Ex-RIAA boss Rosen: when fans took control
p2pnet news view RIAA | P2P:- Had Napster — the original, that is – survived the attentions of the corporate music industry, it would have been 10 years old, p2pnet noted yesterday.
Not only but also, “had the corporate music dinosaurs been able to extract their heads from their anal orifices,” they, and Napster creator Shawn Fanning, would now be bathing in endless streams of cash, we said.
But the major labels didn’t want to share. They wanted it all. And they still do.
One of the principal instruments of their insatiable greed was Hilary Rosen, who now works for a PR firm, but who was then in charge of Vivendi Universal (France), Sony (Japan), EMI (Britain), BMG (Germany) and Warner Music (US) extortion unit, the Recording Industry Association of America.
In celebration of what would have been Napster’s birthday, Billboard had a few words with Rosen and IOHO, the last three questions, and her answers, were particularly interesting, to wit »»»
Billboard: Do you think the RIAA can ever win back the music fans estranged after Napster and the subsequent litigation campaign? Or is the organization obligated to play to “bad cop” role?
Rosen: I think the RIAA became the central organizing vehicle for people’s anger. But they don’t work for the consumers. They work for the industry. It’s the business leaders in the industry that are calling the shots there.
Billboard: What’s your reaction to the recent Pirate Bay verdict?
Rosen: There is a sad irony there that they get a similar verdict and they’re similarly powerless to stop the piracy. For many years, I argued to deaf voices that the industry needed to do some public education campaign about music appreciation. That there wasn’t enough sense that music had value, that it mattered. The record companies themselves weren’t used to being companies that were answerable to the public. Chalk it up to the old flavor of rock and roll, which is “against the man.” Since artists were always against the man, and record labels always represented the man, it didn’t matter that they were giving the artist millions of dollars in advances, they were still the bad guy. Essentially, fans adopted that same anti-record company viewpoint and therefore ripping off the man created some extra joy, not just a convenience factor. All of the good things that the music industry has done over the years, and they have done many – I don’t think any industry has done as much to give back and work in communities and respond to crises – hasn’t really changed that old viewpoint. Now, the only and best the industry can do is focus much more aggressively on partnering with artists to derive revenue from the whole of a musical experience. Artists still need partners. There’s no reason record companies shouldn’t be those partners.
Billboard: Ultimately, what do you think will be Napster’s legacy?
Rosen: It’s just what Sean [Fanning] intended it to be, which was the day the fans took control. That’s what the Napster legacy is. And the industry has been on its heels ever since.
Now you know. 
p2pnet – Napster: 10 today, had it survived
endless streams of cash – The Days of Wine and Napster, May 19, 2009
Billboard - Billboard.biz Q&A: Former RIAA CEO Rosen Talks Napster, June 1, 2009
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June 2nd, 2009 at 9:28 am
“Artists still need partners.”
Why?
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:54 am
because most of them have no idea about distribution and marketing and this stuff.
So they need partners in the “geek business”. People that knows about p2p and all those stuff.
BUT those partners are definetly NOT the record labels and there is imo EVERY reason that *they* should not be it.
Starting with the ridiculous breakage fees deduction even in the age of polycarbonate CDs instead of shellac disks, over to the cheating that the labels are doing to artists when it comes to sales on itunes and closing with the absolutely stupid evidence that Labels don’t get it when they allow their lawyers to call those p2p systems “Online Media Distribution System” MEDIA Distribution! Right, they now shred those polycarbonate disks (the MEDIA!) and blow them down the tubes in alaska! (But hey; At least the breakage fee deductions can survive this way!)
June 2nd, 2009 at 11:26 am
Boy…what can i say to this…I ALMOST feel sorry for that woman. they mind-fucked her so bad that even now she BELIEVES the record industry helps the artist, DAMN!!!
June 2nd, 2009 at 1:52 pm
“fans adopted that same anti-record company viewpoint and therefore ripping off the man created some extra joy, not just a convenience factor.”
Extra joy?? I think she is reading too much into this.
People just want to share and want it to be easy.
Sharing is human nature.
This sharing is easy and costs nothing…like sharing the flame of your candle, completely unlike sharing your sandwich, which many people like to do anyway.
June 2nd, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Well, sounds like to me Rosen took hippy to heart. Strange no one else is living that now. I see no extra joy beyond sharing and I grew up in that span.
It’s just the music industry has different standards than everyone else. Greed is a big factor in that standard. Since Rosen was high up in the RIAA organization, she is expected to spout the line of the day, you know…pirates, helping the artist, helping the office, the music industry, the whole line. Even when gone, as long as she does that, they will see she has a good job with someone. Whoever she works for will receive a bit of extra money, benefit, or consideration, because Rosen is employed there. Nothing will even be on record of course but under the table, now that’s a different story as we all know that the organizations work that way, just from the seeing how they attempt to do when the go after the bigger p2p sites, such as TPB.
Major labels biggest problem is being an asshole. Because of that more and more folks are having less and less to do with them. People didn’t just stick that label on them, they earned it. I have no sympathy for the music industry.
June 2nd, 2009 at 4:32 pm
“Major labels biggest problem is being an asshole.”
- pack mentality plays a role too.
June 2nd, 2009 at 6:21 pm
“All of the good things that the music industry has done over the years, and they have done many”
WHAT GOOD THINGS?
-Turning the 20th century into a artistic desert in which only crap and mediocrities is floating?
-Bullshiting the public with Madona shit, Britney slut and other non-sense for so many years that we were not even born when they started, by using what they called “”marketing”" but was actually brainwhasing?
-Riping off the artists by coercing them to sign crappy and unfair contracts?
-keeping into the dark so many great artists because they were business-wise too unpredictable?
It is incredible if very few bright light at all managed to pierce into the goo they created!
They are just a pack of parasites and criminals such as Spector and they should be exterminated.
The good news is that we are almost done with them.
NEANWHILE CONTINUE THE BOYCOTT AND DO NOT SETTLE!
Never negotiate with terrorists whether their names is vivendique universale, sony/bmg, emi, time warner or el quada!
June 2nd, 2009 at 7:14 pm
It’s funny that now she says that her private position on these issues was in complete contrast to her public position.
The old “yes, I said that, but that’s not how I really felt” backpedal.
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:05 am
Hillary Rosen is a corporate shill, pure and simple.
The only “education” that needs to happen is for people to keep hammering home the FACT that copy”right” is a coercive monopoly privilege that was originally intended to expire relatively quickly, NOT last seventy years past the death of the rights-holder.
Also, copy”rights” should never be held by corporate “persons”.
“Corporate personhood” is another dangerous idea that there needs to be more education about.
But hey, at least the dumb bitch is *trying* to not be a complete RIAA sockpuppet, and giving a halfassed nod to “the fans taking control”.
Gotta love it when empty-suits like her try to sound like human beings.
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:24 pm
“it didn’t matter that they were giving the artist millions of dollars in advances, they were still the bad guy. ”
It only takes one or two artists reporting that record company contracts commonly rip off all artists (and no one denying the fact) for us fans to figure out who the bad guy is.
June 4th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Not to mention that the cost of recording and producing the band’s album comes solely from their advance….right down to paying a “specialist” $10,000 just to make sure the mikes are “warm.”
June 4th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
The $10,000 “mic-warmer” is nothing compared to the what the music executives pocket. The industry ranks have been so top-heavy with do-nothing fat cats that the current collapse of CD sales will serve as a stimulus to clean out the reeking stables.