Vivendi boss Levy misinforms Midem
p2pnet news | Music:- Vivendi boss Jean-Bernard Levy reckons there’ll be a viable market for physical products like CDs for years to come, and that the industry’s future lies in spotting the right “creative talent”.
Wrong.
The industry’s future (and survival) lies in treating its customers and artists (the people who keep Levy and others like him fat and happy) decently instead of suing the one and cheating the other. Make that policy and the rest will follow naturally.
However, the chances of the Big Music bosses showing signs of intelligence any time soon aren’t high and meanwhile, Levy told the annual Midem conference the “gloom surrounding the industry had been over done,” says Reuters.
Having said that, “Of course it is not doing that well,” he admitted, going on, “but look at us, we have flat revenues, a good two digit margins and it’s not as dark as what many people describe.”
Big Music, of which Vivendi is the biggest, “has been hit in recent years by Internet piracy and the rapid growth in digital sales but the planned job losses at British company EMI have highlighted the issue even further,” he said, according to this story, also stating:
“We like to have strong competitors. I hope that after the shake up (at EMI) there will be a strong set of major companies that will help the music industry to grow.”
This kind of thing goes down well with corporatue bosses, but the reality is: it has about as much validity as claims from Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG that they give a damn about their customers and the artists they have under contrac
t.
Were it not efforts on the part of the Big 4, there’d now be a thriving online music industry, nourished by competition.
Instead, the corporate side is dominated totally by Vivendi, et al, who to date have been completely unsuccessful in suing their customers into abandoning the free P2P networks and independent music sites and services.
All four members of the multi-billion-dollar organised music cartel have individually and collectively claimed they’re being “devastated” (a word their PR hacks use repeatedly) by file sharers.
However, “I have seen the numbers go up quite sharply,” Levy confesses in the story. “We had in ‘03 a 3 percent operating margin business and we have today a 12 percent operating margin business.
“We do have a lot of satisfaction … and we’re very committed. If we (have the right creative policy) and if we understand the technology well and the consumer well, then … digital entertainment will continue to expand and will be very successful.”
Sadly, Levy’s words have a distinctly hollow ring to them because neither he nor his minions have a clue about either.
Said UMG heavy Doug Morris recently, “There’s no one in the record industry that’s a technologist. That’s a misconception writers make all the time, that the record industry missed this. They didn’t. They just didn’t know what to do.”
Of customers, one might assume students rank high as future buyers of Big 4 product and should therefore be courted with great sensitivity.
However, to the contrary, in America, Vivendi and the other members of the cartel are currently trying to sledge-hammer students into becoming compliant consumers and what goes down in America is ultimately and inevitably re-applied elsewhere in the world.
Stay tuned.
Also See:
Reuters – Vivendi chief says music industry gloom overdone, January 26, 2008
contactmusic.com – Another too blue scene cut from NYPD, March 15, 2004
New York Times – Life Is Still Tough at the 15th Precinct, October 15, 1996
didn’t know what to do – UMG Doug Morris’ shlock-horror confession, November 26, 2007
students rank high – Harvard chooses RIAA for law class, January 24, 2008
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January 26th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Expect big things from Midem 2008! Tomorrow will be a history marked day in digital music.
January 26th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Considering that this piece of Shit of Levy is the main instigator of the customer extortion conspiracy This levy deserve nothing less than beeing slamed into a jail before we throw the key away.
Meanwhile and until we can achieve this goal, we should sue this parasite to recover all the stolen money from artists and fan with interest and attorney fee.
Let put this bastard out of Business!
Meanwhile continue the BOYCOTT they are melting melting melting. . .
January 26th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
I laugh every time I read someone wants me to join a BOYCOTT. Forget that noise . . .
January 26th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
It’s the file stealers who should be slammed into jail. Levy may be a corporate suit but his company owns the intellectual property. Nobody held a gun to the artists head when they negotiated their deals with the record labels. If anyone is at fault it is the artists’ attorneys. The record labels, the publishing companies and sometimes the artists directly own the intellectual property rights to the music. If you don’t pay for those rights when you use the music, if it is copyrighted, you are a thief. Stop whining. Get a subscription to Napster. It’s almost free and the quality and experience are better than stealing. Grow up.
January 26th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Troll.
January 26th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
” It’s the file stealers who should be slammed into jail. Levy may be a corporate suit but his company owns the intellectual property. ”
Yup. that’s true.
So when are they going to admit in mainstream media to everyone
that the lawsuits have nothing whatsoever to do with the artists ?
