There was popular music before the recording industry, and there will be popular music after the recording industry. It costs next to nothing to record and release an album these days.

“while songwriters and artists without huge live tours and substantial advertising revenue could be reduced to practising their art as amateurs in their leisure hours”

And that’s a bad thing, *how* exactly? A musician is anyone who sings or plays a musical instrument. If 99% of the musicians in the world practice their art as ART and don’t become rich off of it, what exactly is so earth-shattering about the other 1% joining them?

The industry needs to wake up and smell its own irrelevance. Maybe then money-grubbing studio whores like KISS will finally go away….

Good point

“why do you post Corpspeak drivel like this?”

If people don’t have a chance see it in all its glory, once in a while, instead of excerpts, they don’t know just how ludicrous it is.

Cheers!

Of course, we already know this, but too many people don’t.
Too many people still believe that fellating the RIAA/it’s various sockpuppets in other countries means they get to be the next Nickelback.
Not gonna happen. Trust me: when they’ve used up their current crop of boybands and crack-whores, they’ll just crank out some more, Mili Vanilli style.

Cheers!

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We don’t have to worry about it leading to that, it is already that. Today is about making money and protecting the copyright holders. In the making money, gone are the musicians as CEOs that could play music. Now it is use a computer to judge how simular it is to a past hit to try and get a formulatic hit time after time. Unfortunetly that leads to less diversity and to more of it sounding the same. The old “nothing new” line if you will.

Nine out of ten music users on the Internet – 86.2 percent
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More of those bogus numbers you pull out of the hat when you need them. I’m sure if there was a survey company that did this, they were happy to recieve the money for the sponcored survey.

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File-sharers want to do the right thing.

Duh, where was this attitude during the days of Napster? Where is it today with TPB? This “we’re the good guys trying to make a living” isn’t playing so well after all the years of thuggery. Right now, down the drain bankrupt sounds like a great plan for the major music labels because of their past actions. Nothing would please me more than a start over that might bring some sort of reality that once belonged in the major labels concerns back into operation. What I see now, I don’t like. I won’t fund it by paying more money for. Face it and get over it, the major labels have earned their hate relationship with the customer and I am one that doesn’t approve of how they do business and will celebrate the day they close their doors under the present management.

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they would consider paying between SEK 50 and 150 per month.

Again we get down to the only thing important to the major labels. Why don’t I see anything about culture and the majors’ responcibility to further it for the benefit of all? We never get into those issues with the puff pieces do we? Nor fair use, which the majors want dead and buried. Times must be getting hard up for them to even consider mouthing the phrases of blanket licensing. I bet there is a really bad taste in their mouth to even have to phrase it, however it is couched.

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Spotify or Last.fm offers many advantages, but is not thought to offer the potential to replace file-sharing totally.

Yet the main problem with both services are survivability issues because of high license fees that prevent these services from taking off. Again the majors have shot themselves in the foot, believing that free is not a valid model. They want coin and lots of it. No one on the net is making that sort of money. Their reality is having to be adjusted in just how valuable the back catalog is.

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it is important to be able to transfer the music from their computer and listen to it somewhere else.

Where is all the DRM enabling speech? You know the customer empowerment that is so often slung around. Could it be that again the customer needs to remind those same media that DRM is unacceptable for paid music? Looks to me like they are trying to dress it up real nicely. Nice dress or not, a pig is still a pig and a sow’s ear is still a sow’s ear. The past has shown us the major labels are scared to death you might be able to transfer bought music to ever how it fits in your lifestyle.

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STIM’s proposed special file-sharing subscription

Which is the music industries wet dream. Instead of buying a tune and once the sale is over, the money stops as well, they would rather you pay and pay, over and over again. The only way that works is if they can terminate the play ability you have paid for by DRM. Sorry, no sale on DRM. I won’t rent it, I won’t buy defective discs that contain such.

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The technology is stable and functions without disturbing the user.

Was sure it had to come up. Shortly after writing the above comment, it raises it’s ugly head. In puff peices, it’s like fairy tales, everything is rosy. Tell that to someone who bought a song and it won’t play on the player of their choice.

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start working seriously to offer their customers what they are calling for

And I guess it is believed that the ISPs want 3 strikes and your out? You mean they actually like to terminate customers and end the billing cycle? Hello. Is there anyone with any sense remaining in the music industry?

Puff pieces like this are not taken seriously by the average consumer. It is not the legislatars you need to convince, it is the customer from where the money comes from you need to be talking to. So far it is a fancy, hi faltaing noise with little bearing on reality in this puff piece. I have heard nothing but bogus figures so favored by the industry to justify their actions with little bearing on the real uses the music listener puts music to. If you can not meet that demand, which so far the industry has failed miserably at because of greed and control issues, then you are not going to have a long term sustainable business. The CEOs of big music have pretty much ruined a good thing they used to have. They have lost their direction in what is important. If you take care of what is important (which is the customer) they will take care of you, making sure in the process you have plenty of money. That failing to do so, is not the customer’s fault.

Anything other than a (blanket) license to share is an invitation for lawsuits from parties not covered by the “agreement”. If labels are covered by the agreement, those who actually created the works are not.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090319/1003034179.shtml

”
STIM has also had the technical possibilities investigated for measuring reliably the music that Internet users are listening to on their computer. The objective is to be able to distribute revenue to songwriters and artists accurately, while respecting the personal integrity of the Internet user. The conclusion was that effective technology exists that could be used for the purpose, and that is already being used on a large scale by various existing music services. The technology is stable and functions without disturbing the user.
”

By persecuting music fans they will lose the ability to measure reliably. Encryption simply will not permit it.