Gene Simmons Blames College Kids For Music Industry Woes 860
drcagn writes "Gene Simmons has blasted 'college' kids and claims that they have destroyed the music industry, with the labels also to blame for not properly suing them out of existence when they had the chance. When asked about Radiohead and Trent Reznor's recent support of a different direction in music distribution, he says "that's not a business model that works. I open a store and say 'Come on in and pay whatever you want.' Are you on f---ing crack?" When asked about music being free and making money off of merchandise, he says, "The most important part is the music. Without that, why would you care?" even though earlier in the interview he brags that he believes that KISS's merchandise is more profitable than Elvis's or the Beatles.'"
Well, he's over 40. (Score:5, Funny)
"If you're not a Liberal when you're 18 you have no heart. If you're not a Conservative by the time you're 40, you have no brain." --Winston Churchill (at least according to the first Google hit I found).
Re:Well, he's over 40. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Well, he's over 40. (Score:5, Informative)
Capitals? (Score:5, Insightful)
In any case the quote has always annoyed me... but not as much as the conservatives who quote it (with a "when you're older and wiser, you'll come around" attitude about them). As I'm getting older I'm paying more attention to politics and getting more involved, and probably even more liberal than I was at 18.
I've also taken it to mean that when you're 40, you have money and property you want to be greedy about and protect, and so don't care as much about the welfare of your fellow man. Likewise I'm better off than at 18, and it sure doesn't deter me from wanting to make the world better overall.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
ah, so protecting your money and property is now greedy? i guess you'd freely give up what money and property you own because you're not "greedy", right?
Re:Capitals? (Score:5, Insightful)
Would I give up some of my money to support a sensible plan to improve the overall standard of living in my nation? You betcha! Voila une liberal!
Re:Capitals? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Capitals? (Score:5, Insightful)
> your money under the guise of improving the standard of living in your nation.
Eh, I'm lucky enough to have a comfortable income, so yeah, I pay a good bit. But then,
I get a top-notch highway system, a federally insured system of banks, police and
fire protection, my food and water are relatively safe, my workplace is held up to
a minimum saftey requirement... All in all I think I am getting a pretty good deal.
If we had all the money back that we've flushed down the Iraq toilet, who knows what
all nifty stuff I'd be getting for my investment in this nation?
Taxes and agression (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't assume that you're getting all that stuff from federal income tax. Most of that is allocated to paying off loans, so you're actually mostly servicing the banks, not The People.
All those nifty civilized things your tax money gets that don't count as usury or murderous are primarily coming from the plethora of other less obvious taxes: property, goods/services, state income tax, etc.
Yeah, I wonder just how effective half a trillion dollars would be if applied to international pro-democracy propaganda, educational support programs, donations to civil society, and even providing support for local pro-democracy institutions? You know, empowering local Iraqis and Afghanis to rise up and build an equitable system from the grassroots? I'm guessing 500 billion bucks buys a lot of freedom using non-violence-- if that's actually your goal. It's ten times the domestic annual education budget, so one could easily double the domestic budget, and 'educate' the world too.
Here's what Americans would have gotten out of such a radical foreign aid approach: goodwill, security, credibility, a stronger domestic civil sector, more freedom at home, less fear and twisting of the national political culture. Less opportunity for kleptocrat fascism at home. Very likely, actual modern democracies in target countries. A safer world, a smaller american military, fewer overseas bases and invasion forces. Less money and power flowing into Halliburton, Lockheed et.al., and a different track for the future, one that doesn't need FEMA preparing for martial law.
Re:Capitals? (Score:4, Insightful)
Look around, stores full of valuables are protected by no more than a mere sheet of very breakable glass, foreigners walk the streets, people come and go peacefully and in good health busying themselves to their various affairs.
Paved roads to every house!
Electricity lighting every street!
Clean water, hot or cold, at my whim!
Garbage picked up twice a week! Streets swept!
The city bus rolls around predictably for out convenience...
My nation's standards of living are pretty fucking awesome, I just walked to the fridge to get some frikkin' milk and honey for my coffee, my feet warm on a cold autumn day: It's like I'm living in the promised land of legends!
Re:Capitals? (Score:5, Informative)
That's not to say it shouldn't be cheaper, or that there isn't plenty of waste, but I personally think that doctors and researchers should be paid well, I think that we should have very good (read: expensive) people managing all the systems involved, and I am willing to pay for the safety and the new technology.
Universal healthcare, or health insurance in general isn't about making healthcare cheaper, but rather about making the people with Jaguars subsidize the inherently high cost of healthcare for those with Kias.
A great universal healthcare system would reward hospitals who successfully improve efficiency without impacting quality, but and acceptable universal healthcare system will not worsen efficiency and provide affordable healthcare to poorer americans, because we find value in our working class not dieing of cholera.
Re:Capitals? (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, because I've always interpreted it as:
The older you get, the more you understand the value of your own labour and the more benefits you have to show from it. Hence, when older, you're far more likely to care about the government taking it from you and people like you.
Re:Capitals? (Score:5, Informative)
It's not a deep nugget of wisdom. It was a clever insult. Best not to read too deeply into it.
But then, those who are using it are probably not the best judges of brains anyway:
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=112 [winstonchurchill.org]
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The older I get, the more I see how people who benefit from the system are not the ones doing the labor; the more I see that capitalism rewards parasitic investors, gamblers, the children of the wealthy, and the rapers of the land.
To take music as an example, the older I get,
Re:Capitals? (Score:5, Insightful)
People don't passively starve in the street. They will try to find food. A large population of people who can't afford food is a serious problem, not because the more fortunate will have to step over them in the gutter, but because the more fortunate will come home to find that they've been robbed. Right now it's a truism that people don't steal to afford food...That's because they don't have to, because the government provides it.
