Big Music: completely and utterly superfluous
p2pnet news view P2P | RIAA:- So I see the RIAA ‘won’ in the Tannenbaum case.
I say supposedly because, unlike the corporate-owned media, and various RIAA fanbois out there, I have historical consciousness and can actually think.
For anybody who hasn’t clued in yet, here’s how it usually goes:
The RIAA (or some other propaganda-arm of the corporate media industry such as MPAA, or IFPI or BREIN), being the money-grubbing, corporate shits they are, launch yet another ill-fated campaign of propaganda/disinformation/bullying. They do this every few years, in a more or less predictable pattern.
Some examples of their campaigns:
- 1970s: — Home taping is killing music
- 1980s — VCR = Boston Strangler
- 1990s — Don’t copy that floppy!
- 1990s — DMCA
- 2000s — War against p2p
Now, these campaigns have several things in commons:
1. They happen in response to technological innovations which threaten to put professional tech into the hands of mere consumers. The ability for mere consumers to record/copy/share corporate product — or, god forbid, create their own — terrifies the corporate media cartels, because it’s a threat to their monopoly privileges. Ironically, the scare-mongering they use in these campaigns demonstrates that they realize they’re completely worthless, because they keep asking us why anybody would actually pay, if they are permitted to record it off the radio/download a cracked copy/get it off p2p networks/etc. They KNOW that the second the Great Unwashed Masses (not to mention ‘unsigned’ artists) gets access to the ability to record, copy, or distribute ‘content’, the corporate media oligarchies have no further excuse for existing at all.
2. Their intended victims (consumers, indie musicians) inevitably fail to be intimidated in the least, reacting instead with amusement, contempt, disdain, or — should the corporate media scumbags actually manage to score a win, as in the case of napster — anger, and a widespread desire to see the corporate media oligarchy completely destroyed.
Here are some wikipedia links to think about:
(Most especially, read the part about Punk bands cutting their own albums, creating their own distribution networks, etc.)
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milli_Vanilli
(Yes, I DO find the mere existence of Milli Vanilli to be particularly loathsome, in case you wondered.) 
The last thing I want to point you to is this:
Think about the possibilities of this format. I mean, seriously: if Phil Spector was terrified of stereo because it took control away from the producer, an audio format that explicitly allows — and encourages — mere ‘listeners’ to create their own custom remixes, has got to make the RIAA absolutely shit bricks.
Think about it: No more after-market for remastered versions. The artificial dividing line between releases and bootlegs dissapears. What counts as a remix, when it can be different every time you listen to it?
That’s not even the worst part from an RIAA perspective: all that customizing is bound to help mere listeners learn about audio mixing and the other arcana related to music production.
And let’s think about this, folks: I have a home studio in an upstairs bedroom that would have made the Beatles shit bricks with envy, and it’s built out of scavenged equipment, and soon it’ll be possible for me to release entire albums in a format such that anybody AND EVERYBODY can remix at will?
The whole music industry as represented by the RIAA member-corporations is now completely and utterly superfluous, because the last thing they had to offer — producers — just went the way of buggy-whip manufacturing.
Mass literacy pretty much killed off the professional scribe. P2P kicked down the last few barriers to entry as regards distribution, and now a new audio format erases the distinction between source-tracks and mixdown.
I predict right now that the major-label acts are going to resist this tooth and nail. But the first person/group to actually use this and encourage this is going to have a dedicated fan-base the likes of which the world hasn’t seen since the Grateful Dead — who, not coincidentally, were tape- and bootleg-friendly.
Just some stuff to think about, while the RIAA and their apologists are crowing about their massive win against Joel, and completely failing to realize that they already fatally and completely lost at LEAST ten years ago, and each new technical evolution just digs their grave a little deeper.
Henry Emrich – p2pnet
[Ermich says he's, "just some guy," sometime musician, wannabe writer, sporadic blogger, and (hopefully) good-natured person. He and his wife live in Pennsylvania with two cats, and, "entirely too many record albums".]
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
July, 2009
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August 2nd, 2009 at 1:18 pm
im glad to see you finally got henry to write an article
August 2nd, 2009 at 1:25 pm
^^ actually, Henry has been an official contributor for a long time: it’s just he likes to do 99.9% recurring of his writing as comment posts.
Cheers!
August 2nd, 2009 at 3:39 pm
As always, nice post, Henry!
Hey Jon,
Thought you were taking a day or two off!?
August 2nd, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Well I cant wait to see the fall of these dinosaures… Each time they claim to have a win (Tenebaum beeing the last to count) theyre just digging their own graves deeper. When will artists realise that these corpotations DO NOT serve their interests?? The day artists will realise that they, in fact can have a succesfull professional life without help of these parasites, then yes, these bastards will die…
August 2nd, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Maroan:
Exactly. The problem is, RIAA and the corporate dinosaurs they represent, have done a really good job of propaganda and disinformation over the last several decades. For example, they’ve been able to transform copy”right” — a government-granted monopoly privilege granted tor a limited time and specific purpose, and INTENDED to expire — into the “Sacred right of property”. They’ve pretty much neutered the public domain, in that whenever anything comes close to expiring, they just buy themselves another term extension which is then applied retroactively.
Then they promote a skewed notion of creativity and innovation, where supposedly stuff just springs fully-formed from the brow of the artist — as opposed to being part of the surrounding culture, influenced by influences, and suchlike.
Then they dangle the stereotypical “celebrity” lifestyle as bait, and presto: Metallica become total corporate whores in the blink of an eye.
The sad part about Metallica is they started out as a taper/bootleg-friendly band, explicitly encouraged people to copy their album and give it to friends, so as to generate a fan-base. Suddenly, when the same exact thing is happening more efficiently (Napster) they turn into whiny little bitches. Corporate Whoredom doesn’t look very “metal”, y’know?
(Personally, I think their bullshit back then is what damaged their career — nobody’s going to take corporate whores seriously.)
But yeah, the first — and most difficult — hurdle is to get people to reconsider how they think about stuff like copyright, creativity, innovation, art, stuff like that.
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:18 am
http://www.audizen.co.kr/product/product2.htm
If anyone is interested in the actual company thats working on the Music 2.0 program, theres the addy,
might be interesting stuff, if they can get it up and running before the MAFIASS kill it!
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:34 am
The thing that I think is coolest about it, is that — at least according to the Korea times article I found referencing it — the format is explicitly not-drm’ed. So, you’re really “buying” the file from them, rather than merely entering into some kind of skewed “rental until we decide to kill it by changing the DRM license” type of bullshit.
Now, I don’t actually think this will ever make it, simply because the corporate oligarchy holding the “rights” to the vast majority of creative culture (oops, I mean “product”) are a bunch of technophobic dickheads who think endlessly re-marketing “classic” albums and “authorized” remixes makes a good supplemental income-stream, between their latest manufactured Milli-Vanilli style “talent” and/or drug-whored-of-the-month. (Don’t take that how it sounded — I genuinely feel bad for Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse, but still.)
The corporate media oligarchy shit itself with fear when Dangermouse put out “the Grey Album”, so anybody who thinks they’ll willingly do the technological equivalent of releasing the studio-masters to albums (which is just begging for remixers and mashup artists to go nuts), is giving them WAY too much credit.
Still, the format itself is genius, and would be a total blas