p2pnet news view Radio | P2P:-  Earlier today, we ran Jango: the vanity press of online music from p2pnet contributor Fred Wilhelms, a well-known (on- and offline) entertainment lawyer.

He was writing on the appearance of Jango, yet another online radio payola operation whose name has absolutely nothing to do with Stars Wars bounty hunter Jango Fett.

In his article, a follow-up to New Radio Payola scheme,“In book publishing, there’s a greatly undistinguished side of the business known as the ‘vanity press’,” says Fred »»»

It is where the author pays the costs to have his book printed, bound and marketed, and he pays for his copies of the book.  Normally, he gives away more than he sells.  The vanity press has been responsible a lot of bad prose and even more bad poetry.  Jango is the vanity press of Internet music.

Jango is legal.  Paying for play in this way is legal.  I’m not going to argue the ethics or morals, because the more you think about the economics of paying to entertain people, the wisdom of the argument makes those loftier considerations moot.

If Jango is a great success, it will be so filled with ’sound like’ musicians that listeners may never hear the group they went there to hear in the first place.

It could be the Internet equivalent of the popular restaurant Yogi Berra complained about when he said ‘Nobody goes there any more, it’s too crowded.’ 

“First – full disclosure,” said  Deana Graffeo in a comment post, continuing, “While I’m not an employee, I work with Jango, and it’s my name that appears on the bottom of the press release issued to announce the launch of Jango Airplay.”

Seriously, Deana, thanks for saying who you are.  Shills are so obvious and so boring and so trite, and they never achieve anything. Right Sam? Full disclosure, on the other hand, opens the door to genuine discussion where everyone knows what, or who, everyone else represents.

It’s called freedom of speech. Right, Sam?

“I read both today’s and yesterday`s articles with great interest – and while I can certainly respect the different point of view – I`m struck by the assumptions and misinformation that appear throughout,” Deana says, going on:

“But what I find most surprising is that at no time was Jango contacted for comment. The simple fact that information from the website was posted completely out of context and many assumptions were made without any regard for accuracy is pretty sad. Further to that – commentary from someone not-affiliated with the service is posted as follow up -there`s no debate here – where’s the balance? Dan Kaufman, Jango’s CEO is available, and would be most interested in speaking with you to address the potential issues and questions your articles raise. I encourage you to speak with him so your readers get a full picture and can decide for themselves. We look forward to hearing from you.”

In response,  “Please tell Dan he’s free, and welcome, to join in the discussion with a comment post outlining his perspective on either or both stories … in full, and at any length,” I said.

And while we wait for  Dan, below are two Reader’s Writes from the initial post, one anonynous, and one from Henry Emrich.

First, Henry »»»

So if I shell over a few hundred bucks, Jango will insinuate my stuff into people`s playlists? Where the hell is the choice in that, I ask you? If the site is about creating custom playlists of stuff you like — and finding stuff that`s similar to stuff you already like, that`s one thing. But to pay jango to force my stuff on people surreptitiously? Nah. So all I have to do — if I`m a savvy busnesslike type, is to pick a whole bunch of semi-random things I think I sound like: I sound like the Beatles, Mantovani orchestra, David Seville and the chipmunks, Eminem, and Billy Ray Cyrus, and — voilla! — large numbers of people are suddenly exposed to my stuff, which has been inserted into their custom-generated playlists, simply on the basis of me paying a few hundred bucks, and saying I sound like their favorites?

Sorry, but I really can`t get into the idea of paying Jango to pimp my stuff in that way.

2. What happens to artists who haven`t paid Jango? What if I like Zippy McWhipplefarb and his swingin` Kazoo band, but they haven`t bought time on Jango? Obviously — if Jango even bothers to have their stuff available — they`ll get bumped in favor of people who`ve paid Jango to plug their stuff.

The net result of this will be: custom, user-generated playlists which are inevitably skewed AWAY from what the listener would have chosen, and full of the stuff Jango WANTS you to hear. So the custom playlists won`t actually be playlists/stations of your own choosing, now will they?

Another result is that if acts didn`t pay Jango, their stuff gets tossed to the bottom — and you can bet that the majors will be throwing money at Jango like mad, just like they skew broadcast-radio playlists in their favor.

It`s stupid, overpriced, payola bullshit.

I dunno, but this just stinks of the same old pay-for-hype that made Milli Vanilli stars.

Something fundamentally wrong with the notion of buying popularity.

And then anonymous »»»

I’m not sure the reader’s write above might be old enough to remember the radio days of yore. Let me sort of expand on the olden radio days during the heyday of music.

You have a great new tune? Not affiliated with the major labels? Well, you could go to the DJ, ask him really nicely, and he was likely to put your tune on for radio land to hear. You as a listener got to hear new tunes that just might be exactly what your ear canals have always been yearning for. Beyond setting up getting it into a container for the radio station that it could use, that was about the only cost.

Then came along the likes of ClearChannel, who went on a buying spree of radio stations across the nation. When that wasn’t enough, ClearChannel got involved in politics and an even greater amount of radio stations were allowed for them to be bought. ClearChannel depended on payolla to keep the bucks rolling in along with commercials. For being paid by the major studios, they would see that the tune was played x amount of times. Radio DJ’s had their option of putting on whatever local talent might be taken away from them. They would only play what play lists, the head of scheduling laid out. Otherwise ClearChannel couldn’t rake in as much dough.

Later even DJs were removed from local radio stations and they became rebroadcast stations sucking in from a common program and just repeating the signal. Call one of those radio stations sometime with a local emergency you need to get on the air. Won’t happen because there is no one there to take the phone call.

Now you never hear new music on the stations, unless it is on the list from the majors as being groomed for the next top 40 hit. Every hour is the same tunes played over and over. You don’t get new music, unless it is on a syndicated show like a Sunday special program.

The other half of the income, the commercial, became so heavily laced into the programming, that it was like the music was the excuse to air commercials. ClearChannel was forced to reduce commercial air time because they were hemorrhaging listeners leaving for other ways to hear music. While they made a big deal of it and how it was to benefit the listener, the real truth of it was they had no choice in the matter as they were driving off their listeners through so much advertisement.

So we come down to another service trying to make money on something that should be for free. What most of these outfits do, is wait till they got a large audience or user group and then try and turn that into a money making scheme. I call you to FaceBook as a prime example of that mentality. Where this winds up if they are successful is they figure out new income streams that double dip, such as the commercial plus payolla scheme. It’s rather lucrative for everyone but the listener who is stuck with blah, day after day. The service starts out with a nice income and down the road gets greedy. That in turn ruins the experience for the audience and drives them on to other places, their once favorite place turned into some site they no longer recognize.

Because it is totally optional it tells me that they have a little scheme going. You pay us, we’ll advertise you, otherwise you don’t get any special recognition. In essence that is what these groups are buying. Despite what all commercial broadcasters, radio stations, newspapers, magazines and on and on tell you about ads being so desired to reduce costs, they are in truth a major annoyance. They are purposely cut out of tv series if you find them to download. People actively seek and find ways to terminate advertisements so they can enjoy what ever it is they want without that annoyance. They recognize just how bad it is. It’s the last thing the broadcasters want to see because it effects their income stream.

I’ve had it with the commercial. Ever since I quit watching tv, I have become sensitized to these intrusive breaks in programming. Call me a drop out but if it looks like advertisement, sounds like advertisement, and feels like advertisement, then it ain’t a duck.

Stay tuned.

March, 2009

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 6th, 2009 at 12:53 pm and is filed under P2P, Radio. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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