IDM Mailing Archive

David Hodgson transcribes another "The Sky Is Falling" article from the UK:

quoted 4 lines A new CD costs £14.49. Or, you could download it for free on the Internet

> A new CD costs £14.49. Or, you could download it for free on the Internet > ROCK STARS and record companies lined up to complain yesterday that fans > downloading free music from the Internet is costing them millions and could > kill off the British music industry.

And it's about fucking time! "Home Taping is Killing Music!" Sound familiar? When are artists going to wake the fuck up? "ROCK STARS and record companies lined up" ... The genie is out of the bottle, folks. Just because Microsoft and the Software Publishers Association doesn't like WaR3Z, do you think they've stamped them out? Of course not, there's a million floating FTP sites, Web sites, Hotline servers et al. out there now. It can NEVER be stopped ... and ... like WaR3Z ... MP3's are just a new kind of WaR3Z, a new form of currency for trade in this underground economy ... Do you want to know how bad this is, people? Let me give you an example ... At work, we're Apple Certified Developers ... so we get monthly mailings from Apple with CD-ROMs of New And Cool Stuff on them. The latest (April/May) just came in, with MacOS 8.2a4c2 (a.k.a. "Allegro") on it. We're still waiting for our Rhapsody DR2 (Developer Release 2) package that was just introduced a couple of weeks ago. Meanwhile, on Hotline servers they already *have* MacOS 8.2a4c2 and Rhapsody DR2 and are already begging for MacOS 8.2a6 ... and some of these sites are on 30 Mbit links to the 'Net ... 450-700 Kb/sec (burst) transfer rates ... a compressed CD-ROM image can be downloaded in 9 minutes. If the artists had any brains they'd realize that if they sold their own music *directly* from their own Web site (which will be semi-broadly feasible Real Soon Now - i.e. a sufficient segment of the populace having access to cheap CD-R burners and high-speed Internet connections) they could make twice as much money per-unit and sell it for half the end cost that the buyer would normally pay ... which means if the punter has X amount of monetary units they can buy twice as much music ... which means more artists get their work purchased, and overall not only does the artist double their money but there's the chance of increased sales because of more people having more disposable income to try other things they wouldn't ordinarily buy when they're getting ripped off (yes - RIPPED OFF - e.g I paid US $28 for the Reflection single-CD album on Clear, what part of "RIPPED OFF" don't you understand?). The artists need to realize that ultimately the only thing that matters is that their music gets out and they get recompensed for the sale of it, and all the in-between stuff - record labels, distributors, etc. - is just bullshit that jacks up the prices at each stage and gets in the way. Artists and thieving record companies, middlemen distributors et al. kept DAT from being widely available - don't you all think it's fucking absurd that a DAT Walkman still costs in the stratosphere *years* later when time, cost of materials and economies of scale dictate that they should be not much more than say, double the cost of a cassette Walkman? Around here (Los Angeles) they go for about US $699 on the low end, if that isn't ludicrous I don't know what is ... Unfortunately this time 'round the companies are too late, the Genie is out of the bottle (i.e. DAT recorders -> fast Internet connections and CD-R burners) and there's no putting it back in (I can see the record companies demanding a high tariff on CD-R burners now because "people might download songs from the Internet and burn Audio CDs with them", Shock Horror).

quoted 2 lines "It's virtually impossible to earn money through touring. After four years

> "It's virtually impossible to earn money through touring. After four years > we still owe our record company £350,000."

And you wouldn't owe them a dime/10 pence coin if you could sell direct to your audience, you sod ...

quoted 5 lines William Booth of Sony Music said: "My company invests millions of pounds

> William Booth of Sony Music said: "My company invests millions of pounds > each year in new writing talent and new composers and to recover that money > we need to be paid. If we don't get paid because it goes on the Internet we > can't continue to make that investment in new talent and we can't continue > to pay people to collect money for those new composers."

Whinge whinge whinge ... what a load of rubbish ...

quoted 2 lines The irony for the music industry is that the Internet is likely to be the

> The irony for the music industry is that the Internet is likely to be the > distribution system of the future for music sales.

Well no shit Sherlock! You (the article author) get the Gold Star on the forehead award! Now if only the artists were to realize that those "music sales" could be going directly into their own pockets, we could get the "British Music Industry" killed (and the American Music Industry ... and so on ... ). And the sooner the better. Viva la technologie! [Sorry for the sm-stylee, Tubthumping rabid Punk rant, but this is really one of my hot buttons ... one reason being the joke of copyright and royalties; my better half has had 2 albums, 2 singles and a handful of compilation appearances out, and she hasn't received one *penny* from royalties - either mechanical or performance - in part because (in the latter case) ASCAP can't be arsed to lift a finger to track down those royalties for artists that don't sell gobloads of records. How'd you feel about these people bitching and moaning like the above if the same "industry" was keeping a few thousands of dollars out of your pocket?] - Greg

On Thu, 28 May 1998, Greg Earle wrote:

quoted 6 lines David Hodgson transcribes another "The Sky Is Falling" article from the UK:

> David Hodgson transcribes another "The Sky Is Falling" article from the UK: > > A new CD costs ?14.49. Or, you could download it for free on the Internet > > ROCK STARS and record companies lined up to complain yesterday that fans > > downloading free music from the Internet is costing them millions and could > > kill off the British music industry. >

Every time the record companies begin whining about some new duplication technology eating into their sales, they sweep under the rug the fact that they are in fact making more money than ever. Keep this in mind: The market for CD's, adjusted for the population size, is larger now than the market for vinyl records ever was. Gosh, isn't it amazing how home taping has killed the market? The whole thing is a stupid argument anyway. Having an MP3 of a track is less convenient for listening than having a CD. It doesn't sound as good. It's like having a cassette copy of an album that requires a $1000 player that's too heavy to put in your backpack. Now you can buy a MP3 walkman for $400, but it will basically hold only an album's worth of material at any one time. MP3's sound good enough to listen to over then net, but they are not CD quality, no matter what anyone says. I'm not an audio purist, and I can tell the difference. I think artists should be paid royalties on their work. I think that record companies should be able to realize a return on their substantial investment. But they make the specious claim that every MP3 downloaded is a sale lost, which is total bullshit. Same goes for companies who whine about Warez on the internet. It's a fundamental concept of business that you can compete with cheap or free products if you can add value. For most people the convenience, quality, and packaging of commercial CD's add value over mp3's on a website in Slovakia. Don't get me started on the record companies anyway. By and large, they don't pay artists their royalties due, by jiggering their accounting, until they're sued. They also like to hand out advances against royalties so that bands end up owing THEM money in the end. You give someone $200K to record an album and promote it on tour, then you cook the books so it looks like the band never made enough money to cover the advance. Now I'm not accussing Warp, or Rephlex, or Astralwerks of this -- they could very well be exceptions to this. But I know for a fact this is standard operating procedure for the major labels. It's a story I've heard time and time again. So consider THAT when they start crying poor about MP3s.