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Dave Matthews Band has published step-by-steps on how to get around the DRM on their CDs, thereby allowing users to rip a CD to their iPods. I like one of the other comments from Pho: "[Shouldn't] they be petitioning their record company not to put DRM on their CDs in the first place?" Amen, brother.
Thanks to Donna for the tip.
Someone is going to stand up to the RIAA.
For most targeted file-sharers, the threat of paying thousands per infringed track is simply too great a risk to bear, making a quick settlement a sound compromise. But the upcoming trial [featuring a single soccer mom from Wappingers Falls NY] could be a big one for the music industry, challenging the legal foundation that the RIAA is using to sue thousands of file uploaders. From the beginning, the RIAA has pointed a crystal clear body of law on the matter, though the extreme downside risk made a challenge of this sort unlikely. Now, the stage may be set for an Erin Brockovich-style trial, potentially attracting heavy press buzz.
Thanks to Glenn for the tip.
Okay, the title may be a bit overblown, but it's rather hard to deny the impact that mp3s have had on music in general.
Thanks to David for the tip.
Sean Ryan used to work as one of the suits at Real/Rhapsody/Listen.com. Based on his experiences, he's not a big fan of the online world:
I think digital music will eventually be extremely profitable for the content providers, including publishers, but I struggle to find a business model for the middle man in this business, at least for any model which requires broad label rights. And when you consider the joys of the mobile music sector, where you have both a concentrated supply chain AND a concentrated customer base (4 -6 carriers), you begin to see why I find that sector to just be a disaster in spite of the hype.
I think I like the sound of being in the position of extreme profit.
Raghav chimes in, adding
Big retailers [Best Buy et al -- Casper] also have lots of other products to draw people in. Distribution will be key, which is why I think mobile carriers will profit from digital music (as long as they don't get greedy and continue to charge $3 for a song). Radio stations are also well placed given their broad distribution via their real estate on the dial.
...With all of that said, there are a few areas of opportunity (though I'm sure I've missed out on many):Niche aggregator/retail. While Amazon, etc. have deep catalog, their scope is broad. That leaves room for niche players focusing on a certain niche like CDBaby and others (thanks to Chris Anderson's timely post on this topic).
Filters. As the quantity of easily available music grows, the role of filters grows. There are a good number of players in this area already but no one dominates, with Amazon's closed recommendation system probably being the largest, followed by Apple's iMix. Still lots of room for innovation as neither of these are a robust solution to the problem. Musicmobs is trying to be the del.icio.us of playlists, which is an interesting approach.
- Search. Again the offerings out now aren't very robust. Blinkx & GoFish are two startsup in this category though there are probably others flying below the radar.
- Services. I'm a big believer in Web-based services. Besides music rental, podcasting-related services immediately come to mind, but there are others (one of which I can't yet write about).
I'm of the opinion that the search option could be interesting -- particularly if Google gets their act together with indexing binary files.
Thanks to Gerd for the tip.
Rick Boucher, congressman from my home town, has introduced legislation to codify the Betamax ruling.
...That ruling held that Sony's Betamax VCR was legal even though people could use it to copy and pirate movies and television shows.
>It also introduced an important concept: "substantial noninfringing uses." In other words, even if a device such as a VCR could be used to do something illegal, the manufacturer could not be held responsible, provided there were plenty of legal ways to use it.
"A hammer is great for building houses, but it can also be used for breaking into houses," said Boucher, D-Abingdon. "You don't punish the guy who made the hammer when the burglar uses it to break in."
Some more songs from Fiona Apple's unreleased third album have appeared on the web.
-- Update --
Or not. The RIAA sent a C&D (Cease & Desist) letter to the host company of the site, and the mp3s are now down.
Wil Wheaton (yes, that Wil Wheaton) has an interesting perspective on ASCAP and podcasting:
Isn't it the ultimate goal of an artist to have as many people as possible hear their music, and hopefully buy their albums and attend their concerts? Right now, Podcasters are passionate people providing all sorts of free publicity. We're not competing with any large-scale broadcasters, and we're not trying to steal music. I'm doing this as a hobby, and the more difficult organizations like ASCAP and the RIAA make it for me to just play the music, the less likely I am to jump through their hoops.
Why not work *with* Podcasters to develop an agreement? Why doesn't ASCAP create a license that allows zero revenue podcasters to play music in their shows for free?
Well worth the time to take a read through.
A page of nothing but Mr. Bonham pounding the drums.
Just when you thought the RIAA couldn't get anymore ridiculous, they file suit against a grandmother. A dead one.
So, why would you pay money to listen to silence? I can understand wanting to actively not hear anything, but there's another solution for that -- the off button. But, silly me.
Among the hundreds of thousands of downloadable songs for sale at Apple Computer's online music store are at least nine tracks of silence, a fact that has prompted quite a bit of discussion
And, yes, John Cage's 4'33" can be purchased as well.
They lost again. The RIAA is finding out that they are not actually a police force, and they can't force ISPs to divulge information about their clients.
Simon has a wonderful observation on the subject:
The RIAA sniff they don't care anyway:
"Our enforcement efforts won't miss a beat," spokesman Jonathan Lamy said.
But if it's not a major setback for them, you might wonder why they've bothered to spend so much money trying to get the appeal courts to overturn lower court judgements that said much the same thing.
Ah, Simon, you are clearly looking for the RIAA for logic. A fool's errand if ever there was one.
Thanks to Brad for the tip.
Ed Felton is reporting that the recording industry may be deliberately spreading harmful files in place of a actual mp3 file.
The files are encoded in a Microsoft file format. When the user plays such a file, the user's browser is forced to visit a URL contained in the file. For the files at issue here, the page at that URL uses various spyware-insertion tricks to try to infect the user's machine with standard spyware programs. Ben Edelman reports that when he clicked on one such page, "My computer quickly became contaminated with the most spyware programs I have ever received in a single sitting, including at least the following 31 programs..."
So, a question that I have about this is -- Does this open a label so acting to legal vulnerability? Some jurisdictions are either considering criminalizing virus production or have already done so (US and Canada).
Nominally, a person who is downloading a file from a P2P network is almost certainly skating the boundaries of the law -- if not out and out breaking one or two. It would stand to reason that most lawbreakers aren't going to turn to an authority for help when and if they are the victim of a crime while commit one on their own (much like violence or theft committed against a prostitute and/or john during an assignation). Still, if any lawyer-type person might want to comment on the legalities, I'd be interested to hear more about it.
761 more for the RIAA.
Thanks to Brad for the tip.
Literally, in this case. The RIAA files suit against a 10 year old boy.
Bravo, guys, really. Top drawer work there.
Rumor has it that AOL has let go all but three of the employees at NullSoft -- the good folk who brought you WinAmp, the lightweight, fast mp3 player.
-- Update --
It's confirmed.
Actually, it's gone beyond that now. Sony and Grokster have inked a deal for legal P2P distribution.
Another 750 users find a bit o' extortion lawsuit in their mailbox.
The Induce Act, if it becomes law, would make the providers of digital services wary of developing any product that might generate lawsuits from the recording industry, which has shown it can be aggressive in pursuing copyright infringement cases in the courts, adds Hunter. "Innovation may be bad for the content industry, but it's almost certainly good for consumers. The stance of the industry is just to sue absolutely everybody to death. This will have a chilling effect."
Fader suggests that the content industry has turned to the courts and now Congress to protect a business model that is changing as a result of new technology. "Imagine if the horse-and-buggy manufacturers had legal loopholes to prevent the development of the automobile. They would use it, but would society be better off?"
The recording industry might engender more sympathy if it had made a better effort to incorporate some form of digital distribution in its business model, he adds. "It has never even run an experiment. It wants to have legislators come in to help it avoid the need to ever do so."
A think piece from a Wharton professor that should be required reading by anyone at a label.
Ringtones, the annoying variant of music that I rather abhor, are getting their own Billboard chart.
Tim Oren, VC out in CA, makes some observations on DRM and it's impact to consumers.
- Copy protection DRM always destroys end user value, in both convenience and robustness. When you see DRM in a business plan or analysis, it is always there to benefit someone other than the end user. Find out who, it will indicate where power lies in a content value chain.
- The mere presence of DRM indicates a failure to deliver end user value. If the information object were to lose value when extracted from the bundle or service from it was derived, DRM would not be felt necessary. Therefore the presence of DRM suggests a vendor that is behind the curve, failing to find a new value to deliver as their chokepoint disappears in the digital world.
- DRM almost always means there is trouble afoot for aggregators ('infomediaries'). If it's an aggregator inserting the DRM, their value added is in question. If it's information originators mandating DRM, then they feel they can damage the aggregator's value with impunity, and will likely try to drive end users' attention to themselves.
Jason Schultz has an interesting take on all the legal wrangling over INDUCE.
Why were the RIAA and MPAA so insistent during the negotiations on a broad technological definition? Why not just write a bill that narrowly targets P2P companies by name and be done with it? (For example, one could simply make it illegal to write a software program that utilizes the GiFT, FastTrack, Gnutella, Bittorrent, or OpenFt protocols and that would effectively ban most current P2P apps).
The reason, of course, is that INDUCE is not really just about P2P apps. It's about the future of all distribution technologies and in particular, about what I like to call "Me2Me" apps. As network and distribution technologies evolve, they offer consumers and computer users more and more control over their own media. P2P technology broke into the mainstream as a mechanism for distributing files amongst different people, but the same architecture is becoming popular among technologies designed to distribute one person's content amongst his or her various platforms.
For example, consider iTunes and the iPod. iTunes allows one to stream music to any computer on your local area network. It also allows you to transfer files to any number of iPods. It also allows you to rip, mix, and burn CDs. In essence, it allows massive distribution of content, albeit primarily to one's self, family, and friends. ...
The next generation will go even further. Imagine a wireless iPod that can synch with any iTunes application within 75 feet. Or a MP3 player for your car that automatically syncs with your home computer when you pull into the driveway. Or a media player on your laptop that automatically syncs with your TiVo to download the latest episode of your favorite Prime Time addiction.
This is, of course, the RIAA and MPAA's worst nightmare. Both industries have based their business models on controlling each and every permutation of playback for their content. The RIAA wants to make you pay when you buy the CD, when you download the iTune, when you listen to an Internet webcast, etc. The MPAA wants to charge you at the theater, for every copy of a DVD you buy, and (via advertising) for every show you watch on TV. Yet the more and more we as users and consumers are allowed to control and choose our own form of playback, the less Hollywood can justify charging us for each one. The more utility we get out of Me2Me apps, the less we're willing to pay someone for an extra copy or delivery mechanism. In the end, Me2Me technology may pose a larger threat to Big Cotent's bottom line than P2P ever did.
I have to say that this is a variant on the process that I hadn't considered as of yet, but it does make sense I'm a huge fan of TiVo, and if I could link it in with my PC (in a no-hassle, supported way), I might never leave my house.
Well worth the read.
The hopes of media companies were dashed today when the Supreme Court declined to hear a case in which the privacy of ISP records is partially at stake.
All in all, this is a good thing.
