Big Four labels: ‘Greedy bastards’
p2p news view / p2pnet: Rumours that the Organized Music family, EMI Group, Vivendi Universal, Warner Music and last, but by no means least, Sony BMG, are about to excrete Sony BMG from the ranks, could well be true.
The Sony BMG spyware fiasco is ricocheting loudly around the Net, doing more to point up just how far the Big Four are willing to go to get you than even their bizarre sue ‘em all marketing scheme.
“The latest episode in the war between music companies and their paying customers (the one where Sony decides it’s OK to surreptitiously take over your PC so you can’t make a copy of the music you thought you bought from them) has finally pushed me over the edge,” says Mac aficionado Mike Evangelist on his Writers Blog Live.
He’s the former director of product marketing for Apple’s “Pro” applications, as Wysz points out on slashdot.
“I’ve been a big buyer of prerecorded ‘media’ for over 35 years,” says Evangelist. “I have two or three hundred vinyl LPs, several dozen 45’s, a hundred or so audio cassettes, and roughly 60 prerecorded reel-to-reel tapes. They are jammed in my closet with a couple hundred VHS tapes, 450 CDs, and 500-odd DVDs. (Mercifully, I skipped the 8-track, Betamax and laserdisc formats.)”
Join the club, Mike.
However, he’s finally realised the entertainment cartels are run by “greedy bastards” who “prefer to treat me (and all their customers) like criminals. They continually expect us to pay more for less, and even then they are not satisfied. They want to pretend to ‘sell’ us their product, but they don’t want us to actually have it.”
Henceforth, ” They can all take their DRM, and their broadcast flags, and their rootkits, and their Compact Discs that aren’t really compact discs and shove them up their bottom-lines,” he declares.
He said this on November 10 and added a PS on the 11th, to wit:
“But there’s a few points I want to add/clarify.
* I said I was going to stop buying content that is burdened with these ridiculous and futile shackles. I did not say I was going to start stealing that content. My point is to patronize only those companies that treat their customers with some respect.
* I forgot to mention the looming disaster of HD video on disc. Both of the competing HD disc standards will come equipped with the most monstrous, invasive, and customer-hating DRM ever devised by engineers and lawyers. If you want something to boycott, that would be it.
* Finally, a further rant. How did this shit come to be called copy protection? It is clearly intended to be copy prevention.
Mike, you’re right on items two and three. But if in the first, you’re referring to p2p file sharers, you’re perpetuating OM bullshit.
File sharers don’t steal content.
Nothing has been physically (or digitally) removed, no individuals or companies have been deprived of anything they used to own, and no financial transactions are involved.
File sharers would happily and gladly pay a fair and reasonable amount for their mp3 downloads.
However, they correctly maintain a dollar and more for digital tracks which aren’t worth more than a few cents each is neither fair nor reasonable.
If the Organized Music family sold downloads for 20 or 25 cents each, say, its members would be raking it in. And in the process, they’d be going a long way towards countering the counterfeits they say are making such huge holes in their bottom lines.
And think of the money they’d save on legal and PR bills, storage, print and delivery costs, and so on.
The labels have already made their money on the songs. Download sales based on them are pure bunce – icing on the cake they’ve already eaten.
But as you say, Mike, they’re greedy bastards.
Jon Newton
November 12th, 2005 at 6:05 pm
How about allowing low quality bit rates, lets say 56 Kbit/sec, so we can at least sample the music before we buy it ?
November 12th, 2005 at 6:49 pm
“If the Organized Music family sold downloads for 20 or 25 cents each, say, its members would be raking it in.”
Agreed that if prices were in the 20-25 cents per track (for popular music), the tracks would be competitive. However to drop prices to this level some fat must be eliminated from the cost structure.
However the cost structure and the cost per track will be different depending on many variables, lentgh of track, how many musicians were required, if the work is public domain or not and, country of origin, of course the quality of the performance. Put differently, some recordings have higher value than others. A Frank Sinatra recording has more value that the first recording of the kid down the street who sings off key.