Likewise education. A well educated populace makes a better workforce, military, and tax base. What benefits the economy benefits most the people who have the largest stake in it: the rich.
Health care. What do you think happens when a guy with no insurance walks into the emergency room with a legitimate emergency? Well, in LA, they let 'em die on the floor [sfgate.com] but in most places they treat them anyway and eat the cost. This person can't get the sort of routine care that would keep them out of the emergency room, but they can get the sort of massively expensive care that you get from the emergency room. That cost gets passed to the hospital, and then down to the first guy who walks through the door who CAN pay.
There are a lot of things in society that have a cost. The hardcore conservative really believes that those costs don't exist...Everything would be just the same if they didn't have to pay for the damn poor people. Hardcore liberals? I don't know what the hell they believe in. Fairies? I don't know. They tend to push the right thing, but for the wrong reasons...Fuzzy relativist ethics rather than simple economics.
The simple truth of it is that it is a lot better for society to shoulder costs like education, care for the disabled, workfare, etc, because if society doesn't shoulder the cost, then individuals have to shoulder the costs and that generally causes problems itself and results in a less effective solution. It's fair to talk reform, but don't try to pretend like the problem is the fact that the government spends money, while ignoring the reality of what would happen if they didn't.
Re:Capitals? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm over 40, care about the welfare of my fellow man, and try to do my part to make the world better. However, I don't want to take other people's stuff against their will to do it. I use my own time, talent, and treasure. That is the key difference between liberal/conservative and libertarian (in the US context), though many don't want to emphasize that.
Several years ago I saw a long interview of Michael Kinsley (by Bill Buckley I think). Now, I couldn't disagree more with most of Kinsley's positions, but I respected his thinking as consistent and principled. He was quite open about his assumption that it was the proper and desirable function of government to redistribute wealth to achieve good outcomes.
Try to get such a straight answer from a Republican or a Democrat today on the underlying principles of his political ideology. You might get a vague nod in that direction from a Democrat, but he will make sure the voters know that he only wants to take stuff from "the rich," which is always defined as someone who has more money than the voter. Worse yet, the Republican will lie their tails off, claiming to want to "let the taxpayer keep his money," all the while redistributing money for everything from sugar subsidies to bridges to nowhere.
Re:Capitals? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Offcourse you say that, you're a child. All children believe that. Once you grow up and get a little wiser, you will stop believing that."
This is attacking the messenger rather than the message.
It's also insulting. It states flat-out that "Anyone who disagrees with me, has no brain."
But they DON'T... :-) (Score:5, Insightful)
I never liked KISS.
Yeah, honestly. (Score:3, Insightful)
I didn't read the article (sue me), but I have never found "are they on crack" to be a logically-sound attack or defense for an argument. Sounds like he can't get his head around the peculiarities of digital distribution, nor the reasons why such peculiarities could potentially make such a business model functional. Even if it turns out that this business model is
Gene Simmons knows business ... (Score:4, Insightful)
That is a fairly ignorant statement, personal opinions regarding his music prove nothing. If anything, a quick investigation of his career should demonstrate that he is highly intelligent and highly successful in areas of business.
Besides, doesn't the evidence prove him correct? Bands that were incredibly well known and highly regarded, thanks to the promotion of those evil record companies executing that old business model, chocked while experimenting with a new business model. What do you think will happen to new and unknown bands? Face it, artists have always needed sponsors, the royalty and churches in the past, the record companies in more recent times. Support directly from fans yields merely subsistence in the optimistic scenarios.
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Re:Well, he's over 40. (Score:4, Insightful)
You do that by not spending half your tax revenue on the military, like the US does.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=374518 [google.com] (Thanks to another poster earlier in the thread.)
Re:Well, he's over 40. (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, to put it more succinctly, FUCK GENE SIMMONS!
Re:Well, he's over 40. (Score:5, Insightful)
He's like the guy who still owns (exclusively) an eight-track player in a world of people who use iPods and compact discs. They fail to see innovation even when it's staring them right in the face.
He may criticize Radiohead's selling approach, but you can't argue with the results. How much did Radiohead's album make in revenue? The non-standard selling method itself probably generated them a ton of publicity that they wouldn't otherwise have had.
I honestly think a band like KISS could get away with giving their music away for free, since they have other avenues available to them to make a crapload of money. (Live shows and merchandising, for starters.) They should be distributing the music as a promotional tool, rather than having it be the revenue-generator itself.
These artists need to learn to stop shooting their mouths off against the very people who support them. I completely support boycotting all major label artists, but artists like this in particular REALLY, REALLY deserve it. (Sadly, we all know that many people will continue to support artists like this, because they're pathetic fanboy lemmings who cluelessly follow their favorite artists wherever they go.)
Re:Well, he's over 40. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well, he's over 40. (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole system is screwed up.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Aside from correcting your facts, I'd like to point out that art has an important part in our lives as humans. Music in particular can have profound emotional effects on listeners.
Go ahead, try to make a living as a musician, I dare you. A handfull make it big, and the rest just get by.
Re:Well, he's over 40. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Spot on. If you caught the Henry Rollins show where he was interviewed, it becomes plain to see. Gene Simmons doesn't make music; he makes money. The music is merely a tool to get to the money.
What he doesn't realise, however, is that sometimes you have to give up a little bit to make more. In business, it's called a loss leader. You give away a little something, or sell
Re:Well, he's over 40. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Well, he's over 40. (Score:5, Informative)
I had a thing or two to say about 8-tracks a couple of years ago in Good Riddance to Bad Tech [kuro5hin.org].
I honestly think a band like KISS could get away with giving their music away for free, since they have other avenues available to them to make a crapload of money
He works for the record company, and has worked for the record company for almost 40 years. You badmouth your employer at your own risk.
