Is someone eventually going to become the digital Rockadelic Records?
Surely there has to be a successful business model for a business such as yours, even given the problems that crop up due to advances in technology. SS and Waxidermy surely indicate that there is a hardcore group of "object fetishists" still out there. Am I not seeing the forest for the trees?
Is someone eventually going to become the digital Rockadelic Records?
Surely there has to be a successful business model for a business such as yours, even given the problems that crop up due to advances in technology. SS and Waxidermy surely indicate that there is a hardcore group of "object fetishists" still out there. Am I not seeing the forest for the trees?
I have no doubt that some young folks out there with the technical savvy will figure out a way to create a similar business that I had with Rockadelic.
I'm even willing to help them as I have with a few more "modern" labels.
Folks like Numero Group, etc. seem to have taken it to the next level with success.
I did this because I loved the music and my original partner and I agreed that the day it felt like "work" we would hang it up.
We were good at releasing vinyl.....and you should stick to what you're good at.
Until you can't do it anymore.
And it's not fair to my family to do this and lose money.
I'm curious as to exactly how downloading affected your business. Did you notice a significant decline in orders, or was it that you predicted one, based on the fact that your reissues found thier way online so quickly.
I would think somebody operating a niche business like yours would be less impacted by downloads than the majors, because you've got a customer base that actually does want the physical object even if it is available as a free download... as opposed to a 16 year old kid, who's fine with just having a soundfile. I mean, your customers are already making a conscious decision to cosnume music anachronistically by buying records.
I admit that it is somewhat of an assumption on my part....
I had a good network of distributors that either slowly disappeared(sometimes with unpaid debt, another problem for small labels)or reduced the size of their orders over time.
Yeah, that makes sense--regardless of whether your particular niche is directly affected by downloads, the other businesses that you have to rely upon in order to get your music out there are affected.
It makes me sad to hear, though, and it's messed up to hear about people who are supposedly so devoted to the music not making more of an effort to support your endeavors and instead undermining them.
It makes me sad to hear, though, and it's messed up to hear about people who are supposedly so devoted to the music not making more of an effort to support your endeavors and instead undermining them.
The really sad part is that these were grown men, not kids.
And they were on some absurd "We're gonna give the music back to the people, man" type bullshit.
It makes me sad to hear, though, and it's messed up to hear about people who are supposedly so devoted to the music not making more of an effort to support your endeavors and instead undermining them.
The really sad part is that these were grown men, not kids.
And they were on some absurd "We're gonna give the music back to the people, man" type bullshit.
That really sucks. What do you think motivated them to eff with you like that?
It makes me sad to hear, though, and it's messed up to hear about people who are supposedly so devoted to the music not making more of an effort to support your endeavors and instead undermining them.
The really sad part is that these were grown men, not kids.
And they were on some absurd "We're gonna give the music back to the people, man" type bullshit.
That really sucks. What do you think motivated them to eff with you like that?
I suspect these grown men live in their parents' basements and have Beatles-inspired bowlcuts as well as underdeveloped senses of personal hygiene.
It makes me sad to hear, though, and it's messed up to hear about people who are supposedly so devoted to the music not making more of an effort to support your endeavors and instead undermining them.
The really sad part is that these were grown men, not kids.
And they were on some absurd "We're gonna give the music back to the people, man" type bullshit.
That really sucks. What do you think motivated them to eff with you like that?
Simple......they contacted me and asked that I contribute some unreleased tapes of Texas Garage bands for them to up/download.
When I asked if the artist would get paid they said no.
It makes me sad to hear, though, and it's messed up to hear about people who are supposedly so devoted to the music not making more of an effort to support your endeavors and instead undermining them.
The really sad part is that these were grown men, not kids.
And they were on some absurd "We're gonna give the music back to the people, man" type bullshit.
That really sucks. What do you think motivated them to eff with you like that?
I suspect these grown men live in their parents' basements and have Beatles-inspired bowlcuts as well as underdeveloped senses of personal hygiene.
I believe ANY haircut is overestimating their hygiene.
It makes me sad to hear, though, and it's messed up to hear about people who are supposedly so devoted to the music not making more of an effort to support your endeavors and instead undermining them.
The really sad part is that these were grown men, not kids.
And they were on some absurd "We're gonna give the music back to the people, man" type bullshit.
That really sucks. What do you think motivated them to eff with you like that?
Simple......they contacted me and asked that I contribute some unreleased tapes of Texas Garage bands for them to up/download.
When I asked if the artist would get paid they said no.
So I refused.
And this was their retaliation.
