The music Industry Decline and a working solution

p2p

Hi guys,

With the advent of the irish music industry jumping into bed with the RIAA
and the impending Irish law suits I thought it'd be time to discuss what
can be done about it.

One thing i did notice while doing reseach on the issue was an idea by William Fischer.

He proposed a system whereby the RIAA charged ISPs a tax which they then passed on to the consumer for internet access.

When the math is done, everyone's a winner. THe consumer gets to download music worry free. THe most popular / worthy artists are recompensed for their work and the record companys make gains similar to the pre-napster era.

Sounds perfect doesn't it?

Article all about it here

William Fischer's Research can be found here : Promises to Keep

Karoma

not reading it all - but the proposed tax is on ALL customers... irregardless of whether or not they are in fact sharing music... !? bull****!

dangerman

i just did my degree project on this area.

it is a constructive idea, but there's an important point music industry people are making:

that idea values the beatles anthology as the same worth as Busted's latest single.

Personally I'd love to pay 5 euro per month or whatever for the opportunity, but the logistics of rewarding the most downloaded artists: surely all britney would have to do to make millions is make a video of her completely naked? If most downloaded=most profitable then it means non-mainstream stuff would be ruined.

I agree however, that a solution like this must be found; cause litigation is just pushing people onto more obscure/secure networks; personally i dont think its a battle that industry can win without constructive suggestions such as this.

iTunes released version 4.5 just a while ago and it's DRM has already been circumvented.

Microsoft has delayed Longhorn till what is it, at least 2006 with its trusted computing/drm capabilites and its estimated that by 2010 that one hard drive will be able to hold the roughly 5 million recorded songs in existance. Say goodbye to copyright.

And just a slightly OT article related to this issue:
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V124/N20/ValentiIntervie.20f.html

Great read that.

p2p

that idea values the beatles anthology as the same worth as Busted's latest single

And what is wrong with that?

The whole point is, the music people like the most will shine though..

If 20,000 people buy an obscure CD from eg. 4 tet

What's to say those 20,000 people wont download it?
Or even better, people reccomend it or find it by browsing
other users files - similar genre groups etc

Britney will always end up at the top of the pile, but this reflects *real life* too

Let me know your thoughts..


Oh yeah i'd love to read your disertation if you have it on the web anywhere

Pigman II

1) I don't like the 'tax' idea and would prefer a 'per song' method if such a thing was viable. After all it's fairer to those who are using the process discriminately. Also With 'per song' you could at least have a mechanism to reward the beatles higher than busted.

2) You're assuming that when music is available online that people will suddenly start getting taste? Somehow I don't think so and when the industry finally gets their claws into downloading scene it'll still be their crap that gets all the pushing and therefore all the downloads, except now it'll be in Mp3 format rather than CD. Unforunately I think you're gonna be let down if you think the fortets of this world are going to be big winners due to legislation.

dangerman

Oh yeah i'd love to read your disertation if you have it on the web anywhere

unfortunately i wont have it up on the net until may 20th - after my exams and the results for the project are done etc.

here's a bit relevant to the posts here i pulled out of it:

Recently, the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the US made an interesting proposal with regard to legalising file sharing. ‘Voluntary Collective Licensing’ would involve file shares paying a fee such as $5 a month in order to be allowed to share legally. This money would be collected by a central organisation and then be redistributed to artists and their labels based on popularity. A similar system already operates for radio stations. The RIAA has been quick to debunk the idea citing the fact that it values all music as the same, which would drastically impact their profits. The EFF proposal is interesting because it is a solution based on the fact that file sharing is here to stay in all its forms. This proposal is not new, it was originally proposed in a research paper in 2002 by Neil Weinstock Netanal, a professor of Law at the University of Texas. The RIAA and similar organisations still believe that they can ‘beat’ the file sharing phenomenon and drive uptake of legal systems such as Napster 2.0 and Apple iTunes.

At present, the record industries idea of competing with the darknet in the United States at least is to offer copy protected songs for $1 and to aggressively litigate against users of the darknets. These songs are protected. If the consumer goes and buys a new CD, then it is most likely going to be copy protected and wont play in their PC. It is a crime to circumvent such protection.

It seems that society as a whole has to choose whether to save copyright or not; in that suggestions such as the Voluntary Collective Licensing be taken seriously and other such forward thinking proposals be put forward. The RIAA and organisations like it that believe their businesses can continue without significant change are misguided.

EDIT: it's amazing, no matter how many times you read something you've written, how many errors you just don't notice; spelling/grammar etc.

