Another 'Broadband Is Bad' article.

Mr E

From this week's HotPress

Net Piracy threatens Irish Music Industry

The Managing Director of Warners Ireland is warning that the greater uptake of Broadband Technology will cost record companies here at least 25% of their sales.

"And thats just being conservative," Dennis Woods tells HotPress. "One of our Far Eastern territories where virtually everybody has broadband access, reckons that internet piracy halved the sales of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' By The Way album. A couple of years ago, the biggest problem was Napster. Now its the peer-to-peer sharing facilitated by the likes of Kazaa.

"Theres a perception that because its on the 'net, it should be free. No it shouldn't! If something has a value and you're not paying for it, it's theft!"

Woods' concerns were highlighted last week when Radiohead's album Hail To The Thief was leaked onto the Net 2 months before its offical release.

"I bet they had no idea how prophetic that title would prove to be!", he rues.

[...]

"I hate to think whats going to happen when DVD sharing becomes commonplace, especially given the staggered release dates of most films", he expands. "Why spend €6 or €7 on going to see the new Harry Potter or Lord Of The Rings at the cinema when there are DVDs out in America and on one of these file sharing sites?"

[...]

More in this weeks hotpress (with Bovril Lavigne on the cover)

- Dave.

iwb

I would be stunned if these guys will ever get it. The internet is here to stay and it will become faster and better as time goes by. Whether they like it or not, this will continue to happen.
Will they ever figure out that they are going to have to move with the times and find a model that works with the internet? I still don't know of anywhere that I can go to buy music that I can then download (in full wav format) to burn to my own CD. I would far prefer to buy that way than to rummage around in record shops or online at Amazon or whatever. Sure there are copyright issues with that scenario but with mp3, they are already there anyway.
If the staggered release doesn't work, they should have simultaneous release of movies worldwide and deliver the movie over broadband to all who want to 'rent' it the day it is released. Again, they need to figure out the technology and business model to do that. (our networks need to get faster also:))
These guys need to wake up and cop on. They can't impose the same bull**** on a new media world.
If broadband doesn't suit them, perhaps they should set up shop in Amish communities. Then they can go back to the old ways and sell records the way they always have.

maxheadroom

I wonder how much more it would cost them to release movies worldwide at the same time, given that the main excuse they have for staggering the releases is that they don't need to print as many film reels....

Lemming

They still refuse to accept part of the reason for decline in music sales is to do with the fact that

a) Most of what has been released in the last five years has been DRIVEL

b) Spending €25 on a cd when the artist is getting a fraction of the money and the rest is going to administrative costs for the music industry. Somethign is SERIOUSLY wrong here - a case of too many 'suits' perhaps?? :rolleyes:

c) The music industry allowing certain artists spend millions in studio (eg. Michael/Janet jackson, Mariah Carrey, etc.) only to create absolute crap, and then jacking up pricing to recoup what they've lost. These people need to be reigned in over costs like this.

d) The music industry is stuck in a time-warp. They are trying to use governments to enforce sales for them, when they should be doing this themselves. THEY should be researching new means of distribution/mediums of play/etc. THEY should pro-actively be trying to develop new markets. Instead we have a stagnant industry trying to flog a dead horse for everythign it's worth and pulling anyone attempting to climb over it [the carcass] back down.

The very same "calibre" of people who bemoan the lack of a 'killer app' spurring broadband demand that exist in the telecomms industry for a lack of vision. The technology already exists. The music/film industries HAVE the means to create a new form of market, and yet they're too stupid and too busy milking a 'cash-cow' for all it's worth to see any different.

remoteboy

http://www.theonion.com/onion3618/kid_rock_starves.html

Seriously though - I attended a conference as part of a Real Networks expo in SF in '99. There were four major players giving their view on digital distribution of music including a legal guy from Dreamworks, a guy from MP3.com and a really cool, faintly familiar guy who had acted as US manager for a lot of the BritPop bands including Primal Scream and Ned's Atomic Dustbin (ahh memories). They discussed the whole issue from the perspective of the artist, the label and the enduser for an hour. A lot of the discussion centred on how artists were trying to re-negotiate their contracts so they could own the Internet rights to their music and the likelihood of that actually happening.

At the end of the conference they threw the discussion open to the audience and the first guy to stand up said "how come you guys discussed music and the Internet for an hour and haven't even mentioned piracy?"

The Dreamworks guy laughed and said "because all the current debate is a smokescreen designed to buy the record companies time to understand and own the emerging technologies." His final statement was "if record companies gave a damn about piracy they never would have allowed their material to be released on compact disc."

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

DeVore

When they come, they'll eat the fat ones first.












The music/DVD middlemen are the fat ones. The internet is eating them first. They are complaining that the Kazaa users are stealing from the artists when even successful artists get 1-2 dollars per CD sale.
They are middlemen in an information industry (music is just data). Their time has come and they are just squealing as the truth hits home.

They're going down fighting with things like DRM embedded in the operating system and this new "trusted" OS from MS. (cf: Palladium)
Noone's going to buy into that.

Soon, we'll see e-tailers selling direct from artist to consumer and making a decent turn of profit on it because the suits are SO fat at the moment that they can easily be undercut and still have whopping great margins. 5 dollars for a CD? yeah, I'll buy that. Delivered as MP3? sweet.

Eventually you'll buy from the artists website because you want to suport them. (Same way people want to support Boards.ie in fact.)

Perhaps Hotpress should have written the headline
"Turkeys refuse to vote for Christmas: Shocker!"

DeV.

oscarBravo

Originally posted by DeVore
5 dollars for a CD? yeah, I'll buy that. Delivered as MP3? sweet.

...or, better again, delivered as Ogg Vorbis? schweeet!!!

PiE

Originally posted by daveirl
In fact do a search on Slashdot from that time and you'll find loads of articles on things like how CD sales had increased massively around college campuses in the US, where Napster was most prevelant.

Problem with that (from the major companies P.O.V) is that Napster opened up a huge new variety of music to millions of people. Sure, sales went up but they weren't for bands on the big labels. They were smaller bands on smaller independent labels, which from any P.O.V other than the major labels', can only be a good thing.

ozt9vdujny3srf

Bah! I think its still giving them better sales.

If i am on IRC and someone says "hey, x is a great song"

Now, i am hardly gonna go out and by the album on that, but 10 mins /lling just to see i do a lot, sure it can be ****, but hey no money spent.

If i like it, i will probably end up buyintg the album because frankly, li like to have the album :P

zz03

An article in today's LA Times says that Steve Jobs is after Universal - the world's largest record label.

If Apple get Universal, Microsoft will be off to grab another label.

The future's bright for broadband music delivery.

The days of over priced CDs and audio DVDs are numbered!


zz..