p2pnet.net News:- Students of the Big Music’s Australian adventures will be familiar with the name Michael Speck.

He runs the ARIA’s (Australian Record Industry Association) Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) and is infamous for his forceful representation of the cartel’s interests, once going so far as to try to directly influence the sentencing of three students in Australia’s first criminal internet piracy case.

“For a recording industry with a broken business model, last week’s guilty plea by three men to music piracy was a pyrrhic victory that will cost the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) dearly,” said PC World at the time, going on:

“Hoping for a world-first precedent to deter kids from illegally copying music, ARIA and its wholly-owned pet Doberman named MIPI (Music Industry Piracy Investigations Pty Ltd) were made to look like amateur, pea-brained thugs intent on standing over the demographic they so need buy their products.”

It also says, “MIPI’s publicity seeking stunts in Australia have scorched everyone who touches them. From the police to the DPP and even Telstra. This is an exceptional achievement for a one-man-band: for MIPI is Michael Speck and his subsidised shingle in a low-rent part of the city, pumping out foul hysteria to any who will listen.”

Actually, “used to listen” would now be accurate because he’s just quit, as Phil Tripp, one of the ARIA’s most persistently outspoken critics writes in his themusic.com.au Loose Cannon column.

And perversely, given the relative positioning of Tripp and Speck in the Corporate Music Wars, Tripp expresses considerable admiration for the cartel’s pseudo police officer.

“It may be surprising that I am one of Michael Speck’s greatest supporters but it’s because he has a job to do and has done it with the greatest of professional tactics and strategies,” Tripp told p2pnet.

“No other ‘copyright cop’ has achieved globally what he has in Australia – specifically with the Kazaa, Comcen and three student uploaders in the courts as well as physical carrier piracy – and though he is in an unpopular position having to enforce the will of ARIA and its stakeholders through MIPI, he is to be respected for what he has accomplished.

“Some of his great quotes include ‘Calling peer to peer operators music fans is like dubbing car thieves auto enthusiasts’ and ‘They are using the Pablo Escobar defence, I don’t touch it myself’. He has a great sense of humour that matches his sense of duty.”

Read on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

How the Music Industry Has Dropped Artists, Shed Staff, Deleted Titles and is Losing The Fight Against Copying & Piracy
By Phil Tripp – Loose Cannon

Stephen Peach at ARIA must be shitting himself at the moment.

At a time that the government has bitchslapped his organization with the view that it will strongly consider legalizing personal copying, he’s had to face well-documented studies of the number of releases made by record companies that make a mockery of his vapid claims that downloading is killing the industry. What makes it so extraordinary is that it’s the former ARIA General Counsel, Alex Malik, whose Doctorate degree study points to a 42% drop in the number of titles released over the past four years.

At a time when Peachy was promising his stakeholders that the government had respect and affinity for ARIA–no doubt due to his extraordinary leadership and media presence-and that post election, the government wouldn’t consider fair use copying provisions, he’s been gutted once again and is no doubt heading for the bunker to leave the media comments to someone else. But who would want to comment on behalf of a disgraced and irrelevant organization without a friendly face at a time it’s battling to retain some dignity.

And to top it all off, this week it’s been revealed that his general in the fight against piracy is leaving the battlefield after a long series of stoushes with powerful opponents. That’s right, the person actually LEADING the fight against piracy (not the one who would CLAIM to be at the forefront), Music Industry Piracy Investigations head Michael Speck has tendered his resignation. This gives Peach the unenviable task of replacing him, and now conducting interviews with likely candidates to work under his charismatic persona as the legal bills mount up and the likelihood of getting a clean win from the plethora of cases diminishes daily.