RobertFoster

Originally posted by dangerman
that idea values the beatles anthology as the same worth as Busted's latest single

but isn't that the way with buying CD's - they are all roughly around the same price. if there was different prices for different music, you'd be charged a premium for the most popular...

dangerman

but isn't that the way with buying CD's - they are all roughly around the same price. if there was different prices for different music, you'd be charged a premium for the most popular...

i think the point is that at the moment if you go to HMV and want the entire beatles anthology, that would cost you whatever, 30 - 50 euro (ive no idea.)

if you wanted the busted single, it would cost you 5 euro or whatever a single is these days.

with a universal levy on music sharing, which is suggested above say 5 euro a month, then that price difference is removed.

the popularity rating only applies to how the collected money is divided among artists/labels.

RobertFoster

oh right, I understand. I was thinking album to album, not back catalogue to single.

p2p

1. I dont think a per song method would be viable.
A 'flat rate' tax is, in my opinion the only viable alternative to
persuade people to use the system.

For example : Apple targeted to sell 100 million 'units' on I-tunes
in a year for 99c each.

They are now saying they'd be lucky to get 75 million.
Napster in its peak transfered 2.79 billion songs in a month

Whilst its not impossible to compete with the substitute (free) product, it is very
difficult.

This is why i do not think a per song tax/pricing will ultimately work.

2. I never said 4 tet would do better than busted, as this does not reflect real life
However i do believe that they will do better than what they have done if there
is only the option to purchase the CD
* where they make damn all money
or download it illegally - where they make zero money

I also think that word will spread, obviously they won't be on the front page
of apple.com/itunes but that shouldn't matter.

They will do better than they would have done.

RobertFoster

A per song method may be the only possibility that would make the music industry think it's worth it.

Some day it might be like ISP's - you either pay flat rate for a limited amount, or for however much you use - and it'll be a choice for the consumer.

dangerman

p2p; ur right, it is impossible to compete with a free service.

but what if you couldn't copy a new song without the right to do so? what if your own system communicated with remote systems monitoring your use of copyrighted files?

This is on the way, the question is whether people like us will actually stop this kind of drm creeping onto our desktops.

see http://www.againsttcpa.com/

and lots of stuff at http://www.eff.org/ - search for trusted computing.

The arguement that all protection will be broken is a valid one as it has proven true so far; but there could come a time when the hassle of breaking protection is too much for users.

Lol, i could end up retyping my project here if im not careful.

p2p

Very interesting dangerman,

I could see this turning into a whole other debate..

However I was sure this was tried before with hardware flags
etc and talks broke down about it as no one was willing to purchase it?

I can see people holding on to their nice (by that stage slow) laptop
which does not have any TC and sharing to their hearts content..

Just an initial reaction ..

Civilian_Target

Actually, I don't think the whole DRM thing will take off properly. I know very few people that will by a protected CD, mostly because they don't work in car stereos or CD-ROM drives. In fact, I didn't buy the Auf Der Maur album for exactly that reason.

Personally, I have no objections to paying for the rarer tracks from smaller artists, such as those listed at Audiolunchbox.com The downloads are not DRMed and are probably not available on Kazaa, and since the artists get 70% of the price you pay on the site, you know you're supporting the little guy too. But I'd never buy from iTunes, I'll always buy the CD instead. For me, music is something to hold in your hand, and that means discs.

And let it be known that I'd rather migrate to Linux than be subjected to trusted computing. Hopefulls that'll be the thing that kills of MS as well

l3rian

have you ever watch mtv cribs? musicians are filthy rich

why are people siding with these music corporations? with their slick arguements and fear tactics, can you see they only want to rip you all off?

bah, talented people will always make good music even if its free to download

dangerman

And let it be known that I'd rather migrate to Linux than be subjected to trusted computing. Hopefulls that'll be the thing that kills of MS as well

this could indeed be the thing that kills tc, competition - how can u market a system that limits what a user can do with his/her own system if there are competing systems that dont?

So u need government legislation backing it up... which is another can of worms!

It all comes back to whether society wants to have copyright - and the problems involve other huge issues such as privacy and freedom of speech.

Ian Clarke, creater of freenet, (http://freenet.sourceforge.net/) said 'You cannot guarantee freedom of speech and enforce copyright law' ...and he's right, possibly.

What I'll do, next saturday i'll upload my project so anyone who's interested can have a gander. It covers everything discussed here in detail. not saying its award winning stuff or anything, but i put a lot of work into it and it gives an overview of all the intersecting issues at play.