I have always been amused by Lynard Skynard's Working for MCA, especially the verry beginning of the song - it starts out with the buzz of an ungrounded amp, and it's obvious (to me anyway) that they put that there on purpose.
I never heard the CD version, is the buzz still there? From all the bad remixing for CD I've heard in various RIAA fare, I'd bet it's gone.
-mcgrew [mcgrew.info]
Re:Well, he's over 40. (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not a fan of Radiohead. They've made precisely THREE songs I like. (For the record those are "Just", "Paranoid Android" and "Everything In Its Right Place"). I will never buy a Radiohead CD. However, with "In Rainbows", I slung them a few bucks to A) support the creativity of the new business model, B) Metaphorically give the RIAA the finger, and C) Maybe discover that Radiohead are actually quite good. (In actuality I'd say "In Rainbows" did nothing to make me a fan. However I did get to support a band directly, and for the $4 or so I threw in their direction, there's a couple of songs I really like.)
When Reznor gets around to releasing his next work I'll be supporting that as I am a massive fan of NIN and have been for 15 years now.
Simmons has no credibility anyway. Kiss have licensed their music for toothbrushes for christs sake. I see them advertised on TV. As you clean your teeth, the brush plays music. The advert shows a kid brushing his teeth while a Kiss song plays.
Bill Hicks put it far better than I could. "Here's the deal, folks. You do a commercial - you're off the artistic roll call, forever. End of story. Okay? You're another whore at the captialist gang bang and if you do a commercial, there's a price on your head. Everything you say is suspect and every word that comes out of your mouth is now like a turd falling into my drink."
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If I ever build a time machine the first thing I will do is bring "rock" artists from the past so they can see themselves in the future and hopefully beat the shit out of their future self. I'll start with KISS and Metallica
Re:Well, he's over 40. (Score:5, Interesting)
Rather than blasting Simmons as being an irrelevant wanker, I think there's a more useful observation.
The business model of music distribution is changing. It's not really a debateable issue anymore. It's just a fact. But changing to what?
I think Radiohead went overboard. There is not a valid business model when you say, "Pay whatever you want". If you disagree with this conclusion than consider how you will respond when your employer or customers decide they will start paying you whatever they want to and if that's not enough for rent, too bad for you. It's no way to make a living.
But what is important here is the Radiohead has demonstrated that you can make a lot of money selling CD's for really cheap once you manage to get rid of the pimp-ish middleman known as the record industry. The record industry used to have a stranglehold on all things related to radio play, music sales, concert promotions, and other product sales (shirts and posters). But so far, the internet has demonstrated a means for the bands, with a little effort on their part or someone far less expensive than the RIAA, to provide music sales and product sales via the internet. Now all they need to do is set up a means of doing concert promotions and (most importantly) radio play. Without the radio play, they have a hard time getting anything else going.
The Recording Industry must realize by now that their original business model is a bust. This is supported by their efforts to sue rather than change or adopt. But they are also losing a lot of the legal battles. You can analogize this to Monopoly busting or even Union busting.
The future of the Recording Industry may look something like this: A much smaller industry in terms of people employed with a more passive role of providing the framework for bands to connect to concert halls, stores, and radio stations and allow the radio stations, concert halls, and stores to determine their own purchase volumes and schedules. More like the NYSE in that people bid/buy resources based on demand in their geophraphic and demographic areas.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Well, he's over 40. (Score:5, Insightful)
Performers have been dancing a playing on the street corners ever since there were streets and corners. Throw out a hat and start playing.
You don't need a penny,
Just to hang around,
But if you've got a nickel,
Won't you lay your money down.
Now we have the internet. The corner just got really big and really busy, and those nickels start adding up really fast.
Re:Well, he's over 40. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nonsense. When you get right down to it, virtually every business transaction follows this model -- it's just that we typically look at it from the seller's point of view rather than the buyer's point of view. Think about it. If you need a widget, do you obiently pay whatever the widget seller demands? No, of course not. You decide what you're willing to pay for the widget, and if the seller won't give it to you for that price or less you look for another seller or simply live without the widget. The bottom line is that you're not going to pay more than you're willing to. The reason we look at it from the seller's point of view is that the supply of widgets is limited, which means the seller doesn't necessarily need to sell to you, only to enough people that he can sell all of his widgets. But when you're talking about a digital product in the modern world, the supply can be unlimited. Once an unlimited supply is available, the seller has no choice but to accept whatever people will pay, even if that's nothing. You don't want to give it to me free? Fine, I'll go to someone who will. The software industry has, to some extent, figured out how to deal with this -- just look at the number of people making a living off free software -- but the entertainment industry is still trying to control the price of what has become essentially an infinite resource. I can't imagine they're going to succeed any more than they would if they tried to put a price on sunlight, but regardless they're in exactly the same position they would have been in 50 years ago if they priced records too high -- if they demand more than people are willing to pay, sales will suffer.
Of course, with the current legal campaign it's difficult to tell just how much a "free" movie or song will really cost. But then, between DRM, rootkits, and the claims by some in the *AAs that ripping/copying for personal use is not fair use, it's also difficult to tell just how much a CD or DVD will ultimately cost. I, for one, am not willing to take on this cost uncertainty, so I don't download and I have pared my 100 CD/year habit down to almost zero.
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Gene Simmons was never relevant, and neither are Radiohead and Reznor. They're just songwriters and musicians. None of them ever changed the world, and I doubt many peoples' lives would have been any different if these guys had never been born.
John Lennon was relevant. Beethooven was relevant. In a hundred years nobody will have ever heard of Resnor, Radiohead, or Kiss.