” Nobody held a gun to the artists head when they negotiated their deals with the record labels ”
There was a time when the labels were in fact the only way to be heard outside of your
garage. The only way to get national exposure.
This is really why they continually try to criminalize P2P.
now anyone can be heard .. anywhere .. anytime.
The cartels need to sue all non owned p2p developers out of existence, so that they
are once again the ‘gatekeepers’.
” if it is copyrighted, you are a thief. ”
Really ?
Creative Commons is a Copyright.
Nearly all creative commons artists WANT you to hear them .. free.
Of course, once the RIAA locks down all P2P access, you wont anymore, nice eh ?
” you are a thief. ”
Ummm, no your not.
No one has been deprived of the use or benefits of any physical property.
If it was theft, they damn sure would call it that in court.
They can’t , so they don’t , because it ain’t.
” It’s almost free and the quality and experience are better than stealing. Grow up. ”
Fully grown. That’s why I boycott.
I’ve made up my mind from the available facts, not the fictions .. the PROVEN fictions
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/14753 ( Hollywood lies about download stats )
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/14553 ( RIAA LIES at Jammie thomas trial )
of the industry.
How dumb do you have to be to continue to believe a proven liar ?
January 26th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
maybe that’s his honest opinion
January 26th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Everyone has the right to be morally bankrupt and completely wrong. Even so, I think I’ll continue to boycott the RIAA.
January 27th, 2008 at 2:05 am
They are their own worse enemy. They have managed to downturn music in a big way by the way it is run. I don’t know if you can remember the 60’s and 70’s and the way new albums were held in reverance for the first day it was sold. A big name band would have people camping out overnight, just to be the first to have the new album.
Until the days of The Beatles, almost all sales were a single with a B side, more normally referred to the 45 or the 78 before it. The Beatles were the first to make an album so interesting musically as to have people want it all. So albums became the way music was sold. It allowed the artist a longer time to develop a music theme. This went great till the days of the filler.
It was not uncommon for Top Billboard hits to stay in the top 10 for 1/2 a year. But poor quality and the rip off ruined it. Now-a-days no one but no one trusts that an album will be consistantly interesting throughout. Instead it is common to expect one, maybe two good songs and the rest is trash.
This has nothing to do with file sharing. What it has to do with is high prices for low quality and that is where the sales problem in part lies.
No one can fix this but the big labels. The big labels have gotten greedy and had a meal of the golden goose. It’s gone bubba, it ain’t coming back. That’s why the digital is doing as well as it is. Basically, it’s a single; no trash.
January 27th, 2008 at 3:34 am
” maybe that’s his honest opinion ”
That’s possible, but not likely.
If you read through wyly’s rant, you’ll notice that he’s careful to
state every industry cliche, nearly verbatim, while at the same
time extolling the virtues of corporate sponsored product.
And yet, it still reads pretty well.
You’ll notice that a lot of care has also been put into making it LOOK
like a random rant of a ‘concerned’ regular joe ( lack of paragraphs,
improper punctuation etc .. ).
This is carefully crafted.
It is someone paid to troll P2P boards.
It’s a very similar technique to Sony’s use of PR people to pose as
‘Fan’s’ on fansites for promotional purposes.
Similar to Labels putting signed acts on YouTube who pretend to be just
plain ‘ol jane to virally build an audience.
So far I have found not one intelligent thoughtful person that supports the corporate
position that doesn’t get financial benefit from them.
January 27th, 2008 at 7:27 am
Don’t feed the trolls Dreddsnik
January 27th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Here is a book by a Russian professor Alexander Dolgin
“Symbolic exchange economics”
http://www.artpragmatica.ru/en/book/
This book will likely be interesting to you if:
- You use the “mute” button when there are commercials running on TV, and you want to learn about TiVo to avoid this routine operation
- It seems strange to you, that many artistic works (films, music) are sold with the same price without regard to quality, and you want to know why;
- you want to know how brands work in different areas, including showbiz, movies and fashion
- you visit the sales of clothing items and want to understand the internal logic of discounts
- you are amused by the case from the copyright practice, when a filesharing service Napster, convicted for distribution of third-party music, sued a nameless T-shirt distributor who did not pay Napster for using its name
- you want to know about the benefits the ticket resellers and speculators bring
This book is about culture of the digital century. Important topic of the book – how the culture functions in the market conditions, which role does the money play it it and how to make it so, that it benefits the consumer
Unfortunately, the book is only in Russian, they only posted the introduction in English.