The latest example of grasping claws comes from Florida, where Erika Emanski's kids downloaded 634 rap songs - five hundred bucks worth on iTunes. The RIAA claims that it's due USD475,000. Seven hundred and fifty bucks per song. Of course, once again they're going after poor people who can ill-afford to stand up to them, and so will end up "settling" for a few thousand. We know the RIAA believes it has to make some sort of point, but is this the point it really wants to make? That the people who run the music industry are such greedy assholes they'll claim songs are worth nearly 1,000 times their actual value to shake some cash out of people already making ends meet?
Just a little extra helping of injustice from the RIAA in their latest suit straight from Simon.
Grouper is a new application allowing you to share files with a limited number of people (nominally, you and 30 or so of your friends). The more interesting part here is that the software may have the ability to circumvent copyright restrictions by streaming files back and forth (instead of copying them). Something to keep an eye on.
Thanks to Brad for the tip.
Karlheinz Brandenburg, the man who invented the mp3 format, offers some advice for the music industry:
The alphabet soup of technologies is meant to prevent fans from rampantly duplicating and transferring songs to others.
Brandenburg said he twice warned manufacturers and music labels that they risk alienating fans and driving them to unsanctioned file-sharing networks, where the songs are free and encoded in the unprotected MP3 format.
"They didn't listen. Maybe they thought it made commercial sense not to have a standard. It's very strange," he said.
Thanks to Jason for the tip.
A bill has passed the House (HR 4077) yesterday. This particular piece of legislation would
...send people to jail for sharing 1,000 songs, or just one unreleased album. That's right, up to 5 years in jail for sharing one album.
I'd be curious to know how they made the connection between one album (averaging ten to twelve tracks per) and one thousand individual songs. Did they just say "well, they both start with a one. Close enough."?
-- Update --
HR 4077 is also known as the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act.
Virgin with VirginDigital.
What's interesting is that Virgin is putting its biggest emphasis on its subscription service, rather than on selling songs one at time for 99 cents a track, as Apple and Microsoft do. It is betting that new customers will join its Virgin Music Club for a $7.99 monthly fee to listen to an unlimited amount of music from Virgin's one-million-track library on their computers.
A premium subscription service that will allow those tracks to be moved to a portable music player, for a slightly higher monthly fee, will be introduced soon.
It'll be interesting to see how Jobs reacts to Branson's foray; Branson clearly has the cash to make this race interesting.
Green Day is offering professionally printed CD-R labels for five of the albums. Only for legal downloads, naturally.
Thanks to Xeni for the tip.
David has some interesting observations from his experience with media mavens at the World Economic Forum.
...[T]he Entertainment and Media group met in downtown NY. Thirty-five us sat around tables formed into a large square. No PowerPoints, just discussion among senior people in the recording, movie and media industries.
The conversation doesn't lend itself to detailed retelling. But it sure was fascinating for me. I came away with four overall impressions:
First, these people are thrashing. They're floundering. They're desperate to find a way in which their organizations still add value. ...
Second, they don't understand what the hell we're talking about. I can't say that I made any inroads. To them, the Internet is a transport for distributing bits they own. Its lack of DRM is a hole that they will plug. They have no doubt that strong DRM is on its way and that it's a good thing. ...
Third, they believe they're responding to the market. They do not recognize that their market has abandoned them. They think that file-sharing is an aberration. ...
Fourth, they're going to win. They own Congress and neither Congress nor the entertainment cartel sees any reason to compromise. Their Lakoffian frame tells them that they're stopping theft, end of story. So they are going to kill the Internet and they don't even know it.
Yahoo may be paving the way for this to be a reality.
Yahoo's plans are still sketchy, but sources close to the company say instant messaging will play a key role. While the popular IM software already lets people listen to online radio, new versions will let people share and interact with one another's digital playlists.
Given the high consumer penetration of IM and the immediate user friendliness of the application, this could be a very big trend.
Thanks to Brad for the tip.
Not that this is a huge surprise, but the mp3 format beat out Sony's proprietary format.
Sony confirmed on Wednesday that it is working to add native MP3 support to its portable music players--a major strategy reversal that could help it compete more effectively with rivals such as Apple Computer.
The shift from reliance on its proprietary format will begin with flash memory-based players, the electronics giant said...
Fred at the EFF examines how Microsoft's new online music service.
Tech support for Microsoft's new MSN Music service is responding to the incompatibility between its downloads and the iPod by advising its customers to burn the downloads to CD, then rip the CD to a compatible format:
Although Apple computers and Apple iPods do not support the PC standard WindowsMedia format for music, it is still possible to transfer MSN Music downloads to an iPod, but it will require some extra effort. To transfer MSN-downloaded music to an iPod, you need to first create a CD with the music, and then you need to import that CD into iTunes. This process will convert the music into a format that can play on the iPod. We're sorry that this isn't easier - unfortunately Apple refuses to allow other companies to integrate with the iPod's proprietary music format. If you are an iPod owner already and unhappy about this policy, you are welcome to send feedback to Apple requesting that they change their interoperability policy.Now that's what I call freedom of music choice, in contrast to Real Network's misleading campaign of the same name.
Thanks to Donna for the tip.
Microsoft's online music store went beta today. I poked around a bit. Just like Sony Connect, the selection in jazz is rather lacking, but I suppose thats probably to be expected.
Songs run $.99 per, right in line with Apple, and full albums are $9.99. Files are WMA, all nice and spiffy with their DRM built right in. The only nod to useability/freedom is
MSN Music allows you to play your music on up to five Windows PCs, burn playlists to CD up to seven times, and transfer to an unlimited number of portable audio devices.
I'd tell you more, but that would mean I'd have to use MS Passport/Hotmail, and I'd rather peel off my toenails than voluntarily join the spam/virus sewer known as Hotmail.
Just like Amazon, Apple now allows people to resale iTunes. The commission is 5%, but you have to have at least one thousand visitors per month to be eligible. That, and your users have to have iTunes installed on their local machines.
Thanks to Brad for the tip.
If you're not reading Ernest Miller, you have been missing out -- he's absolutely turning into the go-to guy when it comes to the legalities of online music. Head and shoulders, he has the best roundup of opinion on the latest court case over the DMCA (Chamberlain v. Skylink). This particular case dealt with whether or not a 3rd party (Skyline) could produce additional garage door openers made by the manufacturer (Chamberlain). The ruling itself is not an out-and-out win for anyone, but it's a good start.
More and more artists are welcoming P2P with open arms.
Most recently Sananda Maitreya, the artist formerly known as Terence Trent D'Arby, has made three songs from his "Angels and Vampires" project available via P2P. The soulful singer's career never again reached the 1987 heights of "Wishing Well" or "Sign Your Name," but he still has hard-core fans who are avidly following his artistic evolution.
Maitreya chose Weed technology to distribute his project.
With that distribution choice, Maitreya joins rock veterans Heart.
Some other artists using Weed include Sir Mix-A-Lot and DJ Drunken Master, along with a massive list of lesser knowns.
The US government moves against file sharers, raiding several computers in three states. The feds targeted the hubs of a P2P network.
The same articles goes on to mention that the RIAA filed suit against another 744 people for uploading files (grand total: 4,891). The difference here is that the US Government is acting in accordance to the law -- indeed, they are enforcing the written law. The RIAA, on the other hand, seems to be more focused on tryng to scare people into submitting to their agenda.
Which one do you think is more legitimate?
Madonna leads the way, allowing her music to be downloaded to cell phones without needing a credit card. As the commentary from Pho says
...[This approach pretty much has] all the right elements for a successful formula:
- Easy-to-use interface for the customer (just dial 1-900-blah).
- Direct billing interface (cell phone bill line item).
- 'Closed' content playback architecture: cell phone.
The RIAA is all pleased with themselves on their plan to combat piracy. So, the small detail that the lawsuits from the RIAA are not supported by the public (57% against) indicates what...?
Coolfer Glenn once again proves why he's indispensible to music on the web. His tips for using P2P and staying legal:
- Educate yourself on the matter and know what constitues legal and illegal behavior.
- The RIAA, to my knowledge, has not yet sued a person for downloading songs. Uploading is the issue here.
- Don't make public songs by RIAA artists.
Microsoft will be starting up their own version of iTunes. Lucky us.
I'm late to the party -- day gig work and all, so there's not much I can add to this rather momentous case that other people haven't already said time and time again. So, instead, I think I'll just do a link farm on what some other people have said.
The EFF
Cory @ Boing Boing
Rebecca @ Conspiracy of Sound
Katie Dean @ Wired
Jason Schultz @ Copyfight
Donna Wentworth @ Copyfight
Brad Hill @ Digital Music
P2P United @ Digital Music
Ed Felten @ Freedom To Tinker
Actually, I started to do this, but I realized pretty quickly that Ernest Miller is all over this. Go there for all the links you could ever want.
Now, having said that I wasn't going to add anything to this, I'm not going to add something to this. Basically, this is a huge win for file trading. The impact to the music industry will probably be positive, but it can't be seen for now.
The best possible analogy I can draw is the Betamax case back in the 80s. The technology was ruled legal, and a thousand flowers bloomed as both new inventions expanded the horizons (and markets) of the film industry, created whole new industries (video rental is the obvious one; the less obvious ones are the entire Direct-To-Video industry, the ancillary spill over into data storage once the DVD proved popular with consumers, etc.) and basically grew the pie for everyone involved.
I rather suspect that will be the end result of this decision here. Well, it will after it goes through the Supremes. We don't know how it will affect the music industry, but I think that it will cause the pie to grow, and give out more opportunities.
John Gruber has a somewhat contrarian point of view as to why Apple is not making the same mistake with RealNetwork's Harmony that they did with Microsoft's DOS.
I’m here to tell you this is utter bunk. Apple’s position with the iPod is significantly different — and much stronger — than their position with Macintosh 20 years ago. There are admittedly a few similarities, first and foremost of which is that both products are much better designed than any competing product. Second, uh, they both use 12-point Chicago as the system font. (Except for the Mini, which uses Espy Sans, the Newton’s system font.)
The gist of my parlay argument is that the biggest difference between Apple and Microsoft — and the biggest reason for Microsoft’s lucrative monopolies in operating systems and office software — is that Microsoft built upon their previous successes, and Apple did not. Windows parlayed off MS-DOS, and Office parlayed off Windows. The Macintosh didn’t parlay off anything.
I think their goal is to try and collect a million legal mp3 online.
Brad Hill's onsite at the Jupiter Research Plug.In conference. Good reading, giving overviews of the panel discussions on digital music. And thanks to Brad for sharing the knowledge...
Well worth your time to read it.
Electronic termites are chomping out the support beams of our music culture, whether we're prepared or not.
The termite is the MP3 player, led by the iPod -- Apple's handheld jukebox capable of storing the equivalent of 1,000 CDs, or 10,000 or more songs -- that's stashed in your front pocket.
That's right. Those hundreds of CDs you've been hoarding since the '80s, for which you've spent huge sums for stereos, entertainment centers and decorative CD racks, are going the way of reel-to-reel, 78s and eight-tracks.
Eight-what? Exactly. The CD, as a mass-produced physical entity, is dying.
Thanks to the Pho mailing list for the tip.
There's been a raft of stuff written on this topic, most of which I've covered before. Here's another bit o' evidence; in this case, the 9/11 report is selling quite briskly at Amazon, even though it's available for free.
Even if you play along, you might not escape the wrath of the studios.