In the mean time, i recommend http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/ - this is a hugely informative read that predicts the take over of trusted computing tech and copyright enforcement. i conclude exactly the opposite.

Civilian_Target

The problem is, I don't trust the general public to reject TC.

Presumably it'll also drive up the price of hardware, which may will be the most important factor...

Executive Steve

i only buy vinyl.... the only music storage media that cant be copied for cheaper than the price of an original... a lot of dance music labels are quite scared about the move away from the vinyl standard.. cd decks are gettin better and betterand the next generation are going to have dvd playback for live audio visual mixing too... imagine being able to play a mix set and project selected images and lighting patterns in one coherent work...

sceptre

Originally posted by p2p
He proposed a system whereby the RIAA charged ISPs a tax which they then passed on to the consumer for internet access.

When the math is done, everyone's a winner. THe consumer gets to download music worry free. THe most popular / worthy artists are recompensed for their work and the record companys make gains similar to the pre-napster era.

Sounds perfect doesn't it?

Hell no, and I'll tell you why. It presumes guilt. People who don't download copyrighted material are paying for people who do and everyone's assumed guilty. Like those silly tape levies you get in Germany and other countries.

dangerman

right well, it took me long enough,

but here's the project:

http://www.tcal.net/project/

Full of inaccuracies and complete lies im sure, and I'd appreciate any feedback/corrections people have.

fitz

Originally posted by l3rian
have you ever watch mtv cribs? musicians are filthy rich

why are people siding with these music corporations? with their slick arguements and fear tactics, can you see they only want to rip you all off?

bah, talented people will always make good music even if its free to download

Musicians are not necessarily filthy rich.
A lot of the time, the houses may be owned by the record company.
You should read this essay by Steve Albini about how the music industry works:

http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

It gives a good insight into why the record companies are so concerned about filesharing. They're the ones making the profits in the majority of cases, not the artist. Filesharing threatens the margins.

But I feel monitoring usage, which will no doubt be part of the trusted computing revolution, is an invasion of privacy, and I think it'll flop right on it's face.

Civilian_Target

Just for the record, the music industry isn't in decline

http://www.kensei-news.com/bizdev/publish/factoids_us/article_23374.shtml

9% growth since this time last year doesn't seem like decline to me.

Sleepy

This is a subject I find quite interesting because I know (speaking only for myself) I'm buying more music than ever thanks to the net. Before I discovered cdwow I'd stopped buying CD's because I'm just not prepared to pay over €20 for an album (unless it's a double CD).

I'm not a tight-fisted person, I just object to being ripped off and I've perceived the JUMP in CD prices over the last 5 years to being a ripoff. I just got into the habit of burning CD's I wanted, downloading full albums from the net and only buying CD's that were either old and being sold at a discount or in special offers. 2 for €20 and those kind of deals.

Then I found CDWow and I'd estimate that I've bought about 3 CD's every two months from them since. I went into HMV this weekend and realised that they must be feeling the pinch from the CDWow's of this world because they had a massive 2 for €30 deal on (about a euro more a cd than the net, but there's no wait for your music). So I did something I hadn't done in years: I bought 2 CD's purely on the basis that friends of mine liked them and I reckoned it was too long since I'd put a CD into my stereo with no idea of what music I was going to hear. It felt fucking great. For the first time in about 3 years I felt like a genuine music fan again (and this is from a Hot Press subscriber with over 200 CD's and a back catalogue of Q that stretches for over 100 issues before it got shit). No pangs of guilt about ripping off up and coming artists who probably could do with their slice of the action. The satisfaction of reading the liner notes on the first listen to the CD.

So, RIAA/IMRO how can you claim the net is killing music? It may be impacting on the corporations profit margins as more artists go the David Gray/Damien Rice route of releasing music on their own labels (usually after you've ****ed them over first, mind) but for this music fan at least, the net's lead to me redeveloping my love of music and increasing my spending on it. Target me and others like me and you'll find a margin wide enough to keep you in pink champagne a little longer...

Civilian_Target

Same here. Napster turned me into a music fan, and I buy about 25 albums a year now, quite a lot for a student.