-mcgrew [mcgrew.info]
PS- Kiss made good music. So does Resnor. If it rocks it
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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Grab your boots! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Well, he's over 40. (Score:4, Insightful)
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=374518 [google.com]
The original quote is a quite a bit older than Churchill, and the flavour of it is also quite different. The one you quoted is quite butchered, and says something else entirely from what the original meant to convey.
Thanks to an anonymous poster for digging that link out earlier.
I have no brain (Score:3, Insightful)
A liberal wants you to give your money to the government so the government can give it to the poor.
A conservative wants you to give your money to the government so the governmnet can give it to him. He says he's against taxes, but he's only against himself paying taxes. If you don't pay yours he's up in arms.
The guy you see risking his life and spending his sweat to build that road isn't getting the government money. His employer sits bac
Re:I have no brain (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That a statement like that runs up to +5 without an appropriate rebuttal is a crying shame. So the restaurant owner who built the restaurant, bought the deep-fryer and other kitchen equipment, and pays the cook, isn't creating wealth by his actions? The factory owner who invests tens
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's against making money and the pursuit of wealth into an idol, but it's not intrinsically anti-capitalist. Take the story of Anias and Sapphira in Acts for example. They sold a field for profit and gave some of the proceeds to the church, but lied about how much. What was their sin? If capitalism was wrong, you'd think they would be criticised
amusing (Score:5, Interesting)
In other news of the worthy for Gene and his ilk - water is wet amazingly enough.
Re:amusing (Score:5, Interesting)
The industry's only hope of recovering is to realize that their model needs to change to reflect current trends. I am in college and while I have downloaded music for free occasionally, I know a lot of people that do not. What I have also noticed is that regardless of whether people I know download or not, very few buy new music on CDs anymore. Some just listen to old (70s, 80s) music, and others I would assume can't afford to buy it. But whatever the reason, the younger generation seems to be saying to the industry "hey industry, we are no longer interested in the product you are offering and/or the way that you are offering it".
So, instead of attempting to find out why this has taken place and shift their focus to offering a product that the market does want and will pay for, they have instead attempted to force continuation of the antiquated distribution mechanisms through litigation. This is a strategy that will ultimately end in failure, for obvious reasons which are too numerous to list. The real question is whether the industry will realize this and adapt before they go totally bankrupt. I suspect they will not and it will thus take the dissolution of the current structure before any permanent future strategy can be designed. It may have already been realized to some extent with the current increase in non-DRM digital outlets, although I am not sure if any of the current ones represent the final form of what the market is demanding.
Of course, there is another more insidious element of the industry's "kicking and screaming" approach and that is the efforts they have taken to buy off the legislature. If they can succeed in getting their non-economically viable business models made mandatory by forcing them upon us as the law of the land, then it will take significantly longer for the questions of future distribution models to be worked out.
Re:DAT as a historical example (Score:4, Interesting)
Not that I don't believe you, a quick look at the Wikipedia pages on DAT and SCMS (DRM used on DAT) mentions RIAA actions - but honestly, I never knew about it or noticed it at the time. Until you mentioned it and I looked it up, I actually had no clue that DAT even had a form of DRM - I used it solely for original recordings.
A quick explanation for those that don't know - DAT is a digital audio tape, using PCM and roughly the size of a regular audio cassette. ADAT is similar, but uses something the size of a VHS tape and is capable of recording/playing 8 channels - until digital audio workstations and interfaces were common ADAT was the de facto standard for use in multitrack recording.
Thanks for bringing that up, it brought me back to a time many years ago, and taught me a few things along the way
Re:DAT as a historical example (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, I'd say that would be a great job - just having to push a button or two and change a tape every hour or so - but because of FCC regulations against broadcasting dead air, they actually had to listen to the crap that was being broadcast to make sure everything was working as it should. Poor sap.
Well, that, and I had actually had a job where I was paid to sleep 7 out of 8 hours a day unless there was an emergency. Kind of hard to beat that, even if the pay was horrible.
just read this guy's wikipedia (Score:5, Interesting)
In a later Fresh Air interview, satirist Al Franken related to Terry Gross his own encounter with Gene Simmons. According to Franken, he was awaiting a racquetball partner at a club when Simmons, whom Franken had not recognized, challenged him to a match, stating "I'll kick your ass" only to suffer an embarrassing loss to Franken. Simmons responds by calling for another match and when Franken indicates that since his racquetball partner has arrived, he can't play Simmons again, Simmons responds by making loud "bock, bock, bock" chicken sounds. Franken then offers to play Simmons with $500 at stake, at which Simmons walks away.[3][4]Franken tells Terry not to blame herself for her experience with Simmons, and that Simmons behavior at the racquetball made him "the most awful person I've ever met."
Re:just read this guy's wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
At any rate, it's fairly obvious that he doesn't know what he's talking about. And it is odd that someone who has made the overwhelming majority of his "music-industry" money from things other than album sales would take such a vehement stance against the newly emerging models for the music industry. But it's clear from the example he gave that he doesn't understand the market. He equates what Radiohead did with "Opening a store and saying 'Come on in and pay whatever you want,'" but his example is comparing brick and mortar stores (expensive to open and mainatain) with a web-based distribution service (much cheaper, much less overhead). The two business models (the one he expressed and the one that Radiohead tried) are completely different.
What might be more interesting would be his response upon finding out that Radiohead made at least as much money from their With Rainbows experiment than they have from traditional album releases, and that there's still a "special edition" CD to be released and sold yet. My guess (based on Gene's past behavior) is that he wouldn't care. He's very focused on making money at every opportunity, and I suspect that the notion of an unpaid download offends his sensibilities, even if the system is still generating more revenue for him than the traditional model.
Don't even get me started about his stupid comments like "Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid's face should have been sued off the face of the earth." Nothing like trying to sue your customers out of existance. After all, it worked for SCO.