Hollywood studios and the National Football League are seeking to block the maker of the popular TiVo television recorder from expanding its service so that users could watch copies of shows and movies on devices outside their homes.
In filings with the Federal Communications Commission, the organizations say the new technology could compromise the copyrights of shows that broadcasters send over the airwaves in digital form, which offers much higher sound and video quality than what viewers typically get today.
Sometimes you can't win for trying.
Thanks to Donna for the tip.
A MIT professor takes a look at the two cultures and how they each approach the issue of online music piracy.
...[W]hile the American industry has responded by seeking legal actions against its own consumers, no such law suits have been filed in Japan, where industry leaders are seeking to understand why music fans think it is ok to share music. CD rental stores are so common in Japan that the industry has no hope of shutting down this alternative distribution outlet. Industry leaders have suggested that the aggressive commodification of music had led a generation to ignore its status as someone’s expressive output. They are seeking ways to rebuild consumer loyalty rather than demand customer obedience.
What a concept -- instead of treating all prospective customers as criminals and suing grandmothers, find out why people do something and then scratch their itch for them. That's just crazy enough to work.
Thanks to Donna for the tip.
George Washington University (in Washington DC) will be offering Napster to students living in the dormitories, free of charge.
If you want a one stop shop to really insightful writing on the INDUCE act, check this out. Earnest Miller's work is top notch and completely leading the way.
Remember that horrible piece of legislation that Orin Hatch introduced? Well, the RIAA has (surprise, surprise) come out in support of it.
First off the bat, Earnest Miller goes through the RIAA's letter to Congress, fisking as he goes. Then Brad Hill restates the letter in a short but sweet, straight-to-the-point version. Either (or better yet, both) are worth your time to read.
The new Velvet Revolver album released without DRM protection in Japan. Yet more brilliance from the labels.
Will Smith comes out (sorta) in support for music downloads.
...[T]he actor and singer says he doesn't see why so many other musicians are furious about illegal downloading.
[Smith] said: "My take is, 'OK, there were pirates 1,000 years ago - there is no reason for us to think that we'll live without them in the year 2004.'
I use Gracenote rather regularly; it's the database in the backend of most CD ripping software. Wired has a nice review on the service and it's origins.
Thanks to Brad for the tip.
When you buy a tune from iTunes, you should probably be aware that you're not getting quite what you think you are:
Customers are led to believe that they are getting a CD in all respects except the trouble of going to the mall. The iTunes store does not warn about the permanence of its method of compression; once freeze-dried, there is no way to reconstitute the music into CD quality for playing through a good stereo.
Ah, for simpler times, when we never had reason to look up the bit rate at which music is digitally sampled for CD's: 1,378 kilobits per second. The bit rate for iTunes, 128, is so low that when played side by side against the original, the difference is audible not only to audio enthusiasts, but also to mortals with ordinary hearing. Wes Phillips, contributing editor at Stereophile, says "128 is like an eight-track," and he describes the combination of iPod and iTunes as "buying a 21st-century device to live in the 1970's."
More details on the process can be found here.
Or is this just part of the strategy of the RIAA? We'll let you buy "music" online, but we'll give it to you at less quality (over ten times less, to be accurate), so that you'll probably go out and buy the album anyway. The industry gets to sell the same song twice, the consumer ends up not being all that happy with the online experience (which also fits with the RIAA model) and, well, at least the label walks away happy.
A good word (or two) of caution about those seemingly legal mp3 services.
What these sites sell is something you can get for free from any number of Web sites: client software for accessing P2P networks such as Kazaa, WinMX, and Gnutella, along with some simple instructions on how to use them. As for the $25 charge to your credit card? None of that goes to the record labels, as some users might assume. That money generally goes to Internet entrepreneurs (actually, they're closer to parasites) who developed none of the software or the networks their so-called products use. As for you? The fact that you paid $25 to some guy in Romania changes nothing except your bank account balance. Your potential legal risk of being sued by the RIAA for making music available for sharing is unchanged.
Hopefully, the day will come when record labels start licensing their music to P2P networks so that those services can sell legal access to them. But for now, sites such as My-Free-Music.com are 100 percent bogus.
A little slideshow for your edu-fi-cation.
Thanks to Gerd for the tip.
ARIA (Austrailia's version of the RIAA) has started to step back from the hard line on digital music.
Australian Record Industry Association chief executive officer, Stephen Peach, told ZDNet UK sister site ZDNet Australia: "We certainly don't agree consumers should have the statutory right to simply make copies, we think that right should rest in the copyright owner. However, the industry is exploring a variety of means where controlled copying by consumers can be implemented".
They're not quite there yet, but it's positive motion, and that's a good thing, right? And do you think I could get a few more commas into these sentences?
Today, I finally got around to trying out Sony's online music service Connect. A few days ago, I was in a McDonald's, eating a Big Mac, and they are giving out free songs from Connect as a promotion.
First off, the installation went fairly well, a pretty clean install process (and I've been through many software installs that were not). The software seems to bind itself to a specific machine through some mechanism (I'm not immediately sure as to how -- perhaps to the Intel processor identification code?). Accordingly, I don't think that anything I would download using Connect would work on another Connect-enabled machine I would also happen to own.
Opening an account (which seems to be required if you were to want to actually download any music) asks for credit card information. This wasn't required, but it bothered me that they were even asking. I would think you might ask for a credit card if a customer actually tried to buy something -- I know I don't hand my Visa to a cashier as soon as I set foot in my local record shop.
I entered the free coupons I had from McDonald's (I had been back once or twice since that initial outing), only to discover that you could only redeem two coupons per day. I didn't know that there needed to be a waiting period for music downloads; the guy from Super Size Me must be furious.
With my coupons in hand (2x$.99!!), I started to hunt for some music to download. Not a lot of luck, though. No Victor Wooten at all; some Flecktones, but nothing that I didn't already have; Norm Stockton is not represented, nor was David Dyson or Oteil Burbridge. Connect doesn't seem to be all that bass player friendly.
I decided to check out how Connect would do with some more standards. There were some tunes from the Beatles, but not the one for which I was looking. I did grab a song from Mike Stern which I hadn't heard before (Play, although once I did hear it, I realized that Stern had played the piece at one of the shows I have attended) and a different version of the Sting song I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Cryin'.
Once the two songs were downloaded, I found out that I can only play it within the Connect software -- I can't use my usual player. The player built into Connect is good enough and all, but Connect has a much larger footprint than WinAmp does.
For the technical geekish who might be reading, I did a little detective work on the software. I discovered where the Sony software writes the files (<user>/Application Data/Sony Corporation/SonicStage/Contents/<song name>) and the format (oma). I also found that the Connect software was written using a considerable amount of MS tools (witness the Access database file that make up the "backup", the csv file that provides help). I haven't taken the time to hunt through my registry to see what it did or didn't do there, mostly because I don't care enough to check it out. I don't see me using this software as anything other than a way to try out music that I was already inclined to buy via these free things from McD's. Once that promotion ends, my use of Connect will end with it.
Basically, Connect is good for previewing music and not much more. You can only listen to what you buy on the same machine on which you make the purchase. You can't take it with you (unless it's on a ATRAC compatible CD). Does someone want to explain to me what the positive benefits of this product would be?
Andrew Leonard explains his feelings towards digital music
Ease of access enriches our lives. I am not just a happier consumer now; I am a better consumer, more discerning, more informed, more confident to pull the trigger on a purchase. I read a review of an album on the day it comes out, and before night has fallen, I own it -- something that rarely happened before. Previously, by the time I got to the record store, I had long forgotten the positive reviews I might have read. And listening to so much music feeds a virtuous cycle: The more I hear, the more I want to hear.
But the record industry still doesn't get it. A couple of nights ago, I searched iTunes for the song "Days Go By" by Dirty Vegas. I found it, but was annoyed to learn that it had been designated as "album only." In other words, I could not purchase the song for 99 cents -- I had to buy the whole album. So, naturally, I bought nothing at all. I don't like having my arm twisted. Again, I'm not a file-trader, but that kind of heavy-handed bait-and-switch treatment might very well encourage me to look for the song on Kazaa or to ask a friend to burn it for me. So now the studio, the artist, the song writer and the retail outlet are all out their percentage of my purchase.
This kind of behavior is a microcosm of everything that the industry has been doing wrong for years. I won't buy CDs that I can't rip to my hard drive. If legislation is passed that outlaws my CD burner and prevents me from making mixes for my friends, I'll return to my cloistered past, unaware and unengaged with all the music being created in the world. And if I'm exposed to less music, I'll buy less music.
Starting in August, the RIAA will recognize downloads (the legal kind, one can only presume) when tabulating Gold (100k units moved) and Platinum (200k units) status for a single.
The overall music industry is improving (7% in the US, 3% in the UK so far this year) thanks to online music sales and ringtone sales.
The recovery has been fuelled partly by the spread of download services such as Apple's iTunes, launched outside the US this month. "We think this is the digital music store that Europe has been waiting for," said Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple. In its first week, Apple sold 450,000 tracks in the UK, augmenting the 70m already sold in the US since its launch last year.
The somewhat obscure headline references a legal theorem -- if you're a television station and you are actively editing what is broadcast over your equipment, then you can be held liable for that content. However, if you're like the telephone system and you are not monitoring the traffic at all, you are not liable.
Canada's Supreme Court has decided their ISPs fall within the latter category. I'm glad that they came to this conclusion, (which seemed intuitively obvious to me).
In a surprising development, 56% of American's do not support the RIAA's lawsuits. I do wonder how many of the surveyees were part of the 3500 already being sued.
Thanks to Brad for the tip.
An interesting article on a possible sales strategy for brick and mortar record shops.
Bob can't be the only one who wants in on the digital music action but doesn't want to bet a whole new computer on the proposition. How can we let computer-phobic types into the starting gate? I suppose we could encourage them to send crates of CDs to a ripping service such as RipDigital, then borrow someone else's computer for a one-time transfer onto their MP3 player. Not a bad plan, but it assumes that Bob's done buying music, which I doubt very highly.
The solution is staring us in the face...how about (shock, horror) a music store? Bob and his noncomputing ilk could bring a promotional, uniquely identified flash memory keychain to any cooperating store--Virgin Megastore would be a good place to start--and browse the music while scanning the bar codes on interesting CDs with the keychain. When he's ready to go, Bob would go up to the counter, plug in his keychain and MP3 player into ports beneath the register, and buy the songs (at a discount, since ones and zeros are cheaper to duplicate than CDs).
Thanks to Coolfer Glenn for the tip.
Two different writers weigh in on the online music situation in today's NY Times.
First off, we have William Fisher, a professor at Harvard Law. He stakes out a liberatian POV, making a case that
It is noteworthy that the story with the happiest ending — both for the public and for the copyright owners — was the one in which the owners were denied any share in the revenues earned by the developers of the new technology but instead had to develop a new business model to take advantage of it (VCR's). The next best outcome occurred when the copyright owners first allowed the new technology to take root and then worked out an arrangement in which they obtained modest license fees (radio). The least satisfactory outcome occurred when copyright owners demanded fees that were so high they hurt the growth of the new technology (Webcasting).
If the pattern holds, then the record industry's response to file sharing — trying to block the technology altogether — would generate the worst of all possible results.