What is important is that in the future whoever wants to sell music must drop the price and/or increase value, to the levels that it will be possible to compete with the “free” but not actually free and actually ideal products.
Nevertheless to achieve the best cost structure and the highest value the following are suggestions:
Eliminate somemiddlemen (the greedy bastards):
a. Music publishers. Now they are paid about 8 cents per track of CDs. Allegedly one half of that goes to the songwriters. The truth is that far less than one half goes to the songwriter. After the music publishers are eliminated, then a payment of four cents directly to the songwriter would be reasonable.
b. Record companies. These no longer make any sense for digital distribution though downloading or copying at music stores.
Enforce payments:
Additionally payments to artists and songwriters must be enforced. That will allow for lower costs, just like the utilities can charge lower costs to the paying customers if theft of the service is not allowed. Right now (at least in the USA) payment to artists is erratic and frequently non existent to say the least. I speak from very personal experience. Currentl there are about 75 records in the market with songs my family owns and not a single one of these records, produced by about 20 labels (including 16 records by Sony) has produced a payment of one single cent to my family.
Then some new methods have to be developed and used. Here are some ideas:
- Artists should sell track at their concerts, to customers that take USB flash drives to the concert.
- Music stores should sell tracks to customer’s USB drives or through email after payment is made at the store.
- Music stores should burn CDs for their customers. Here is the idea: People will be willing to pay a higher price for a group of 15 selected tracks than 15 tracks from a single musical release by one performer, where maybe one or two tracks are liked and the rest are just fillers.
- Include with the track files, files containing images, information and song scores.
One thing we must do is not fall for the employment arguments that RIAA and publishers makes… that if they disapear, so many thousand persons will be unemployed. A faulty logic, since the money not wasted by the consumers will be spent somehow anyway, in better things, thereby creating more employemnt in other sectors of the economy.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
November 13th, 2005 at 5:27 am
Make it easy on yourself………..DON’T BUY RIAA CRAP!!!
Make your own music, buy independent, listen to INTERNATIONAL MUSIC.
Just don’t bother yourself with worthless RIAA crap!
November 14th, 2005 at 12:38 am
These ‘Greedy bastards’ must be taught a lesson. For a start let’s say if everyone acts in concert and stops buying anything from them just for a week? Artistes do not have to be at the mercy of these ‘Greedy bastards’. They can go the way of e-books. I don’t see why e-music shouldn’t be a roaring success. In fact e-music would be most compatible to the Internet and certainly there is already a ready and eager audience for it. With today’s technology, I imagine that it wouldn’t be too complicated or costly for artistes to record their own music and songs and then sell them on the Internet as e-music. And before long I think everyone will be publishing their own music and songs on the Net, just like blogs! Hooray! the ‘Greedy bastards’ can file for bankruptcy at last!
November 14th, 2005 at 9:54 am
Just crazy, but…..
New Sony Digital Camera Installs Rootkit to Stop Photo Sharing
Many consumers are complaining about Sony’s new Cybershot DSCP515 camera that installs digital rights management (DRM) software on the person’s computer so they are unable to share their digital pictures with anyone.
The DRM is similar to the one which Sony recently came under fire for on its music CDs. That software installed rootkits on consumer’s computers making them vulnerable to cyberattacks.
“Picture sharing flies under the radar when it comes to piracy,” said Wilkerson. “People know about the dangers of music and movie piracy, but not about the dangers of sharing personal photos. What happens if a person takes a picture of Mariah Carey’s latest CD? Think of the children.”
The system which also makes it difficult to print out pictures has prompted complaints from consumers. “I tried to send a picture of my daughter to her Uncle Tim, but this window popped up saying it was blocked. I decided to print it out and mail it to him. There was a 14-page license agreement that printed out first that I had to fill out and fax to Sony so they could send me an authorization code to print out the picture.”