Re:just read this guy's wikipedia (Score:4, Interesting)
I know people who bought all of Loki's games, even if they didn't like some of them, because they wanted to support a new company that was catering to something they wanted. How many people threw a few dollars at Radiohead, even if they don't like Radiohead's music, just because they're one of the first big bands to do this ? When every band does it, you'll lose that factor because it's not something special anymore.
Radiohead also already benefited from the existing recording establishment... They were backed by a music distributor who made sure they got on the radio and MTV, that the right professionals were managing their tours, etc. Would people care about Radiohead's new album (in such a large quantity) if they weren't already established as a AAA band? I don't see people dumping millions on the quality bands I see locally who offer their stuff online.
My regional grocery store chain is cutting back the number of brands they offer for any given particular product because "people get confused when they have too many options." If you go from having 100 choices for music to having 100,000, you probably won't even know where to start looking for what you want to hear. Yeah, it'll be cheaper than the current model, but assuming 95% of it is crap, you're filtering out 5 albums out of 100 versus 5,000 out of 100,000.
In short, I don't think the business model has proven itself on an industry wide scale based on Radiohead's experience (which is the optimal experience, rather than the median experience).I think the traditional companies can still provide a benefit in the internet age, but they're going to have to adapt (they could theoretically separate the wheat from the chaff and narrow down that huge selection to the 5,000 good ones for you) and they aren't going to have the margins they used to take anymore (so they'd better make sure they're getting you the wheat).
Krispy Kreme and ol' Gene (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, besides being a greedy bastard.
Disclaimer: I do not read EW -- I just remembered that quote from a guitar magazine awhile back
Music's dead? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Music *industry* woes".
Music, itself -- the part that involves people getting up on stage and singing/playing/whatever, and maybe selling recordings if they're good enough -- is doing just fine.
People still write songs and play them, and will keep on doing so independent of the success or failure of any particular method by which others profit off of them.
Re:Music's dead? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the same sense, people are still going to make music even if every label closed tomorrow and no one ever sold another cd. Obviously this is an exageration but the point remains the same. If every single comercial avenue of music closed down there would still be people making music.
Re:Music's dead? (Score:5, Insightful)
Today is a new world. Certainly within music, noone needs the _industry_. Producer and consumer are able to communicate directly via the internet. The industry's contribution is to insert themselves in the process for the purpose of taxation, which serves only them. Without them, the tightness of the feedback loop (consumer is able to give their feedback immediately after downloading the album and the musician is able to take those comments on board and may choose to alter their approach (or not), moments after reading it) is surely going to lead to everyone being a whole lot happier.
Radiohead and Reznor are demonstrating this; surely that obvious, even to someone who paints their face?
Anyhow.. it's painful to watch the industry-formerly-profiting-from-music die (and it's putting up a great fight), but die it will. If we stop feeding it, that will help.
Say hello to tomorrow
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
noone needs the_industry
I wouldn't say that no one needs them. Surely musicians can't tour as extensivly without financial backing or have the same promotion without a label. While radiohead and reznor can self promote and distribute themselves, how many other bands can boast the same? Don't take this to mean that I am whole-heartedly supporting label but I do think they serve a purpose.
Labels form and they search for talented, undiscovered acts to sign that while they may already be popular in their own sense, get much more
Re:Music's dead? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know what motivates musicians, but knowing enough young visual artists, when they start out, most of them are ambitious, just want to make an impact on the world, and make their living doing what they love which doesn't necessarily mean making a fortune. Making an impact seems to be especially important to them -- although I don't know if that's just intended as a road to money.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No, the stuff Kiss and Simmons put out first time was 'second rate crap that was not good enough to put out the first time'. These box sets are surely third rate crap that it would have been criminal to put out the first time.
Re:Music's dead? (Score:5, Interesting)
When someone plays music, it benefits people who listen to the music as well as the producers. In an ideal world, people who listen to the music would prefer to pay the musician for extra music then have no extra music at all. So in order to achieve socially optimal music production, artists need to be compensated for the utility they bring listeners.
To some extent, this is done by the prestige and fame system, but this seems to create rather curious incentive structures and marginal effects.
Not that this justifies the RIAA stance, there is quite a bit of evidence that our copyright system actually discourages production by allowing artists to live off the earnings of previous songs. Even if it is against the immediate interests of listeners and artists, we need to create an incentive structure that is best for society.
Personally, I think that we should reduce copyright times to 4 years, as research has shown that period maximizes the incentive to produce music. Marketing can be expensive, so sometimes musicians will release their music free, but that is their choice. At the same time, fines for downloading copyrighted materials should be decreased drastically, to about two times the purchase price, so that the dispute can be handled in small claims court, minimizing transaction costs.
From the department of redundancy department (Score:4, Funny)
Seriously. There is a story about this on Slashdot at least every other day with no actual new legal/economic/industry developments, resulting in the exact same comments and arguments rehashed. Yes, I know I can just ignore it. Yes, I must be new here. But what's wrong with some constructive criticism of Slashdot?
FWIW I think the only way we'll see the stories disappear is if we stop reading and commenting on them (which means /. loses ad revenue and will stop posting them).