Now, I'm very sympathetic to this. I think that the marketplace will work out a solution that makes the most people as happy as possible (or, alternatively, makes the least amount of people as little unhappy as possible), but this will take time.
The other piece comes from Kembrew McLeod, a professor at the University of Iowa. His solution is significantly more statist, requiring a governing body of sorts to manage blanket license grants to end users for a monthly fee.
...[G]iven that the movie, video game and software industries continue to grow — and file sharing's harm to the music industry is debatable — additional fees needn't be exorbitant. [The proposed] plan calls for generating a $3 billion pot of money — the amount the industry says it is losing annually — by charging consumers a $5 monthly licensing fee. The fee could come bundled with, for instance, a consumer's broadband Internet access bill and would be similar to paying a cable bill. Rather than replace the music industry's business model, this would supplement it with a steady revenue stream.
I'm not a fan for several reasons.
And that's just off the top of my head.
A good article about the effects of online music distribution on labels and other businesses.
analysts believe that the ability to make money from distributing music is moving away from content owners like EMI to companies that provide the software and hardware to download and play digital music. Analysts describe this as a "seismic shift". It is already decimating the profits of traditional record labels.
In the United States, Apple is the market leader in online digital music sales, but its European launch last week coincided with the prospect of serious competition from companies like Microsoft and Dell, which are offering their own versions of Apple's technology. European mobile phone operators such as T-Mobile and MmO2 are also offering, or promising, digital music download services.
Microsoft's strategy of providing software for a growing number of digital devices is similar to the one it used to dominate computing by licensing its software to any PC maker prepared to pay for it. Some industry sources conclude that Apple is in danger of a repeat performance of what happened in computing -- it established an early lead and then allowed Microsoft to capture the market by signing software deals with all the big manufacturers.
Thanks to Coolfer for the tip.
Earnest Miller has fisked the exceeding asinine legislation known as IICA (Inducing Infringments of Copyright Act), formerly known as INDUCE (Inducement Devolves into Unlawful Child Exploitation Act). As hard as this is to believe, the IICA would have the net effect of making the DMCA look like the modicum of balance and well written law. Check out the annotation for, among other things, how much money the entertainment industry has donated to the sponsoring legislators as well as several legal comments as the introduction goes along.
Thanks to Brad for the tip.
Felix Oberholzer-Gee, one of the professors who wrote the study showing that file sharing doesn't hurt sales, has some more thoughts on what the music business should do next:
Suing potential customers is not exactly a standard entry in the book of good CRM. More importantly, the RIAA's legal strategy is hopeless and smacks of short-sighted panic.
Our research shows that only 45 percent of music files downloaded in the United States come from computers in the U.S. More than 100 countries supply files to the U.S. file-sharing community, and many of these countries do not have strong records of protecting copyrighted materials. The RIAA does not stand a chance to implement an effective legal strategy in all these countries.
Those who dream of legal solutions do not recognize the truly global nature of the peer-to-peer (P2P) phenomenon. Even worse, the RIAA's legal strategy does not even seem to work here in the United States. Despite the lawsuits - the RIAA has sued about 2,000 individuals to date - file sharing is more popular than ever. ...
Our research shows that people do not download entire CDs. They download a few songs, typically the hits that one would also hear on a Top 40 station. This suggests that P2P is much like the radio, a great tool to promote new music. The music industry has of course long recognized that giving away samples of music for free over the airwaves can stimulate sales. The same seems to hold for P2P.
The problem with radio as a promotional tool is that it can be quite expensive for labels to get radio stations to play their music. P2P networks are promising because they make the market for music promotion more competitive. From the perspective of the music industry, the more competition among P2P services, the less costly it will be to promote music.
I think the latter part of this is just spot on. I know that I use some of the sound clips on which I have played as a means by which to get additional work, and I'm just a bass player.
Thanks to Eric for the tip.
It's not just music anymore.
Less than charming, however, is the digital rights management (DRM) used for the project. Fifteen of the biggest Japanese publishers (and Sony) put their heads together to figure out how to offer a compelling collection of novels and other material while protecting their own financial investments in the work and the interests of the authors.
What they came up with is a sad business model that ties downloaded ebooks to a maximum of four devices, which is reasonable enough, but also ensures that the titles purchased (with your money, remember) lock up after 60 days, which is far from reasonable. Sure, the books are cheaper than their real-world equivalents, but who in their right mind is going to buy books that simply evaporate after two months? Periodicals might be suitable for this protective scheme, but none are yet taking advantage of it on the Libri?Ž.
As some of my readers have probably noticed, I read a lot of books. I can guarantee you that my consumption of books would dwindle to about zero if I were to lose the ability to reread or reference that book after 60 days.
Thanks to Simon for the tip.
An interview with Rick Boucher, the congressman who represents my home district. These days, he's supporting a reform to the DMCA. Go Rick, go!.
Thanks to Brad for the tip.
Yippee. Total number of really ticked off consumers; 3,429 and counting.
Several major tech companies (Intel, Sun, Verizon, Bell South and others) support changing the copyright laws to better address some of the ridiculousness of the DMCA.
This is good news. Now that major companies (you know, the kind that make donations....), it's possible that Congress might just get off their duff and do something about it.
Thanks to Ed for the tip.
The web is a good and wonderful thing. It has helped with the marketspace in opening vista of near frictionless economics. It has also launched a thousand dreams to die on rocky shoals. And, lest we not forget, the web has helped lots of musicians, but hasn't quite made any millionaires as of yet.
For all its promise, the Net has not yet created any overnight sensations. That power, for now, appears firmly locked to television, where popular contest shows such as "American Idol" have put unknowns at the top of the pops with ease. By contrast, the Internet is proving its worth to independent musicians primarily as a complement to traditional marketing efforts known to generations of road-weary rockers. Touring, word of mouth, fan clubs and posters are now being augmented with Web sites, e-mail lists and blogs.
Thanks to Coolfer for the tip.
I had a Big Mac today for lunch, and I get a free download from Sony Connect as a result. Having heard quite a few bad things about the service, I guess I can now find out firsthand.
Yesterday was the Cato Institute's conference on "The Law and Economics of File Sharing and P2P Networks". From all accounts, it looks like it was interesting. Bobby over at BlogCritics attended, and he has filed a report on the proceedings.
The strongest feeling I had as I left the conference is that the recording industry, even after five years, still has problems understanding the nature of the problems they're facing. For instance, in reply to one question regarding the effectiveness of suing file uploaders, Liebowitz replied that he doesn't think the public or the media really differentiate between uploading and downloading, so that such litigation is effective as a threat against both. It may be that the "public" and the "media" have such a perception, but you know who doesn't? College students, who are perhaps the critical demographic when it comes to downloading. College students tend to know that they need to turn off access to their shared folders so that they can't be sued for uploading the files. They focus on downloading instead, and since 55% of files are downloaded from users outside the United States (a figure provided during the conference), one has to wonder how effective this litigation strategy can really be. Instead of catching those downloading (or even uploading) the bulk of the files, the RIAA has wound up with PR nightmares such as suing grandmothers. One really has to wonder when the recording industry is going to get a clue and begin to operate proactively rather than reactively. In this sense, at least, it seems that the MPAA may be a step ahead.
Naxos.com, a website dedicated to classical music, has stopped track by track listening and changed to samples only. Apparently, too many people were free-loading off the samples and never paying for anything.
In what can only be considered to be a step forwards, both the RIAA and the MPAA are requesting the attorney generals of the several states to examine whether or not file sharing is against the law.
I say that this is a step forwards because at least then it will be a part of the government process, thereby subject to due process, burden of proof -- you know, all that actual legal kind of stuff, as opposed the bullying/shakedown lawsuits that the RIAA is filing these days.
Allofmp3.com is an online music service that sells music by the megabyte without worrying about DRM or any of that crap. The legality of the service is, well, questionable, but they're at least pretending to follow the law. The law in Russia, that is.
Thanks to Brad for the tip.
Really. I don't see conspiracies everywhere, I don't really even know what the Trilateral Committee is (let alone what it does) and I don't think the UN is the font of all evil.
Having said that, there is a treaty under discussion that might get me to change my mind.
This treaty would undermine many of the public's rights under the copyright laws of most countries. It would, for example, eliminate my right to record off-air without the permission of a broad caster, or to copy a recording from one medium to another (eg from tape to DVD).
When I first saw the draft (it was published in April), I assumed it must have been written by executives at Fox, NBC and other US TV networks while high on cocaine, because it read like a wish-list of everything a failing industry could want to protect it from the future.
It is a control-freak's charter. This is predictable, because an obsession with control has worked its way into the industry's DNA.
Well, if nothing else, it seems that the madness that has infected the RIAA is not only limited to US music mavens. Other countries are equally asinine.
Remember that story a few days ago where the IFPI said that piracy is falling and it's because of the lawsuits? In a complete and totally unexpected surprise, there's more going on here than they let on.
Thanks to Brad for the tip.
p2pnet and Downhill Battle have joined up in an effort to try and get people to create some video clips to show how the industry works.
The future of the music business is up for grabs right now (like you haven't heard). The Big Five record labels have had an unfair monopoly for decades but it's finally starting to crumble. Excellent examples in the movie gallery.
The problem is that the labels are two years into a relentless public relations propaganda campaign. Through their US enforcement unit, the RIAA, they want to convince the public that filesharing is criminal and that pop music would end if their monopoly falls.
In both cases, the opposite is true. But if the majors - Warner (US), EMI (UK), UMG (France), Sony (Japan) and BMG (Germany) - win the PR war and continue to use their political friends to advance legislation to make file-sharing a federal offense, their monopoly just might survive.
And that's where you come in.
A survey with some interesting results. I don't know the methodology of the report, so take this with the very large grain of salt it should have.
-- Update --
Some details on the survey.
Manufactured spoof files are proving to be the best deterent to illegal file sharing.
Echo, a venture between some of the larger music retailers to go online, is pulling the plug on their outing.
...[M]ounting development costs, a glut of rivals offering bargain-rate services, and smaller-than-hoped-for sales across the online-music spectrum, even at Apple's successful store, have led the big retailers to pull funding for the project, its founders say.
Thanks to Brad for the tip.
68% of people in the UK acknowledge that file sharing is illegal. Yet they still do it. Hmmm... In America's past, when we had rampant numbers -- clear majorities, even -- of people knowingly breaking the law, ignoring the statues and seeking out an illegal good in spite of the possible criminal consequences, we repealed Prohibition.
Just a thought.
The music industry and Hollywood complained to Congress that their businesses are being ravaged by global piracy, with China and Russia named as the worst offenders.
Pakistan, Brazil and other countries were also cited as culprits in the spread of counterfeit and pirated movies and music, at a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Do you think the RIAA/MPAA will sue these people?
A real must-read about music sharing and cell phones
The music industry is scared out of its mind. The mass sharing of music files that exploded on the internet could transfer to mobile networks. The advent of high-speed 3G networks and mobile phones with complex operating systems, Bluetooth and massive storage capacity, could create another "perfect storm", hurting profits further.
Also buried in the article towards the end is a ray of sunshine for music people. Well, everyone other than the majors.
Wheeler said independent music labels, annoyed at the low fees they receive from major labels, could consider ways of using technology to cut them out of the equation. The smaller independent labels view the widespread sharing of digital music as an opportunity.