Unfortunately, I'm probably not very profitable for the music industry, I buy a lot of CDs from local bands on small labels, and fringe artists. You won't catch me buying a 99% profit Brittany album....

ixoy

There's numerous articles (some of which I've linked to before), that show the lie behind the RIAA.
Amongst them is that, in many cases, sales have increased but, because the album prices have been forced down, it's not reflected when the greedy whores released their end-of-year figures. Also, and this greatly amused me, the distributors have only recently factored in sales from online stores and - if I recall correctly - only a small handful of stores at that. Yet they then have the gall to use their weekly pop charts to try and point out sales declines without actually looking at all the sales :rolleyes:

Sleepy

Civilian_Target, you are profitable for the music industry, just because artists are credible, release things on indy labels etc. doesn't mean that they're not still part of the industry. Think of it like buying your chips from a "Mario's" or whatever instead of a McDonalds, it's still part of the fast food industry, just a smaller player.

pork99

What I've noticed - correct if I'm wrong please - is that there's no convenient micropayment system available for me if I am a musician and want to put my work on the web for download. I would want something I could get as part of a hosting package, so it would be just "plug and play" without any messing around with merchant accounts or the like.

I would have no problem paying 50c - €1 a track or whatever if I knew it was going directly to the artist. (minus whatever the hosting company might charge - but thats more like sales commission than being screwed by Sony and EMI)

sceptre

Originally posted by fitz
Musicians are not necessarily filthy rich.

Too true. Three letters: TLC. Nuff said.

Originally posted by pork99
What I've noticed - correct if I'm wrong please - is that there's no convenient micropayment system available for me if I am a musician and want to put my work on the web for download. I would want something I could get as part of a hosting package, so it would be just "plug and play" without any messing around with merchant accounts or the like.

You're pretty much correct as far as I know. There's no convenient micropayment system for anything - even journal articles and so on.

Dangerman, grabbed your project, will read later. I started a paper myself a few years ago on copyrights, international IP law and the dark internet but got board after a few months so never finished it so I'll be quite interested to read someone else's take on it.

mr_angry

The quicker the music industry crashes and burns, the better. I can't wait to see the back of people like Gareth Gates / Liberty X / Westlife, etc. etc. Musicians? Don't make me laugh. As I keep saying, you don't see many ex-record label execs on the dole queue, do you? The rich are just trying to make themselves richer as usual, and file-sharing and the evil Internet are a convenient scapegoat that they plan to exploit to the maximum. Sadly, they'll probably succeed, but we can always hope...

Civilian_Target

Originally posted by pork99
What I've noticed - correct if I'm wrong please - is that there's no convenient micropayment system available for me if I am a musician and want to put my work on the web for download. I would want something I could get as part of a hosting package, so it would be just "plug and play" without any messing around with merchant accounts or the like.

I would have no problem paying 50c - €1 a track or whatever if I knew it was going directly to the artist. (minus whatever the hosting company might charge - but thats more like sales commission than being screwed by Sony and EMI)

www.audiolunchbox.com

Artists can get their tracks listed, and if you buy stuff from them, 70% goes to the artist.

It's $10 per album, which works out at about €8.50 these days, and the tracks come as MP3s or OGGs, so theres no DRM.

dangerman

Dangerman, grabbed your project, will read later. I started a paper myself a few years ago on copyrights, international IP law and the dark internet but got board after a few months so never finished it so I'll be quite interested to read someone else's take on it.

enjoy it. i'd be more than interested in feedback. granted it's 36 pages long, but even just read the wacky-far out conclusions i've drawn.

I'm also v. interested in people spotting inaccuracies, or where i've missed the point entirely. [by the way, im not getting ppl to proof read it or anything sly like that, its done, handed up and ive got my grade for it already.]

pork99

Originally posted by Civilian_Target
www.audiolunchbox.com

Artists can get their tracks listed, and if you buy stuff from them, 70% goes to the artist.

It's $10 per album, which works out at about €8.50 these days, and the tracks come as MP3s or OGGs, so theres no DRM.

Very interesting, thank you.

DEmeant0r

Dangerman, interested to know what you got for you project grade-wise.

dangerman

78% - 3rd or 4th highest mark in the class i think, highest was 84% i still wonder if that was the right mark for it. Why do you want to know?

And if you've read it...what did u think of it? you can be as brutal as you like if you don't think it deserved that mark. [i still wonder if it did.]

oh and if ur wondering if its good enough to plagerise, well...

Civilian_Target

Where can we read it?

Mr E

Originally posted by Civilian_Target
www.audiolunchbox.com

Artists can get their tracks listed, and if you buy stuff from them, 70% goes to the artist.

It's $10 per album, which works out at about €8.50 these days, and the tracks come as MP3s or OGGs, so theres no DRM.

Great link.... downloading Jesse Malin's new album now...

(Albums are $7.99 until the end of the day tomorrow...)