It’s not surprising that Speck would want to leave this swimming pool of spit and faux sincerity we call the music industry after years of battling physical and online piracy. One has only to look at the legal blundering by the backup teams of lawyers, the white-anting of case logistics from incompetent police and the continuing loss of credibility that ARIA has in the government’s eyes that makes the whole effort somewhat futile. Speck has put in incredible innings and been a centred and credible cop in the media’s view. But being seen to be fronting for a trade association of multinationals–accused far too often of violating trade practices and clawing to maintain perceived monopolistic practices–when the actual head is ducking media on crucial issues, must be a frustrating if not denigrating experience.

Especially when you look at the extraordinary figures the music industry would like to hide from public view when it comes to downplaying the degrading of artists, downgrading of marketing, downsizing of staff and downturn in releases. It’s the big lie that the industry wishes government and the media would swallow whole, but there have been too many lies in the past and too much hype to be credible, much less palatable.

This column started originally with my observations about the two ‘new’ talent programs on TV-X-Factor and StarStruck-which already have the stench of death around them with the latter just being shifted into a new timeslot. I was going to remark on how sad it is that our industry has become so habituated to allowing the SMS dialing addicts in front of the glass teat serve as de facto A&R couch potato teams judging how well artist either imitate artists as karaoke wannabes or adopt US & UK styles of music as ‘emerging new talent’.

I had to watch one episode of each to at least get the drift and the balance of what’s happening with ‘today’s music’ and I must say it’s a sad indictment of the industry when you are betting the farm on a new generation of cloned cattle strains when there are both veteran and innovative up and coming talent that sing in Australian. Style and language that is. Can’t they see that Casey Donovan has already fallen from the charts and that the Idol tour failed to live up to expectations? Isn’t this an indication that the pop phenomenon is coming to a close as audiences reach for the remote and yearn for something more riveting?

I thought it was a sick joke, but seeing Nikki Webster’s comeback as a Dancing Queen, duking it out with former fattie Sarah Marie Fidele from Big Brother and crossing to Celebrity Overhaul as a new concept in entertainment makes me believe the music industry is betting on the wrong horse. And if you look at the judges of X Factor and their career trajectories, I think there will be more misses than hits.

But this somewhat warped view had to take a back seat to the announcement today that the Federal Government has agreed to consider making legal the copying of music-from CD, vinyl, tape, 78, 45 or even shellac cylinders-for consumers who have purchased them for their own personal use. Some of you may remember that I was lobbying government on this issue of ‘fair use’, urging that it was time for an updating of our 35 year old Copyright Act not only to reflect fairness in allowing the consumers who actually SUPPORT the music industry by BUYING music and who want to make backups or compilations or transfer to another medium to play their music elsewhere. You might even have recalled that I was down with the proposal that recording artists and songwriters receive a reasonably small compensation for this ‘fair use’ copying by the introduction of a combined blank media levy on hard carriers used primarily for music recording as well as digital music players which are primarily copying devices.

APRA was behind this solution as was Screenrights. They were doing what they could to present a credible face to the music business that ARIA has consistently failed to do with either the Liberal or Labor parties. I went to Canberra a couple of times with some facts and figures as well as logical arguments as to why the tradeoff of blank media levy and digital music player levy could be balanced by compensating creators.

I got a fair hearing by both DCITA and the AG’s offices. It seemed that they were in favour of what was announced today, Then came the election. And things got real quiet. I had to go into ’stealth mode’. And now I’m happy to report on a remarkable turnaround.

Peach had assumed that ARIA-which strongly objected to the fair use doctrine of private copying-had kinda won by default. He assumed that the arguments he presented in favour of retaining the outdated prevention of personal copying of purchased material would be supported by Government. He thought they’d swallow the line that allowing this would result in unfettered downloading from illicit sources.

The problem is, the facts didn’t back him up nor did the figures. Nor did his supposed mates in Canberra. With a $20,000 a month lobbyist reassuring everyone that they were on the case and it was under control, Peachy must have felt comfortable that the war was over. He had made overtures to both the Music Managers Forum and Association of Independent Record Labels. MMF didn’t take a position but AIR copped out with a weakview that may yet be modified, now that a couple of key events have happened.