Indie labels could, in theory, use P2P mobile music sharing as a kind of radio - promotion for their artists with selected free releases. Despite P2P networks such as KaZaA, many indie labels have seen sales rise as the audience finds new music.
"We can work with kids in the bedrooms and get paid," said Wheeler. "DRM networks won't get the revenue. The kid in the bedroom will, and we will. We can't be beholden to the operators who are greedy. We want to be responsible, but if we can still do business and that's what our fans want, then we'll do it."
Thanks to Brad for the tip.
The IFPI (a European counterpart to the RIAA) has filed suit against a number of people in Europe. Some numbers:
I suspect they'll be about as successful.
Morrissey, avant-garde leader of the alternative scene of yesteryear, comments on online music:
"I find it sad. Music deserves efforts. How can you love a record that arrives so easily?
"When I was a child, accessing to the music I loved was difficult. It was not on radio nor TV. Even if music was my only love, it was a permanent fight to get it into my arms."
Ah, I see. Only pain can validate love. If it's easy, it can't be any good. Silly me.
Wired Magazine has a graphic detailing the amount of traffic, the source of the traffic, the kind of traffic and how files are promlugated throughout the web.
Thanks to Brad for the tip.
In what might be described as a contrarian viewpoint, one writer expounds on how Napster (and it's ilk) have ended up hurting the average consumer of music.
So maybe ... you've never downloaded music illegally. You might not know it, but the [RIAA] is coming after you, too, by developing encrypted, restricted-use CDs. It doesn't want you to make digital copies, even for personal use, of the CDs you bought. It doesn't want you to so much as play a CD on your computer.
The music industry is scared of its own technology, the quality and speed of making copies in the digital age. ... Never before have people paid so much for recorded music and, if the music industry has its way, been able to do so little with it.
The RIAA, in a move that can only be described as staggering, wants every listener to authenticate themselves via a fingerprint prior to listening to music. As usual, Simon has a trenchant observation:
We're certain that, as with virtually all the other security devices, it won't actually work, but that won't stop them trying. So, if you're in the bath, you can't ask your wife to stick on that Faithless album, because she can't; you can't buy music as a surprise gift for anyone, because you'd have to secretly cut their finger off and sneak it to the store and have it sneakily sewed back on to their hand before they'd be able to play it.
A pretty good read, albeit from about 30,000 feet.
Brad has a great commentary on Pro-Music.org.
The one-dimensional distortion zone called Pro-music.org is celebrating its first birthday, and executives are trotting out pathetic statistics in an attempt to convince us (and themselves, probably), that the site is a success.
"www.pro-music.org was launched in May 2003 supported by an international alliance of musicians, performers, artists, major and independent record companies, and music retailers. The initiative was set up to promote legitimate digital music services and confront the myths surrounding online music piracy."Actually, its purpose seems to perpetuate myths surrounding file-sharing. In the bogus Timeline section, for example, not a whisper can be found of multiple studies over the years establishing the disconnect between file-sharing and CD sales. Instead, the timeline offers utterly undocumented statements lifted from industry press releases asserting that file-sharing is responsible for crummy music sales (and, perhaps, for crummy music as well).
To be honest, I wasn't even aware of this site before I read about it on Brad's site. It strikes me as one of those preachy, school-marm kind of scolding sites that attempt to heckle you into following the party line.
Granted, this is more in line with his writing, but it's another perspective.
I'd love it to go away, but it's not a genie that's ever going to go back into the bottle. Let's see, what do I think? I was delighted recently when I heard that the guy who'd been selling CDs with PDF files of the complete runs of Sandman, Preacher and so on on eBay is currently having close encounters with comics companies' lawyers. The stories weren't his to sell, after all.
Frankly, I think that the important thing is the wishes of the copyright holder in these things. Does it impact my sales when people post my stuff on the web? I've no idea. Probably not. I'm perfectly happy to put stuff up But I think that, for example, posting American Gods or Neverwhere on your website is, apart from anything, astonishingly bad manners.
As for Sandman and the other comics being out there on the web, well, mostly I'm not the copyright holder. I tend to think of it as being slightly more of a grey area -- I'm more sympathetic to people in countries where the work isn't available otherwise, for example. And I'm very aware that what's on screen is not the comic, not in the same way that an MP3 really is the song. (Anyone who's going to read all 2000 pages of Sandman on a monitor has my sympathy.) But I tend to lose all sympathy at the point where the "but it would cost money to buy the real thing" argument gets invoked.
On this note, if I post anything that any of the copyright holders take offense at (or just don't want me to do, please let me know).
Salon magazine looks at file sharing amongst Christians (registration or sit through an ad required).
To the teens in the Barna study, "hooking up" a friend with a copy of your new CD is like giving a pal a free Coke if you work at McDonald's -- no big deal, and an accepted, even expected sign of friendship.
"Being faithful to your friends, giving them something for free, is more important than any kind of moral allegiance to a record company. Whether a teenager is a committed Christian, of a different faith or just has no religious affiliation, some of the patterns of how they make decisions transcend religious input," Kinnaman says. He believes that to change those kids' attitudes, you'd have to somehow influence those networks of friends, not just tell the kids that what they're doing is wrong.
Another complication: For some Christian kids Barna studied, sharing the religious hits that express their faith is their way of spreading the word. "They wanted it to be part of their ministry. They wanted to share some of the positive messages from their music with non-believers. It's an evangelistic impulse." He compared it to the old saw about the stolen Bible: "If someone came and stole my Bible, I'd be happy that they stole it, because they needed it."
Even McPherson, the Christian computer scientist who takes a hard line on file sharing, has mixed feelings about the trading of religious movies and music. When he heard that "The Passion of the Christ" was the most widely available pirated movie on the net in April, his e-mail response was to quote the following scripture: "The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice" (Philippians 1:18).
Thanks to Cory for the tip.
Even with the lawsuits, people are still trading files.
In yet another "Damn the torpedos" move, the RIAA has filed suit against 493 more people. This makes a grand total of 2947 people being targeted.
Yet, as Simon points out, none of these cases have ever made it to court.
By sending out demands for thousands of dollars per tune, and then saying "but if you agree to settle, we'll only roll you for a few hundred, mate." Very reasonable. Curiously, Reuters report that people have already been sued - but as far as we know, not a single case has actually reached a courtroom yet. It's funny that the RIAA insist that these lawsuits are about educating the public - the very Cesearesque stance of 'to encourage the others' - and yet they actually seem really, really reluctant to have the exposure that a proper legal case would bring. But, surely, if the people they are suing really are defrauding artists out of tens of thousands of dollars, and the RIAA is confident of its case, what would be the logic in bending over backwards to try and keep it out of court? Unless, you know, they're fibbing a little and don't really have any confidence in their actions at all?
Could this be just a massive intimidation campaign rather than an actual, honest legal attempt to remedy the situation?
In a battle royale of the acronyms, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America, the 600 pound gorilla that argues in favor of the recording industry) and CEA (Consumer Electronics Association) have been going at each other over the impending spectre of digital radio. The RIAA sent a fax to the CEA, requesting the CEA ask their members to change the hardware in digital radios to prevent end users from recording signals (much as the RIAA succeed with prevent digital TV transmissions from being recordable via broadcast). The CEA pretty much concisely told the RIAA to stick it.
...[T]here is no content "license" at issue becuase RIAA members have no licensable right that could be a basis for imposing limitations on free broadcasts.
Finally, you state that you do not wish to limit the ability of consumers to record over-the-air radio broadcasts. Instead, you apparently want to force them to buy what they have received for free since Fleming and Marconi first made it possible for consumers to hear new and music over the public airwaves.
As you know, we have love been concered about content owners seeking to change the "play" button on our devices to a "pay" button. At least you have addressed the semantics by suggesting new devices come equippred with a "buy" button.
... As you are aware, hundreds of thousands of digital radios have already been sold in Great Britain, yet you offer no proof of harm to the recording industry. Indeed, the various consumer recording practices your letter warns of could easily be accomplished today using commonplace analog radio data service (RDS) technology combined with the digitization of FM broadcasts, but there is no evidence this is occurring. The FCC docket is also devoid of any showing linking digital radio to the unauthorized peer-to-peer file sharing of music.
Hear, hear. With friends like the RIAA, musicians don't need enemies.
Thanks to Cory for the tip.
The latest Hollywood movies, television shows and albums zipping between Internet users accounts for 70 percent to 80 percent of all Internet traffic handled daily by European Internet service providers (ISPs).
Color me skeptical, but I'm sort of doubting this. I would have figured at least a third of any given bandwidth on the web to be sucked up by porn.
Thanks to Brad for the tip.
As the band Moe found out, online music trading can help a band out.
The first time Moe played San Francisco, the band didn't have a song on the radio. It didn't have a video; it didn't even have a record deal. Yet the group sold out the 750-seat Great American Music Hall.
The secret to Moe's success? A community of West Coast music fans had been trading tapes of the New York band's concerts, duplicating bootlegged recordings and distributing them to friends. The members of Moe never saw a dime off those concert tapes, but they arrived in San Francisco to a full house.
Thanks to Brad for the link.
Some good ideas on additional revenue streams in today's marketspace:
This digital era allows content owners to make money off the footage that didn’t make the cut. Loyal fans of successful TV shows, hit movies and established bands will pay money for content they cannot get elsewhere. Artists will be able to make money on songs that never made it to a CD, or perhaps video footage that never made it on MTV/VH1 along with concert footage and backstage/bus footage. ... The revenue possibilities are endless in this digital age, and the opportunity is at hand to monetize these valuable content assets.
Thanks to Gerd for the tip.
If this is any indication, the whole online music war might just be over.
More than half of young Americans with Internet access continue to download free music even though they know that they are breaking the law, according to a poll released today.
Eighty-eight percent of the respondents know that most popular music is copyrighted, but 56 percent download it anyway, according to the survey of 1,183 children, ages eight to 18. The survey also found that more kids worry about downloading computer viruses with their songs than about getting in trouble with the law.
Okay, so when over half of the up and coming generation of music consumers choose to download music -- even while knowing it's wrong -- that should be a pretty darn strong indication that the music industry needs to wake up from it's sporific slumber and find the way to answer this need rather than attempting to sue it out of existance (an approach otherwise known as the "ostrich method" -- if we keep our head in the sand, those new fangled thingees won't stop us from following our present business model).
Two researchers out in Oklahoma have patented a way of foiling file sharing by injecting distortion into the datastream.
Downloading music, movies or software illegally might become less appealing if every third song or film scene was suddenly interrupted by white noise or worse, announcements urging "next time, pay for what you take!"
This "gotcha" technique - circulating flawed or reproving digital copies of songs on the Internet - has been tried in some form by a few pop stars hoping to thwart online music piracy. Two weeks ago, a University of Tulsa professor and a former graduate student of his won a patent for software that analyzes and monitors illegal music swapping on file-sharing networks, and then systematically inserts decoy files into the mix.
I know this is hard to believe, but lowering the price on items leads to more sales.
Brad over at Digital Music Weblog has provided an overview of all the major online music providers.
Some more thoughts on file sharing:
"That's the heart of this debate. In our experience, we've found that downloading both hurts and aids the sales of CDs, and it's pretty much a wash."
A handy dandy little chart that compares mp3 players to the various services and formats.
Michael Robertson voices his thoughts on the new version of the site.