Re:From the department of redundancy department (Score:5, Funny)
Standard
This story is Burnt out, over the hill musician doesn't understand how the world is changing
Re:From the department of redundancy department (Score:4, Funny)
Pity he's not writing any new music (Score:5, Funny)
Fine and sue all nite (Score:5, Funny)
You keep downloading and your disk gets hot
You drive us wild, we'll go sue crazy
We'll twist the facts till they go in a spin
The lawsuits just begun, we'll get you in
You drive us wild, we'll go sue crazy
You keep on shoutin', you keep on shoutin'
I wanna obey the law all night, and not get sued every day
I wanna obey the law all night, and not get sued every day
I wanna obey the law all night, and not get sued every day
I wanna obey the law all night, and not get sued every day
We keep on saying you'll be fined in a while
Smoking crack and opening shops just ain't my style
You drive us wild, we'll go sue crazy
Our lawyers demand everything you've got
Baby, baby thats quite a lot
And you drive us wild, we'll go sue crazy
You keep on shoutin', you keep on shoutin'
I wanna obey the law all night, and not get sued every day
I wanna obey the law all night, and not get sued every day
I wanna obey the law all night, and not get sued every day
I wanna obey the law all night, and not get sued every day
Nothing new here (Score:5, Insightful)
Cooper was better anyway (Score:3, Insightful)
Luckily I don't know enough Kiss to fit 'sue' into a song title. Slow news night, I guess.
The richer they are (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know much about Kiss, but I imagine he's getting to that age where he wants to tour less (and thus make less merchandise sales) and thus would like to live off royalties.
But... he's totally right! (DRM or prosecution?) (Score:3, Insightful)
And I think he's generally right that pirates need to be taken to court and prosecuted. This is a far better alternative than DRM, which hurts legal users too. Prosecute the criminals. I don't think that the slashdot audience can be self-consistent if it's both opposed to DRM and to prosecuting criminals.
--
Get started with microcontrollers today! [nerdkits.com]
Re:But... he's totally right! (DRM or prosecution? (Score:3, Interesting)
copyright law was intended to encourage artists to create new work by granting them a temporary monopoly on their work.
with mass-reproducible art forms - music, photography, print, film, industries were created which took copyright away from the content creators
once the copyrights have been acquired, the industry big-wigs have repeatedly bribed government officials and law makers into extending copyright protection to ridicules terms so they cab squeeze every penny out of each copyri
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Or to look at it another way, with mass-producible art forms, e.g. CD audio recordings it allowed musicians to create high quality products using their own resources for which they could retain copyright and sell directly to their public, i.e. via the web or at gigs. These people would invest considerable amounts of their own time and money in this creative endevou
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Music and art theft was and is a problem.
Radiohead has matured and has shown the way. Apple is showing the path.
Bands like KISS are still retarted and will always be. These guys want kids to pay $29.99 for a CD which contain 20 songs out of which 2 are good and rest are piss poor.
Now that kids have the power to resist such payments, and instead pay only 99 cents for each track they like an
why do where care about Gene Simmons? (Score:5, Funny)
Gene Simmons? (Score:5, Funny)
Seeing as how my first thought on reading the summary was 'who is gene simmons', I think its fairly safe to say the final score is:
College Kids 1, Retarded Old Drag Queen 0.
Outside the box (Score:5, Interesting)
But do we really care? (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, some people need to RTFA, he is NOT talking about himself, but about new bands who dream of success who he claims will not be able to do it (or at least not the way he defines success, getting really rich of your image).
So?
Times change. Once you had far more theathers and far more places where plays could be held. Then the movie theather arrived and put countless performers out of business. Were once a musician was playing in bar now there is a sound installation. Where once there was an entertainer, now there is a big screen TV.
Movie theathers too took a hit with the arrival of television. Live tv broadcasts took a hit when VCR's arrived and even more with DVR.
Coal mines are gone in holland, because we discovered a gas field and bam, lots of people unemployed. Daf cars (trucks still exists) is gone and again, people out of a job because less and less people are needed to make cars and there are countries that can do it cheaper.
IT is being outsourced as are call center jobs.
The next generations job prospects are going to be different then today's.
In a way, he says that himself, no band has managed to overtake KISS in merchandising. HE himself killed the dream off new bands in becoming the next kiss because he refuses to step aside. Shame on him.
Lets say that not a single musician can make money anymore. Unlikely but lets assume it for a second, not a single person can make a single penny creating music. So?
Where is it written that you should be able too? I am by training a baker, I am fairly good at it, (but not exceptionally so) and I left the business because it is a dead end. People buy their bakery goods from the factory and opening a new bakery shop is far to expensive and legally impossible. Zoning restrictions, a bakery works at night and produces noise and smells while by its nature it has to be in a residential area. That don't mix no more. The hygience laws have become so strict that it costs a fortune to fit out a new building and the costs (and shortage) of skilled labourers, plus the restrictions of what they are allowed to do means you need a massive amount of very expensive equipment, which because the demand for small scale equipment has plummeted is increasingly expensive.
In short, society has killed the small baker shop. Of the people in my entire school only a handfull are still in the trade, a most of them because they inheritied the business from their parents.
Do I see Gene Simmons give a shit about that? No. Why then should I give a shit if some other person has to give up his dream of being a paid artist and find another way of making a living.
Lots of people try to make an argument that music sharing doesn't hurt the industry or that artist can compensate or that there are different methods of selling music.
I like to take it one step further, why should society give a shit wether music creators can make money? Do we really want to make rigid laws for all people just so a few can make a living the job they want? I want to bake bread. Should YOU be forced to go to a seperate store in your area for your bread rather then go to the supermarket? Should for instance the dutch be forced to serve pie again on their birthday from the local bakery rather then "vlaai" (a kind of pie coming originally from a dutch province that comes from a chain of stores that get supplied by a factory).
If you say no to that, then you should say no to everything the RIAA wants as well. Society should not have to bend over backwards just some people can make music for a living. Get a job.
Read your own words again (Score:4, Insightful)
Say funeral arrangements. People do indeed provide that service, and we pay them for it. Now say that a medical breakthrough happens and dying becomes a thing of the past. No more dead, no more need for burials. Should YOU then be legally forced to die, just so funeral directors can continue making a living supplying that service?
