p2pnet - rss feed: NY digital music probe widens
p2p news / p2pnet: Sony BMG, Vivendi Universal, Warner Music and EMI, the Big Four Organized Music cartel members, aren’t the only ones to have New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer breathing down their necks.
“A trade group for digital-music services said Tuesday that its members have now also received information requests,” says CNET News, quoting Jonathan Potter, executive director of the Digital Media Association, which represents companies including Yahoo, Apple Computer and America Online. Potter says the inquiry could become, “full-blown” and, “Everybody expects to be contacted, and some already have been”.
At this point in time, there’s no viable corporate online music business.
This reality is surprising given that hundreds of millions of people around the world regularly and routinely use the p2p networks and independent artist and download sites for their music fixes, and that thousands of new music lovers are logging on and tuning in every day.
Reading Big Four Organized Music cartel press releases, always faithfully reproduced as-is, and without question or verification, by the mainstream media, one could be forgiven for thinking significant numbers of people are hitting the various sites backed and supported by the Big Four, and paying handsomely for the privilege.
However, it’s all pure PR baloney.
Organized Music is wholesaling identical, low-fidelity, heavily compressed versions of songs its owners have already created for CD releases to the same companies, such as Apple, RealNetworks and Napster, for between 60 and 90 cents each.
This forces Apple, et al, to try to off the tracks for a dollar and more each, depending on which countries they’re selling in. And the Big Four apparently want to introduce variable pricing with something in the region of $1.50 for ‘premium’ product at the top end.
No one in his right mind is going to pay upwards of $1 for lossy, inferior quality, cookie-cutter corporate ‘product’ drawn from tightly limited catalogues when for pennies, they can tap into not only everything the Big Four have to offer online, but also millions of other tracks, new and old, from allofmp3.com and similar sites.
They can also buy from the many independent sales pages set up by new artists as well as established star performers who’ve discovered they can do much better for themselves and their fans online and off without the “help” of the major labels.
Meanwhile, nine times out of ten, music industry ‘premium’ product, going out at $1 and more, isn’t worth a light, which is one of the reasons OM is reporting plummeting sales.
This isn’t surprising given that people with absolutely no clue about what’s happening in the digital 21st century are controlling what’s being sold to the music buying public.
Currently, the Big Four spending most of their marketing resources on a bizarre sue ‘em all campaign through which they’re trying to blackmail people into buying ‘product’.
They’re doomed to fail on all fronts and meanwhile, the New York state anti-trust probe of Organized Music’s download pricing is, “coming at a critical time for the online music business and could delay a move away from the industry’s familiar price tag of 99 cents per song, legal experts say,” states CNET, going on:.
“Some in the music industry view the antitrust probe as a warning to the labels not to collude on pricing, but observers also say the prospect of further investigations could dampen enthusiasm for changes in the per-song pricing structure.”
Under state and federal antitrust laws, record labels aren’t allowed to work together to set prices for music, says the story, and, “Any evidence that executives had agreed to offer similar terms or wholesale prices to companies like Apple and Napster could trigger an antitrust lawsuit against the companies”.
The Big Four have already been found guilty of numerous dirty tricks designed to boost sales and keep prices high.
Stay tuned.
Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local political representatives. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance.
Also See:
CNET News - Probe may delay change in digital-music prices, January 4, 2006
plummeting sales - Record industry’s plunging sales, Januaryy 5, 2006
blackmail people - Patti Santangelo campaign launch !, December 31, 2005
January 4th, 2006 at 7:01 pm
“Big Four apparently want to introduce variable pricing with something in the region of $1.50 for ‘premium’ product at the top end.”
There is a certain logic that products of highert quality or that require more cost to produce or where demand exceeds availability, are worth more or can be sold for more.
But this logic cannot be applied to song tracks. Traditionally the records that generate more profits do so by because more records are sold, not because of the quality of the music is higher or the prices are higher. For this reason artists and composers are usually paid based on licenses issued or contracts signed before the record is released.
Attemps by artists and songwriters (or music publishers) to get better per-record payments are usully rejected by record producers with a somewhat logical explanation: You will make more money if more records are sold, not because you make more on each record sold.
I wonder, will the artists and songwriters of “premium” tracks be paid more than those of non premium tracks? I doubt it. Also, at what point in the sales curve is the price changed up or down?
Likely the “premium” track pricing will only lead to lower sales and hurt those that get a per record royalty (artists and songwriters).
What a bad idea for the artists and the songwriters, the creators.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
January 4th, 2006 at 7:01 pm
“Big Four apparently want to introduce variable pricing with something in the region of $1.50 for ‘premium’ product at the top end.”
There is a certain logic that products of highert quality or that require more cost to produce or where demand exceeds availability, are worth more or can be sold for more.
But this logic cannot be applied to song tracks. Traditionally the records that generate more profits do so by because more records are sold, not because of the quality of the music is higher or the prices are higher. For this reason artists and composers are usually paid based on licenses issued or contracts signed before the record is released.
Attemps by artists and songwriters (or music publishers) to get better per-record payments are usully rejected by record producers with a somewhat logical explanation: You will make more money if more records are sold, not because you make more on each record sold.
I wonder, will the artists and songwriters of “premium” tracks be paid more than those of non premium tracks? I doubt it. Also, at what point in the sales curve is the price changed up or down?
Likely the “premium” track pricing will only lead to lower sales and hurt those that get a per record royalty (artists and songwriters).
What a bad idea for the artists and the songwriters, the creators.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
January 4th, 2006 at 7:18 pm
The big 4 also want to lower the prices for back catalog below the 99c price point one aspect of this that has not been noticed by most of the media and especially p2pnet who has stated that 99c is way to much for digital downloads .
There only 1000 hits on the shelves of most retail music stores but there are literally millions of songs sitting in back catalog\niche music and digital distribution makes that back catalog and niche market more available to the consumer .
Steve Jobs from Apple originally pushed for the 99c price point because IPods are what makes profit for Apple not iTunes .
Itunes is a instrument to keep the copyright owners off his back while selling a product that can infringe copyright easily .
January 5th, 2006 at 8:49 pm
Show me the law that is preventing the record companies now from selling songs for under 99 cents. If they want to charge more than 99 cents let them, Jobs is not obligated to sell them on itunes, nor is anyone else under any compulsion to buy them. It will just cause more people to go p2p.