”At the time I started MP3.com none of the music sites had any music. They talked about music and had pictures of musicians, but were largely silent. The few that had any music had very low quality (think early real audio) 30 second clips and even then it was only for bands that paid.
”Ironically, MP3.com has now been transformed to be like those early music sites that were around before I started MP3.com. Namely a music site that talks about music and has pictures of music rather than focusing on zapping music digitally through the internet. Life sure takes interesting twists.”
Would this be one of those sites that talk about music rather than zapping it around? To a large degree, yes. There is some music on this site, but most of the content that I produce is written. I think the written stuff is still pretty decent (if I may be so immodest), but it can always be better.
I haven't made it over to mp3.com since they reopened for business, but it doesn't appear that I'm missing all that much.
Coming on the heels of the NY Times rather unfavorable review, the Washington Post unloads another thumbs down.
If anybody can get Internet music downloads right, it should be Sony Corp. The company has years of experience selling records, consumer electronics and personal computers -- and it's had plenty of time to study earlier digital-music ventures.
So how could the Connect music store, unveiled on Tuesday, have turned out so badly? It gets a few things right, but by forgetting that customers want to feel like they actually own their music, it repeats -- or exceeds -- the mistakes of other music stores. ...
This service is an embarrassment to the company that gave the world the Walkman.
As an update to a previous story, Apple is denying the anticipated price increase for iTunes.
"These rumors aren't true," Apple spokeswoman Natalie Sequeira said. "We have multiyear agreements with the labels and our prices remain 99 cents a track."
Apple's commitment to the 99 cent retail price point--which is shared by other music services such as Musicmatch--comes in spite of wholesale prices for music that are already beginning to fluctuate, according to record labels and other download services.
I live in the DC area. There are a number of traffic traps around, where camera try to catch people doing bad things (like blowing through a stop light or going 52 in a 25). If Jane happens to be a bad person and gets caught by the traffic camera going a few miles over the speed limit, she doesn't receive the traffic ticket personally. Rather, the owner of the car gets the ticket and has to pay the fine (with no points on the license). The owner may or may not be Jane.
What in God's name might this have to do with downloading, you might ask?
The RIAA is suing personally the owner of the computer (or, I think to be a bit more accurate, the leasee of the broadband connection) for copyright infringment -- regardless of the actions of the actual legal leasee. In other words, Jane could download the entire sonic collection of Barenaked Ladies using her next door neighbors connection (and just think for a second about people "hijacking" WiFi from home users who haven't locked down their access point).
So would Jane get sued or Ted, her neighbor? Judging from the RIAA's suit against the NC grandmother, it would be Ted. And that's just a little bit disturbing.
The RIAA is back in the headlines (well, I suppose they never really left). Not only are they suing a grandmother in North Carolina for some songs that her grandson downloaded using her machine (which brings up an interesting point that I'll try to come back to here in a bit).
"Those 520 songs will cost you $750 and I said, 'What?’” Johnson [the grandmother] said.
That's $750 for each song but the association says it will settle for $3,500.
"I said, 'You know what? You won't get it because I don't have it,’” Johnson said.
Johnson said it's not fair to hold her financially responsible for what her grandson did. She doesn't let him use the computer without supervision now and she's hoping RIAA leaves her alone.
You might learn of all of these RIAA suits that are going on a decide to go and download songs legally, right?
The sources claim Apple has now signed agreements with EMI, Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG), Sony, Universal and Warner that will see prices on some songs rise from 99c to $1.25, an increase of over 26 per cent.
Still, that's better than the $2.99 price point some labels had been pushing Apple to introduce.
Album prices are going up to. Many are likely to continue to be offered for $9.99, but some are appearing in the ITMS for $16.99, a rise of 70 per cent.
As one music industry source told The Register: "That will really ingratiate the public and discourage piracy, won't it?"
Ah, what a brilliant idea. For some good commentary, let's check out what Simon thinks:
It seems that the RIAA and its members just can't resist squeezing more money from the consumers (that's us), and, hey, if golden-egg laying geese get slaughtered as a result, that's business, yeah? The big five labels are forcing a25 per cent price increase on Apple for songs on iTunes. Now, it's true they wanted the price to rise to USD2.99 per song, but even so - USD1.25 for a single track, which doesn't require any packaging, distribution or storage? They've got to be kidding.
In effect, the RIAA are pricing legal downloading out the market. You can vote with your peer to peer networks.
Earlier, I mentioned that Sony's online music site Connect was open for business. Maybe the champagne should be corked for now, though.
Music fans already had to contend with two incompatible music copy-protection formats: Apple's AAC files (compatible only with iPods) and Microsoft's WMA format (used by Napster, Musicmatch, Wal-Mart and others). Sony's music service employs yet another format, called Atrac. Predictably, Atrac files don't play on any of the three million iPods or the four million WMA-compatible players in use. Unless you have a Sony player, Atrac may as well be 8-track.
Some thoughts on the pricing model for online music.
At the Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit in Washington, D.C., Glaser recounted his general frustration in getting the record labels to offer creative pricing beyond the 99-cents-per-download model. In fact, some labels -- emboldened by consumers' apparent willingness to pay a buck a song -- are talking about raising per-song fees rather than lowering them to increase volume.
"Can you explain what planet the record labels are on?" asked Walt Mossberg, tech columnist for The Wall Street Journal and moderator of a one-on-one interview with Glaser at the conference.
Glaser smirked. "I guess I'd call it Planet Spreadsheet," he said. "The problem is that they don't look at it holistically."
Glaser has tried to convince the labels to compromise -- perhaps by charging more than a buck for newly released songs (and more than $10 for newly released album downloads), but then slashing the price a few months later to drive demand after the new-release sheen dulls.
So far, response has been muted, Glaser said. On a host of packaging issues, he said he can often get a couple of major labels on board. But then they hear that a couple of other labels aren't playing ball, and they back off for fear of being the only ones to make a mistake. The result, according to Glaser, is the "lowest common denominator."
Glaser's proposal seems immently reasonable to me. Not only does that address the needs/desires of the market, it also has the added benefit of mirroring the pricing model of CDs in the physical world. The brand new CDs are sold for full price (or discounted as a loss leader in some stores), the not-so-new CDs are sold for less, and the older/poorly selling CDs are sold as "budget". Musicians are compensated for sales in these strata as well -- full royalties, then 70-80% royalties and finally 50% royalties. Why the labels are resisting this is beyond me -- it would simply be an application of their existing business model to the internet.
The labels should really be focusing on answering this consumer driven need. Otherwise, people are going to fulfill their needs on their own.
"The best-selling CD in the country is blank," said Flansburgh [from They Might be Giants].
Connect will be competing directly against iTunes.
Microsoft has come up with a brand new way to license music in the digital age. Janus will allow consumers to download music and then transfer it pretty much as they see fit. That's the good news. The bad news is that the license to listen to said music expires from time to time and has to be renewed (for a small fee).
The Washington Post does a good job of summarizing the situation.
It's not hard to see why the industry and the labels are big fans of this approach:
"Online music-subscription services like MusicNet or Rhapsody offer a seemingly appealing proposition: all the music you could ever listen to for a flat monthly fee. But there has always been a hitch. The songs remain locked to your computer, unless you pay more to buy them outright." [San Jose Mercury News] noted that the Janus announcement "potentially removes that obstacle," because "the software will allow consumers to move rented music, movies or games onto portable devices or distribute them across home networks. ... The new software has an internal clock that keeps track of the return date on a particular song or movie. Every time the portable music player or a Pocket PC connects to the Internet, or to an Internet-connected PC, the software checks the return date to see if the file has expired.
Ah, so I get it. It's not enough that I bought the latest Rush CD; I have to buy again and again every so often. Wow, I'd like to get in on that deal, except for that whole completely hosing the fans aspect.
Thanks to Eric for some of the info in this post.
Here's Simon on this development:
YOU'LL NEVER BUY A SONG AGAIN: Not if Microsoft has its way - it's just launched a new version of its Digital Rights Management gubbins for the unpleasant Windows Media format which will make it possible for "content owners" to ensure you can only hire songs and movies for a brief period, with them becoming unplayable after the hire period is up. This really is a music company's dream: in the past, they had to invent a whole new format to make us buy our record collections all over again; now, our collections can be made to evaporate every Thursday.
Sometimes you really have to wonder if the record industry isn't going out of it's way to tick off every last person who might have bought something online.
An opinion piece about the RIAA and their real constituents, the labels.
This is actually banner news! It's a large PDF file, but worth reading the whole thing
When asked what impact free downloading on the Internet has had on their careers as musicians, 37% say free downloading has not really made a difference, 35% say it has helped and 8% say it has both helped and hurt their career. Only 5% say free downloading has exclusively hurt their career and 15% of the respondents say they don't know...
67% say artists should have complete control over material they copyright and they say copyright laws do a good job of protecting artists...
Some 60% of those in the sample say they do not think the Recording Industry Association of America's suits against online music swappers will benefit musicians and songwriters. Those who earn the majority of their income from music are more inclined than "starving musicians" to back the RIAA, but even those very committed musicians do not believe the RIAA campaign will help them. Some 42% of those who earn most of their income from their music do not think the RIAA legal efforts will help them, while 35% think those legal challenges will ultimately benefit them.
Hey, gals and guys over at the RIAA? Take the hint. The lawsuits are not an effective means to stop downloading; the actual musicians (you know, those people you ostensibly represent) don't want you suing their fans; what's it going to take for you to finally notice that big ol' barrel of coffee in the main room?
Thanks to Cory for the tip.
Apple computers has sold around 70 million tunes through iTunes.
The company, which struck a landmark deal with record companies last year to permit iTunes users to download copyrighted music, had originally said it believed it would sell 100 million songs during the first year of the service.
Steven P. Jobs, Apple's chief executive, said the company, based in Cupertino, Calif., is now selling 2.7 million songs a week, charging 99 cents a song.
While some might say that selling less than the expectation might qualify as a failure, I wouldn't be one of them. I'm all in favor of expanding avenues of musical sales for the consumer.
The RIAA files suit against 477 more.
Boooo.....
Wendy has some good stuff on the RIAA as well as online copyright issues.
The sound that you might be hearing are all the unsigned bands rejoicing. MP3.com, once the haven for unknown bands good and bad, may be returning, more or less.
If you were one of those bands (or if you know someone who was), go to this site and transfer over the old files to the new site.
To be honest, I didn't even know that the RIAA was doing this program, but hey had been previously promising not to sue people if only they pledge to not only stop downloading, but promise to go forth and sin no more. That act of mercy has ended today.
The program required individuals to acknowledge in writing that they shared music files online and then remove the files from their computers. In exchange, the RIAA pledged not to target them in its lawsuit campaign.
According to Simon, there wasn't a whole lot of activity in the process anyway (about 1,108 pledges out of the entire US), so this probably isn't going to amount to much.
Real Networks and Apple computers might be joining up.
RealNetworks made a direct appeal last week to Apple Computer, its Internet music rival, suggesting that the two companies form a common front against Microsoft in the digital music business.
And, in a related story, Apple is now selling more iPods than iMacs.
Steven P. Jobs, Apple's chief executive, [said] "We sold a lot of Macs, but we've sold more iPods in the quarter than all the Macs put together."