What I am saying is that if musicians can't make a living making music, they should stop doing that. Demand and supply, this does NOT mean, as you seem to think, that if you supply that you are entitled to a demand.
Times change. Monks were once able to support their monestary by handcopying books. With the invention of the printing press, that job vanished. Should society be forced to stand still just so a handfull can enjoy the living they once did.
Get this straight, I am not saying music should be free. I am saying that if people don't want to pay for your music, don't make it.
Perhaps I spend too much time around performance artists. This is a group of people that feel they deserve tax money for their art. They need the tax money because nobody is willing to pay for it.
I am going to introduce a law, and you must follow it, when ever you come across a street performer you MUST donate 10 dollars. You saw it, you gonna pay for it.
Offcourse that is silly, as silly as people thinking they have a right to make a living in any job they feel like. I would LOVE to make a living as a gigolo for beautifull young ladies. Ain't going to happen and if the world isn't willing to bend over backwards for my needs then I sure as hell am not going to give a shit about some kid who wants to become rich making music in world that doesn't want to pay for music. Find another job, do it for free. I had to do that, I am forced to just do my amazing love making as a hobby with no more compensation that a "job well done".
Disingenuous argument (Score:5, Insightful)
As an intellectual exercise, let's stick to Gene's flawed analogy. Gold has a price because there's this idea that people "agree" that it should have a certain price. Now let's examine Radiohead's experiment. They're saying "you name a price, and we'll charge you that much". And so on an individual basis, each fan is agreeing with Radiohead that the price of the new album should be X dollars. Seems to me that Radiohead's model is exactly what he's arguing for. So tell me, what's wrong with giving away music?
Regardless, somebody needs to let Mr. Simmons know that he's living in a brave new world, and unless he has a burning desire to move in with the dodos, he needs to realize that the old models might not work anymore. That, or maybe he's trying really hard for the arrogant, self-righteous bastard image.
He's kinda right about merchandise, though. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd argue that rock stars don't WANT to shill t-shirts, or they'd be in a t-shirt company. And honestly, if you're looking for LESS crappy pop music, do you really want to encourage them to base their economics on having faces that look good on lunch boxes?
Same for programmers, of course. While the line is blurred in many cases, at heart I'd say many coders don't WANT to work as "support" for their own product. I mean, isn't that the basic coder stereotype, impatience with people who don't understand technology?
The paradigm breaks down even more for novelists. A novelist's entire skill set revolves around writing stuff, and anything he writes is gonna take ten seconds to copy and upload, so without "intellectual property" of SOME sort he's basically SOL.
FORTUNATELY, (and here's where I hopefully mitigate the -1 Troll points I foresee for this post), merchandising ISN'T the only way musicians can make money aside from CD profits. They also have that little niche called "live performances," which sustained them for a good 99.9% of human history.
Simmons went into music to make money (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey Gene.... (Score:4, Insightful)
they got a heck of a lot more per album for themselves doing it that way than you get with your rip-off recording contract...
/me thinks he's just jealous he didn't come up with the idea himself... cos if he tries it now, he'll just look like a me-too wannabee...
Ah, Gene Simmons. Such a noble creature. (Score:3, Funny)
It's too late (Score:3, Interesting)
It's the same with alcohol and drugs, once they've taken hold it takes a very determined leader to try and exstinguish such things. It was tried in the US in the early 1900s and failed.
Gene is old school, he simply doesn't understand the way people think these days. I would love to see him survive on the money available to an average college student.
He's right (Score:4, Insightful)
Truer words were never spoken.
Here's the truth also, Mr. Simmons. No business model will work because in the age of computerized publication, content is no longer a business. Period. It's too easy to produce when your average high-school student, with a job as a checkout bagger, has access to cheap (and complete) digital publication and production tools.
I can do the job of what used to be a $1M+ recording studio/pressing plant on a $500 PC, and post it to a bittorrent on a $25 Internet account, and retain full rights. This means I can't make money off of the music alone. QED.
This brings us back to square one, as you say, "The most important part is the music. Without that, why would you care?"
Right again, Mr. Simmons. Music is no longer a business. Trading oil futures is a business. Music is not. It is about the music, again. All you businessmen need to find a business to get into. I suspect you were never actually a musician, but I could be wrong.
Gutenberg put a lot of preachers and wandering storytellers out of business too. He put the entire Catholic Church out of business, in fact, in the space of about 100 years. This is the kind of change we are talking about here. This is big. I think we should do it with fewer "Inquisitions" this time, if we can avoid them, as you so stupidly encourage.
It's also quite normal. The world changes. There is no longer a business model for making money off of content. End result: There's a mountain of crap out there and it's harder to find quality stuff, but there's a banquet of quality under that mountain, so you must make money some other way. There's no longer any money in content alone.
You want a business model? Reliably help people sift through all the crap. You'll be in direct competition with Google, of course.
Sad but true. Your day is over, Gene. Adapt or die already.
--
Toro
Gene Simmons is a dolt (proof) (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.rof.net/wp/carriep/TERRYGRO.HTM [rof.net]
Terry Gross: Are you trying to say to me that all that matters to you is money?
Gene Simmons: I will contend, and you try to disprove it, that the most important thing as we know it on this planet, in this plane, is, in fact, money. Want me to prove it?
Terry Gross: Go ahead.
Gene Simmons: The first thing you need -- besides air, which so far is free, and by the way if you went scuba diving, you're paying for air -- the other thing besides that is food, it's what we need to survive. I don't know what other tool I would use besides money to buy it. Although, as a woman of course you have the ability to sell your body, then get the money, and then, with that, get food. But ultimately money is part of it. And so --
Terry Gross: [laughs] You -- you -- you are weird.
Gene Simmons: Really? How do you get food?