- Dave.

dangerman

Originally posted by Civilian_Target
Where can we read it?

http://www.tcal.net/project/

Civilian_Target

Originally posted by TmB
Great link.... downloading Jesse Malin's new album now...

(Albums are $7.99 until the end of the day tomorrow...)

- Dave.

SCORE! Just got myself a 100% legal edition of Blackout by the Dropkick Murphys

Civilian_Target

My purchasing aside, that papers good. The aspect you left out though, that I would have thought to be an obvious inclusion is the Video Games industry.

Since the day it was born, PC Games have been easy to copy. You could copy games on floppy disk, you can copy games on CD and now that games come on DVD you'll be able to copy them too. Whats more, there is no firm and rigid, unbroken anti-copying mechanism on games and many companies (notably ID software) don't even try. Yet the industy continues to flourish. Why?

First, people want a product they can hold, a box and a manual, which is why vinyl and games still sell today, and why CDs will continue to sell.

Secondly, people feel good about buying a legal copy. There really was no need for me to get a legal copy of AC/DC's back in black last week, I copied it illegally a year ago, but its a really good album. When I'm old, I want to be able to put it in my retro CD player and remember it, long after my hard disk is gone. And as it hisses and clicks along, it'll be please with my purchase.

And finally support. Games won't be developed if no one buys them. But people want games and we continue to go out and support good games by buying them. The makers of Half-Life and Max Payne deserved to be millionaires, and the games-buying populace made it so. And it should continue that way.

The music industry will only die on the day that artists start distribting their own CDs and writing their own press. We can only hope that day is soon.

*EDIT* Glad you drew the same conclusion, but I'm still not so sure about people unwillingness to submit. Remember, Hitler was elected, so there's no reason why other stupid things can't happen.

dangerman

My purchasing aside, that papers good. The aspect you left out though, that I would have thought to be an obvious inclusion is the Video Games industry.

Right ok, valid point. But let me explain why i left it out.

Games I think will become less and less a target over the next while. Mainly because of the move to steam like systems + pure online multiplayer games. It *is* a lot of hassle to try and get a cd key say for BF:Vietnam or some such with the master server/cd key setup - it cuts out a significant portion of piracy. (and by cutting out, i mean the casual user, who discovers that it's not just a quick hack off the net, is then resigned to buying it. There will *always* be hardcore pirates who will go to extreme lengths - ala the script kiddies fighting for popularity by coding more extreme hacks and carrying out more extreme internet & viral attacks)

Software in general in the future will be less prone to piracy than music/movies because of the 'value-add' aspects of it - updates for software, tech support - patches for games ... things that require legal copies to work...

So, intantigble digital goods; music & movies are i think more open to continued and high levels of piracy - all they are is audio/visual files and as such if the drm is hacked once & removed then off they go onto the internet for free distribution. But with software, you've got consistant and frequent remote-attestation style protection, with the software regularly communicating with servers - the 'hack once distribute anywhere' chain is broken - because if it's hacked so it communicates ok with the server, then the server will soon be updated (think PunkBuster) and that hacked copy will break again.

...Hence DRM tech trying to put that kind of technology into audio & visual files ala iTunes, Windows Media 9 files etc.

i'm not really talking about the situation now, i'm talking about it in the future...with the advent of longhorn and tcpa etc. this kind of thing will reach a head.

The main reason for it's possible success is the fact that all the tech is going to creep onto people's desktops. - One day soon daddy will bring home the new dell and it will be doing all this horrible big brothery type stuff.

The answer? Go linux, open source etc and read up on your right to privacy stuff. While obviously piracy is a bad thing, i think so is a computer that is not your own, its constantly checking you have the 'right' to do what you are doing. - the right to open that file, the right to view this web site etc. etc. First, terrible neo-nazi sites and child porn sites will be auto blocked by government/corporations. then, ever so slowly...extreme political parties sites would be blocked (terrorists! incitement of hatred!) ...and ever so slowly... the internet becomes a controlled medium, and outside sources are controlling what you want to see.

Far fetched, doomsday george orwell dangerman ranting indeed. But is it really that hard to think of?

DEmeant0r

Originally posted by dangerman
78% - 3rd or 4th highest mark in the class i think, highest was 84% i still wonder if that was the right mark for it. Why do you want to know?

And if you've read it...what did u think of it? you can be as brutal as you like if you don't think it deserved that mark. [i still wonder if it did.]

oh and if ur wondering if its good enough to plagerise, well...

Haven't started to read it yet, studying for the LC. I'll tell you what I think of it after I do the LC. Asked because I'm nosy