Off the top of my head, that kind of change in Apple's focus should have some pretty interesting implications to the industry.
Simon has made an excellent point with regards to the RIAA and file sharing.
The RIAA has made it a point to pursue anyone who does file sharing and trading of music. In yesterday's NY Times, there was an article about how the American troops in Iraq bring their own music with them.
The songs came from a European satellite music channel and a communal computer where 12.8 gigabites of tunes had been downloaded for sharing on MP3's. The rule was simple: Take some music, add some music.
"Any time anybody on the team gets a new CD, they load it in, so we stay pretty current," said Sgt. Thomas R. Mena.
As the new CD from Tool blasted in the barracks, Sergeant Mena scrolled through the computerized music library, which ranged from Abba and AC/DC, through Limp Biskit and Metallica and on to Van Halen and ZZ Top.
So, what I want to know is when will the RIAA be filing the lawsuit against these troops to stop this blatant file sharing?
Suprising to, well, no one, the RIAA has come out with negative comments about the recent study showing that file sharing does not hurt sales.
Amy Weiss, RIAA senior VP of communications, calls the Oberholzer-Strumpf study's results, released March 30, "counterintuitive." The study appears to absolve illegal downloaders of negatively impacting the music business.
Weiss also says the study is "anomalous" in that it contradicts the findings of five other studies of P2P activity conducted in 2002-03. All suggested file sharing as a major element in the decline of industry sales.
Simon does a masterful job fisking the RIAA's response. Some highlights:
First, she dismisses it as "counter-intuitive" - in other words, it runs contrary to what the RIAA needs to believe. But a lot of people have been saying for a long time that downloading helps, not hinders, music sales, so it's not counterintuitive to what our gut instincts believe. Besides, even if it was - since when has a scientific study been without value because it doesn't prove an assumption? That's what science is for, isn't it?
Second, the report is "anomalous" because it doesn't agree with "five other studies of P2p activity." Now, we've spent some time poking about the RIAA website - it's actually online at the moment - and can't find any figures relating to this, so we're assuming that Weiss is talking about opinion poll type surveys, which aren't as rigorous as the sort of investigation undertaken by Oberholzer-Strumpf. (For example, the ludicrous BPI poll from a couple of weeks ago where a sliver-thin sample group, and a bunch of leading questions still produced "facts" that need to be spun more than buttermilk in a churn to try and help the BPi justify it's planned bullying of its customers.)
Read it all.
Places like iTunes have been offering individual songs for just under a buck a pop. That may be changing, if the major labels get their way.
For months, digital-music services have been touting albums for $9.99 to entice more people to buy online. But Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store has been charging $16.99 for "Fly or Die," while Roxio Inc.'s Napster service sells the 12-song collection for $13.99. Both prices are higher than the $13.49 that Amazon.com charges for the CD itself. The same pricing shifts are showing up on albums by a growing slate of artists, from Shakira to Bob Dylan.
Unburdened by manufacturing and distribution costs, online music was supposed to usher in a new era of inexpensive, easy-to-access music for consumers. In many cases, buying music online is still cheaper than shopping for CDs at retail outlets. But just a year after iTunes debuted with its 99-cent songs and mostly $9.99 albums, that affordable and straightforward pricing structure is already under pressure.
All five of the major music companies are discussing ways to boost the price of single-song downloads on hot releases - to anywhere from $1.25 to as much as $2.49. It isn't clear how or when such a price hike would take place, and it could still be months away. Sales of such singles - prices have remained at 99 cents - still account for the majority of online music sales.
The industry is also mulling other ways to charge more for online singles. One option under consideration is bundling hit songs with less-desirable tracks. Another possibility is charging more for a single track if it is available online before the broader release of the entire album from which it is taken. There is also talk of lowering the price on some individual tracks from older albums.
If this is something that matters to you, read the whole thing.
Some people aren't all that happy about this turn of events, though.
Remember how online music stores were going to route around the music industry? The pigopolists have barely got their feet under the table and already demanding more. The Wall Street Journal reports that the major five labels think that 99 cents per song is too cheap, and are discussing a price hike that would increase the tariff to $1.25 up to $2.99 per song.
The current tariff is too much for most people, as saggy sales indicate. "99 cents a song is a pricing model designed to protect CD sales, and not one designed to move people into a new digital music marketplace," senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation Fred Lohmann told us recently. "If an iPod has room for 4,000, does Apple think people are getting to spend $4,000 filling it with music?"
As it is, online music stores are a loss leader, or barely cover operating expenses. Apple alone can consider its online store a success: it has driven demand for its iPod and given itself a toe-hold in a valuable new consumer market. Some analysts reckon Apple's cut is as high as 33 cents, but once the bandwidth, manpower and marketing are counted - and let's not forget that Apple pays Thomson an MP3 licensing fee on the iTunes software it gives away - there's very little to the bottom line. What it does do is indirectly help the iPod.
Not too long ago, a well published songwriter wrote an open letter to the file sharers of the world. In it, he said:
What is becoming increasingly clear is that the great majority of you truly feel no guilt about the "sharing" of what I have created and own -- my music.
You have lumped together many professions (artists, songwriters, engineers, producers, publishers, etc.) into one big ugly corporate caricature -- a rich and corrupt industry that can be stolen from remorselessly. Additionally, in your "yes, Virginia, there is a free lunch" mentality, you have unthinkingly devalued songs to the extent that you perceive them as trifles -- something of little value to be partaken and enjoyed at no cost. Moreover, you have unfairly condemned me and my record industry peers for bringing the law to bear against you. In classic "blame the victim" reasoning, you lay the responsibility for my losses at my feet, saying, in essence, that the problem is not your theft, but rather my inability to prevent it.
Well, file-sharers, I righteously say "bull." I, songwriter/publisher, labored for years to create those songs, and I really do legally own them. I -- not you -- have the right to control what happens to them, a right your technology does not trump. You are dead wrong to simply give my songs away and undermine my only chance to profit from my creations. Don't tell me that I should gracefully pardon your hand in my pocket. Don't insinuate to me that, because your thievery is so facile, perhaps I should find some other way to make a living. Your "hobby" is taking the bread off my table, and I have every right to use any and all legal means possible to discourage your destructive practices.
There are a some details in his letter that aren't quite completely right (as an example, he doesn't actually own the songs, but he does own the copyright to them), but I am rather sympathetic to his position. He has worked hard on his craft, and he should be compensated for his efforts. Having said that, it's my opinion that the musical marketplace is undergoing a sea change. His letter rings of a complaint that the world is changing and he has not been able to/is not able to adjust to the brave new world in which we find ourselves.
However, a little bit of hypocrisy rears it's ugly head when it comes to his past. It seems that he was arrested for carrying a loaded revolver onto a airplane in January of this year. Maybe that's what he meant by the means to discourage destructive practices.
Personally, I only find this lightly hypocritical. His error in judgement regarding being armed on a plane does not compromise his position on flie sharing. If he had been prosecuted for plagerism or music piracy in the past, then that would be massive hypocracy. This is just some egg on his face during a public moment.
Thanks to Eric for the tip.
The open source community has made a new entry into the copyright/file sharing conflict. Playfair is a software package that allows a user to circumvent the digital rights management built into the iTunes system.
That this would be developed is hardly a shock. Just like with the fiasco of SDMI, there are too many highly motivated, highly competent programmers out there with anti-authoritarian leanings to realistically expect technological initiatives to be 100% effective.
The only technological foray that might actually work is the Trusted Computing model being pushed by Microsoft and others (for more details, check here). If this is implemented, then the content providers would be able to control how any digital file is managed on anyone's computer (can you say Linux? I knew that you could. I know that I can....).
More on this as it develops.
Here's a pretty good analysis of the RIAA's current behavior:
Bulletin boards bulge with calls for RIAA boycotts, literal CD burnings, and pledges from people who claim not to download songs (or even own computers) to stop buying music. They're lashing out against artists such as Madonna who endorse the RIAA's position. There's even a support network. Jesse Jordan, a 19-year-old student sued by the RIAA for copyright infringement, raised his $12,000 settlement (plus $5.67 extra) via PayPal donations from over 900 sympathizers.
Music fans have adopted a stance secretly shared by many in the music establishment. "Remember," a major-label marketing executive e-mailed me, "every time you download a song, you're depriving a senior vice president his expense-account dinner."
As Simon put it,
...[I]t's a timely and concise summation of just why the RIAA's actions over the last three years have made any impartial witness wonder if they were trying to burn down the store and claim the insurance."
The Judiciary intellectual property subcomittee of the US House of Representatives sent the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act (PDEA) on to the floor of the House for a vote.
The PDEA--the result of intense lobbying from large copyright holders over the past six months--has emerged as a kind of grab-bag that combines other proposals introduced in the past but not approved. One section that first surfaced last year punishes an Internet user who makes available $1,000 in copyrighted materials with prison terms of up to three years and fines of up to $250,000. If the PDEA became law, prosecutors would not have to prove that $1,000 in copyrighted materials were downloaded--they would need only to show that those files had been publicly accessible in a shared folder.
One part of the PDEA that did not appear in earlier bills would require the FBI to "facilitate the sharing" of information among Internet providers, copyright holders and police.
This time from Harvard and UNC. PDF can be found here.
Thanks to Rob for the tip.
There's a site out there that lets users share their playlists for legal, publicly available mp3 files (i.e. files that an artists has chosen to share with the general public). It's a good place to check out some music about which you may not have otherwise heard.
Thanks to Lucas for the tip.
Mp3.com was a great place for struggling bands; you got a centralized place to house your online music, you got visibility and someone else handled all the plumbing for you. Too bad they're no longer around.
However, there's another group that's trying to make a go of it. They are still beta, but it could turn into something interesting.
Thanks to Eric for the tip.
The Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) has lost it's court case. The CRIA was attempting to force ISP's into releasing the names of file sharers.
The judge ruled the music companies had not provided enough evidence that any copyright infringement had occurred or that the companies could identify the individuals.
"No evidence was presented that the alleged infringers either distributed or authorized the reproduction of sound recordings. They merely placed personal copies onto shared directories on their computers which were accessible by other computer users via an online download service," the judge wrote.
As a result, using an online download service for personal use does not amount to copyright infringement in Canada...
This one from a professor (Wharton B-school) this time.
Some of the results seem quite surprising, while others are expected. According to the study:
The top albums (over 600,000 copies, top 25%) were helped by the downloading, those with lower than 36,000 copies had a negative effect.
Most people download individual songs, not entire albums. About 90% of the songs on most popular albums are downloaded less than 11 times, and there is a high download concentration toward hits.
Music industry marketing still greatly influences people’s habits, both from a sales and downloading aspect.
Thanks to Eppy for the tip.
This time, they're going to be targeted at people all over the world. I guess as long as the industry groups keep screaming and crying, they are hoping that no one will notice that things are actually getting much better for the biz....
Simon is reporting that Prince is allowing some of his songs from his new album to be downloaded for about a buck a pop. The more interesting thought actually comes from someone else, though:
"Imagine new CDs by Eminem, Norah Jones, Bruce Springsteen and Beyonce made available online at each artist's own website. After all the talk about illegal downloading destroying the music industry, it could be legal downloading that puts the big record companies out of business."
Larry Katz said this in the Boston Globe, but I cannot find the story to give you a direct link.