The first is the ruling by the Canadian Supreme Court, upholding the blank media levy in that country as a levy and not a tax. This has certainly awakened interest in Australia where the original blank tape levy campaign crumbled because it was promoted as more of a tax than a levy. The second of course is the Free Trade Agreement which tends to compel us to follow the rules of engagement that the US Copyright Act-which has the fair use provisions-even though that means extending copyright life and other alterations to our laws.

But this is all law… not necessarily justice… just law. And in the end, it’s the truth that burns clean. The truth, they say, will set you free. But first it will piss you off. And here’s the truth that the music industry would rather not have the government believe.

If you look at Alex’s statistics, gathered from ARIA’s own release information, you will see that a 42% decline in the number of titles released over four years is a fact. What other business can sell more when they reduce the product lines they have?

If you look at the rosters of the remaining four record major labels (there were six five years ago) you will notice that the number of artists signed to these labels has been halved. And even more distressing, the number of ‘cloned’ artists from TV talent quests-who are the ultimate disposable commodity-has vastly increased. So record companies have been dropping artist with longevity which have years of monetary investment. What other business model like this could work? Go from running a chain of boutique restaurants to turning them into hamburger stalls.

Now have a look at the staff levels of record companies. Over the past five years, judging by the Music Industry Directory which we publish and anecdotal material, the number of staff at major label level have been slashed by 40% at best and 50% at worst. What kind of business can increase sales with fewer sales, marketing and support staff?

Then look at the amount of advertising in street press and music magazines. According to the publishers, ad salespeople and others I’ve spoken to, the amount of advertising from record companies has dropped by about 35-45% over the past few years. The editors of the publications note that there are fewer releases, fewer copies and fewer giveaways tendered to them than ever in the past.

So with diminishing marketing and advertising, what business model could sell more of less product by fewer producers?

Then we come to the final statistics-all from America-which paint a pretty bleak picture. You see, over there, they have gone through the same sort of struggle, just sooner than us. Fewer artists, releasing fewer recordings, less frequently with smaller promotion and marketing resulting in decreasing airplay from a diminishing number of outlets and with predictable results. But like us, they blamed downloading for their woes too.

Last year in the US, there were 30,000 album releases. There were only 100 certifiable hits. Albums that made a hefty profit. Of those 30,000 titles, only 1000 sold over 5000 copies. Only 5000 sold over 1000 copies. In other words, 25,000 releases sold less than 1000 copies each. And this is in a country which has more than ten times the population of Australia.

Just today, some figures were announced that may give some hope to the music industry.

22 million US adults (about 11% of the population) now carry digital music players. (Pew)

And exactly 11% of US consumers and nearly 50% of music downloaders in the US, aged 12 or older, have paid for online music downloads. That’s risen from 2% in December 2002 and 4% in December 2003. (Ipsos)

But the picture here is somewhat distorted by the fact that the most action that appears to be happening not in the high street stores of HMV, Virgin and Sanity but at the low end of the food chain in Dirt Cheap CDs and DVDs, Rock Bottom, JB Hi Fi and other remainder outlets as well as the $10 tables in front of chains like Hum and Fish. What’s happening at retail is that the import of cheap Asian and overrun product from other countries is being sold here at incredibly low prices and also that the price of Top 40 product is being eroded by cheap imports.

It’s a facet of the music industry that has been silently growing like a cancer but it’s also the result of local labels selling their remaindered product back into the market at giveaway prices while trying to retain top dollar for chart and new release product. The result is that consumers are far happier avoiding new product-unless it’s ‘dirt cheap’-and opting to acquire compilations or other shlock product to fill their collections.

What’s the answer? There isn’t one unfortunately. I could go on a long time here but I’ve got to get back to work and save this for another fortnight.

Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net

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See:-
foul hysteria - MIPI mischief comes a cropper in court, Computerworld, July 10, 2003

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 17th, 2005 at 6:45 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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