score:2)
Sorry ainsoph that someone modded that offtopic. The youngsters here have no idea what you are talking about lol.