At least one band is not only getting with the online movement, but evangelizing others as well:
If fans download the Secret Machines' debut album on free peer-to-peer file-sharing sites on the Internet, "We're not going to put up a sign at the show that says, 'If you stole the album, go home!'" says Bill Bennett, manager of the New York trio, at the South By Southwest Music Conference last week. The album, "Now Here Is Nowhere," is due out May 18 on Reprise Records, a division of the Warner Music Group.
Bennett (once the president of Geffen Records) says the band's philosophy is to embrace the Internet and the new fans it brings to the band: "The idea is that even if they downloaded the album for free, they'll like the band enough that they'll join in some kind of commerce with the band down the road."
A ray of rationality breaks through the clouds.
A good write-up suggesting ways that Apple could maintain it's lead in the online music field.
Apple could still guide digital-music standards for years to come -- and create a more open, competitive marketplace that will ultimately benefit everyone -- except Microsoft. How? By letting go of FairPlay and trusting the market -- as well as its own ability to make killer consumer devices.
While Apple's competitors have embraced WMA, they hardly relish the thought of their business becoming heavily dependent on another standard that Redmond controls. I asked several of Apple's competitors in both music hardware and software if they would like to license FairPlay and include AAC as an optional format. They indicated that it's something they would be very interested in.
Apple's AAC/FairPlay combo already owns the largest share of the music-download market. If music players from other outfits could use iTMS, then customers could move back and forth from one brand to another.
But Apple can take heart with the DVD Forum's decision to use their audio codec as the standard for DVD-Audio.
New Zealand is considering making their copyright law much like the US variant. Specifically, implementing the fair use proviso.
What Glading [head of Sony Music NZ] calls a "horrendous" proposal is a modification to New Zealand's copyright laws that would essentially permit one of 'fair use' rights US consumers already enjoy.
Like New Zealanders, UK consumers have no right to duplicate the contents of a CD they've legally purchased onto, say, a cassette to allow the album to be listened to in the car. Similarly, it is illegal in the UK and New Zealand to rip that CD to MP3 and transfer the files to an iPod.
US law, by contrast, makes provision for copying songs this way.
Actually, US law has been that way for quite some time. And it didn't affect sales. Is it any wonder that some people are a little skeptical of the record label's claims of woe and pain?
Wal-Mart has announced their entrance into the world of selling tunes online.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) on Tuesday tuned up its online music store, undercutting competitors' prices as the world's largest retailer officially launched a venture designed to boost its Web businesses.
The store, which sells digital downloads for 11 percent less than major competitors, expanded its catalog of artists by 50 percent, including exclusive songs from Jessica Simpson, 3 Doors Down, Shania Twain and others, the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer said.
Wal-Mart began testing the site, which allows customers to download a song from the Internet for 88 cents, in December.
An editorial in the Toronto Globe and Mail captures some of what I have been struggling with with regards to online music.
...[I]n this tug-of-war between file-sharers and music companies, artists actually find themselves identifying with both sides. We are rights-owners after all, and therefore not at all keen on encouraging loose respect for the rules. But we are also major users of other people's work; our own depends on it. For this reason, we worry about things like the health of the public domain, and trends that seem to be making access to the cultural expressions of the past more difficult and ever more costly.
File-sharing may be piracy, but it is also a consumer revolt and an explicit demand for change. People want more choice and flexibility in the way they "consume" music, which is to say, for example, they want access to single songs and permission to compile their own CDs. This is not an unreasonable request...
On the one hand, I'm a musician who would rather like to be compensated for my efforts. On the other hand, I'm a fan who would like the flexibility and choice. The RIAA's hamhanded efforts have hurt their cause far in excess of their victories. I'm not to the point where I would want to go off the deep end, but I can understand that point of view.
Due to a hodge-podge of licensing laws, the ability of the internet to make distance irrelevant is still being underutilized.
Everyone from Microsoft to AOL offers some form of commercial music download service, all based around arcane licensing deals and proprietary formats that limit what you can do with your purchased music.
So arcane are these arrangements - enforced by the record companies - that despite the internet making location completely irrelevant, European music fans can't access the US- based services. iTunes Music Store Europe is rumoured to be opening soon - Apple is as tightlipped as ever about the exact date - but until then, people wanting to download music they have paid for will have to try elsewhere. Luckily, there are much cooler places than boring old Apple.
T-Mobile will soon be letting their customers download music directly to their phones. Is this a step forward?
-- Update --
Apparently, I misead the article. Only bits of the song can be downloaded (about ninety seconds worth). Wow, that makes this service just about completely useless.
Simon is reporting that MS and Sony are making a huge mis-step with their online music outings.
Microsoft's bid to outgun the iPod seems doomed from the start, if only because Microsoft isn't a brand name that people really want to be linked with. It's the brand that drives your computer at work, it's the brand on Excel spreadsheets - it's never going to have the groove or cachet of Apple.
In other news, Sony picked up a huge gun and blew its own foot off at the knee by announcing that its music download service is going to use a Sony-only format linked in with its new generation of digi-walkmen. Do these people do even rudimentary research?
iTunes, despite having made it to 50 million songs sold, they are not going to make their 100 million in the first year target.
An interesting opinion from another struggling musician about online music.
The industry titans—Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Brothers Music, EMI Group and BMG Entertainment—are clinging to a fading oligopoly, cutting workers by the thousands and looking for safety in mergers. EMI is in talks with Warners, which has mentioned BMG, which is said to be considering Sony, and so on. All are in full retreat, confessing prior sins of power abuse, cutting CD prices, offering more generous contracts to artists. Most strikingly, labels are rushing to embrace the digital technologies that are their undoing.
What this means is that power has shifted so decisively to consumers that the companies will never get most of it back. When the Recording Industry Association of America—acting in the name of global giants like Sony of Japan and Bertelsmann of Germany—sued several hundred prolific American file sharers this past summer, it meant to put the fear of the law in an estimated 60 million file sharers in the United States alone. It failed. Since then there has been no net decline in illegal downloading, according to Big Champagne, a company that measures file-sharing data.
Coke's site is quickly becoming on of the most popular legal services in all of Europe.
If you are a band that wants to distribute cover songs (that you've recorded natch), here are some tips that will help you do it legally.
For people who like obscure types of music (and I know that I'm one of them), this should be a good thing. The growth of internet based radio has let slip thousands of individualized netcasting stations, each playing a different format than the last.
Check out ShoutCast or LaunchCast for a listing of stations.
Virgin Group Ltd. will be establishing an online presence in the summer.
Virgin Digital, a business created to offer on-demand music and music videos, plans to use U.K.-based Virgin Group's bricks-and-mortar Virgin Megastores as a springboard to its two online services. One will allow consumers to purchase music on a per-song or per-album basis. The second will allow consumers to subscribe to a membership service and listen to all the streamed music they like while they are members...
Whether you agree with Lessig or not, his latest article in Wired is worth a read.
Yesterday's Digital Forum in NYC throughly discussed the next steps in online music.
[RealNetworks VP of music services Sean Ryan] said: "2004 will be a great year for digital music", and said that successful services need to supply a: "mix of offerings, multiple services (a la carte and subscription), control of the media player, and the ability to efficiently acquire customers and to get music off the computer"
With the industry ready to reach critical mass, Ryan shared his belief that the industry is now closed to new start-ups. "The time is over for start-ups in this sector," he said.
Ryan observed that a roughly 50/50 split exists between subscription and a la carte services, and warned that format incompatibility "will be the bane" of the year, predicting this would "ease" in 2005.
I would strongly disagree with Ryan's assertion that the time is over for start-ups; there is always room for some small company to come from out of the woodwork with some hot new concept that larger houses will not see (think Napster, think Harry Potter).
Metallica has decided to join the online revolution. Well, kinda.
Like several other bands, Metallica will be allowing soundboard recordings of their live shows to be downloaded. This fits with their support of tapers at shows. It also comes at the same time when sales of their last album have been slipping a bit. Coincidence, maybe?
The EFF has put forth a proposal to allow musicians to be compensated while allowing listeners to legally download tunes. On the face of it, it seems like a potentially good plan.
The concept is simple: the music industry forms a collecting society, which then offers file-sharing music fans the opportunity to "get legit" in exchange for a reasonable regular payment, say $5 per month. So long as they pay, the fans are free to keep doing what they are going to do anyway -- share the music they love using whatever software they like on whatever computer platform they prefer -- without fear of lawsuits. The money collected gets divided among rights-holders based on the popularity of their music.
In exchange, file-sharing music fans will be free to download whatever they like, using whatever software works best for them. The more people share, the more money goes to rights-holders. The more competition in applications, the more rapid the innovation and improvement. The more freedom to fans to publish what they care about, the deeper the catalog.
Read the whole article; it's worth your time. (Thanks to Eric for the pointer)
Someone has gotten the idea to counter-sue the RIAA. How very interesting. While I rather doubt she will be successful, it might give the RIAA a little pause with their ham-handed tactics.
It seems that more music (as singles) has been legally downloaded than purchased through other means.
More than 150,000 downloads were sold last month, exceeding sales of 12-inch, seven-inch and DVD singles, the Official Charts Company reported.
Album sales are also looking good.
Between 1998 and 2002, the last full year for which data was available, worldwide sales of recorded music fell by 18%. Over the same period the value of sales in the UK rose by 6%.
But not all is sunshine and light in the land of boiled cabbage. Single sales are starting to suffer. The author of the article suspects "elastic pricing" to be the culprit.
So what does this mean overall? Well, when I put both of these pieces together, it tells me that legally downloaded music is the largest segment of growth in a shrinking market. Um, bravo?
There's a coming battle for file standards in the online world. Think VHS vs Betamax.
An emerging version of this conflict is being fought out now over standards for music purchased online. It boils down to this: will Apple support Microsoft's "Windows Media Audio" (WMA) format for purchased music on the iPod music player? Or has the Apple-preferred (but not Apple-owned) "Advanced Audio Codec" (AAC) format that it uses through its own iTunes Music Store become a de facto standard that others - including Microsoft - will have to adjust to?
To me, this seems to be somewhat of a strange argument. I know that on those rare occasions when I have gone on to Kazaa and it's ilk (just for research, officer), the predominant standard has been mp3s, not WMA or AAC. Mp3s have good sound, aren't encumbered by the somewhat ridiculous rights management overhead that WMAs are (I can't speak to AAC) and pretty conclusively have the mindshare of the general public when it comes to online music.
...[M]ost people listening to music on digital players have most of it in MP3 format. I'd also bet that every music player out there now has at least one MP3 file on it. People who've got into digital music assume that MP3 is the default format. The challenge for Apple, and Microsoft, is to join MP3.
Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno have announced a new way to let artists sell their music online rather than only through record labels.
[Gabriel and Eno] call the plan the "Magnificent Union of Digitally Downloading Artists" - or MUDDA.... "Unless artists quickly grasp the possibilities that are available to them, then the rules will get written, and they'll get written without much input from artists," said Eno.... By removing record labels from the equation, artists can set their own prices and set their own agendas, said the two independent musicians, who hope to launch the online alliance within a month.
I'm glad that they're getting on the bandwagon; hasn't Prince (or whatever he's calling himself these days) been doing this for a few years now? In any case, more avenues and options are almost always a good thing.