Terry Gross: Well, not by selling my body. But --
Gene Simmons: But that's a choice you have that I don't. But getting to the money part, money is the single most important thing on the planet, including the notion that uh, love gives you everything. That's a lot of hogwash. Because although I subscribe to the romantic notion of life --
Terry Gross: Well, let's cut to the chase. How much -- how much money do you have?
Gene Simmons: Gee, a lot more than NPR.
Terry Gross: Oh, I know. I -- you're very defensive on money, aren't you?
Gene Simmons: No, I'm not, I'm just trying to show you that there's a big world out there, and reading books is wonderful. I've certainly read, well, perhaps as many as you have, but there's a delusional kind of notion that runs rampant in --
Terry Gross: Wait, wait, could we just get something straight?
Gene Simmons: Of course.
Terry Gross: I'm not here to prove that I'm smart --
Gene Simmons: Not you --
Gene Simmons Never Had a Personal Computer... (Score:4, Funny)
How do we know? We know because our own well-documented research has shown conclusively that a child who lacks his own personal computer during those earliest school years will very probably grow up to be a bass player in a heavy metal rock band who wears women's fishnet pantyhose and sticks his tongue down to his kneecaps. Just like Gene Simmons.
Your child's future doesn't have to look like this.
The Banana Junior 6000 Self-portable Personal Computer System, complete with its optional software - Bananawrite, Bananadraw, Bananafile, and Bananamanager - is just what your four-year-old needs to compete in today's cut-throat world of high tech and high expectations.
The Banana Junior 6000...Buy one before it's too late. Gene's mother wishes she had.
Re:Gene Simmons Never Had a Personal Computer... (Score:4, Interesting)
Miss the point (Score:3, Insightful)
He's right about that... the "pay what you want" model won't work long term. It works now because it is novel, because the fans want to support the artists in this movement, and because nobody knows what everyone else pays... yet. But it would devolve into people just taking stuff because they'd feel like suckers whenever they found out they paid more than average. "Pay what you want" would end up like every other soft shareware project.
But that's not the point: the point is cheaper a-la-carte music, where more of the money goes to the artist and less to a marketing/distribution corporation. The price can still be set, like at iTunes. But there's finally a little competition in music distribution industry (thanks to illegal downloads) and as with most competition, the consumer wins.
Cheers.
Will wonders never cease (Score:4, Insightful)
Gene Simmons saying "It's about the music." I thought it was about the merch and pyro?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:He's right though (Score:4, Interesting)
There's something very basic in humans that less us understand the concept of "mine" and "yours", and apply it to physical objects. But what about ideas? Intellectual property is much more difficult for most people to wrap their minds around. For example, you don't understand it either. "Downloading stuff that you didn't pay for" is not stealing. Stealing is a criminal act where you deprive someone of the use or enjoyment of property. Making a copy of a work is not criminal, nor does it deprive the copyright owner of anything. It can be against the wishes of the copyright owner, and the copyright owner can assert that you inflicted damages, but it is not stealing, just as hijacking an aircraft is not committing insurance fraud.
So, we've got property rights that are agreed upon by a society, or so we think, and some of those, few people really seem to understand, and yet affect everybody. Worse, these are relative young "rights". Copyrights came in with mass printing and were built to combat mass printing. With the cost of duplication practically nil, and the means of communication readily available, Copyright law, as it is now, is just impractical: it's designed for mass infringement cases, not as a means of generating revenue.
On the one hand, human behavior in these matters has not changed since the beginning of written communication: people copy what interests them, and don't immediately grasp the notion of paying for an instantion of an idea (they do, however, immediately grasp the importance of paying someone to produce ideas). On the other hand, we have a handful of companies with a business model based on the high cost of mass production and distribution confronted with a change to an environment of cheap distribution and individualized production. And there's no worse citizen than a fading elite. The music industry in particular made this worse by focusing on saturating the market with a few insipid "hits", and overexposing the listeners: to the average person, that song that they're hearing several times a day isn't worth anything in itself.
So to answer your question: nobody's saying downloading music without paying for it is ok. I say that, yes, downloading music without paying for is ok, when the copyright holders make it available for free.
Re:He's right though (Score:5, Insightful)
It is wrong, and illegal, but it isn't stealing.
Stealing and copyright infringement are covered by different laws and they have different effects on the victims of the crimes and society in general, they are not the same thing.
That doesn't make copyright infringement right. However, there needs to be some flexibility here.
For example, I generally download an album before I buy it. If I like what I hear I go out and buy the CD, if not, I delete what I downloaded. If I can't hear something before buying it I probably won't buy it because I've bought too many CDs I thought were going to be good and turned out to be complete crap. And what's wrong with this? Consider it promotion for the bands - if their music is good then it makes them more money because I'm more likely to spend my money on CDs I _know_ are good rather than taking a gamble.
Can anybody fill me in as to why downloading music without paying for it is ok?
It isn't. But can you fill me in as to why the following behaviour is ok:
At the moment, the quality of the official product is frequently substandard compared to the blackmarket product. People generally like paying and staying within the law, but when it starts to become impossible to use the legally purchased product, is it any surprise that people stop buying it?
Re:He's right though (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Are you sure about that? I've never heard of "theft of service" and can't find it anywhere in my states' laws. It seems like in the case you mention there's a much simpler and less contorted charge that would also land you in jail -- trespassing.
Re:He's right though (Score:4, Informative)
Re:"I was made for suing you baby..." (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a stupid notion that will not die. Musicians do make money from record sales. Sometimes, their percentage is low, but thats because they probably sold the rights to publishing houses which do make money off record sales. If there was no protection on published music, musicians would not be able to do that. Indirectly or directly, lack of record sales hurts musicians.
Fact is that their w