Well, you took a commendable stand there. They sound like true turdburglers.
if you share a file from a label that has been defunct for 30 years and 500 copies in existance is it still illegal to share if it's copyrighted ?
what if you own the only copy in existance but it is still copyrighted ? wouldn't it be a service to share this record and get it out there ?
how do you find out if something is still copyrighted and by whom ?
i'm really having a hard time seeing it as stealing.
if a dj plays a record in a club and people listen to that that is not stealing. if they record said song on a tape recorder and listen to it later...i know the dj may object but is that really stealing ? really really stealing ? if someone makes you a blank cd of mp3s ripped from some record and you listen to it in your car, is that really stealing ? it's like people are trying to sue you to prevent you from just LISTENING to music, not even selling it or anything.
i mean you see advertisements for dells and stuff with the option of cd burning being marketed as something you'd want and should have. why else would they even have cd burning technology on computers now ?
i don't know about most people but i have this experience with mp3. for instance, there was this record by egisto macchi called fauna marina on leondardi record from 1974. it is a very obscure italian library record on an obscure italian label by a pretty obscure artist. someone shared that album with me. after hearing it, i HAD to have that record. i sought it out and finally won one off ebay.
am i stealing now by not paying royalties for the purchase of the used item to the copyright holder ?
when i hear something i like i HAVE to have it on vinyl whether it's obscure or a reissue, i like the tactile feel of a record more than an mp3. i wonder if a lot of people are like that ?
i mean you see advertisements for dells and stuff with the option of cd burning being marketed as something you'd want and should have. why else would they even have cd burning technology on computers now ?
That's one of the things I find amusing. You have Jennifer Pariser (head of litigation for Sony BMG) saying something like
"When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Making "a copy" of a purchased song is just "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy',".
But then you have Sony pushing burners & MP3 players and phones and software all geared to taking advantage of using mp3's.
I watched an ad today for a Sony MP3 player talking about being able to hold 15,000 MP3's. How do they figure your going to put that much stuff on there without at the very least of ripping CD's that you already own. Buying every single track again for just that MP3 player???
OH SHIT! Sony is helping you steal. Someone let Jennifer know!
if you share a file from a label that has been defunct for 30 years and 500 copies in existance is it still illegal to share if it's copyrighted ?
what if you own the only copy in existance but it is still copyrighted ? wouldn't it be a service to share this record and get it out there ?
how do you find out if something is still copyrighted and by whom ?
i'm really having a hard time seeing it as stealing.
if a dj plays a record in a club and people listen to that that is not stealing. if they record said song on a tape recorder and listen to it later...i know the dj may object but is that really stealing ? really really stealing ? if someone makes you a blank cd of mp3s ripped from some record and you listen to it in your car, is that really stealing ? it's like people are trying to sue you to prevent you from just LISTENING to music, not even selling it or anything.
i mean you see advertisements for dells and stuff with the option of cd burning being marketed as something you'd want and should have. why else would they even have cd burning technology on computers now ?
i don't know about most people but i have this experience with mp3. for instance, there was this record by egisto macchi called fauna marina on leondardi record from 1974. it is a very obscure italian library record on an obscure italian label by a pretty obscure artist. someone shared that album with me. after hearing it, i HAD to have that record. i sought it out and finally won one off ebay.
am i stealing now by not paying royalties for the purchase of the used item to the copyright holder ?
when i hear something i like i HAVE to have it on vinyl whether it's obscure or a reissue, i like the tactile feel of a record more than an mp3. i wonder if a lot of people are like that ?
The music on the record belonged to the artist. When you bought a used copy without paying any royalties you were ripping off the artist. There is no difference between buying a used record and ripping food out of the mouth of the artist.
Dude, seriously...I wonder if someone over at SONY HQ is slapping themselves in the head as Pariser's testimony came out. It's so ass-backwards, it'd be Frickin' comical if there still wasn't a woman with a quarter million fine levied on her.
i mean you see advertisements for dells and stuff with the option of cd burning being marketed as something you'd want and should have. why else would they even have cd burning technology on computers now ?
That's one of the things I find amusing. You have Jennifer Pariser (head of litigation for Sony BMG) saying something like
"When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Making "a copy" of a purchased song is just "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy',".
But then you have Sony pushing burners & MP3 players and phones and software all geared to taking advantage of using mp3's.
I watched an ad today for a Sony MP3 player talking about being able to hold 15,000 MP3's. How do they figure your going to put that much stuff on there without at the very least of ripping CD's that you already own. Buying every single track again for just that MP3 player???
OH SHIT! Sony is helping you steal. Someone let Jennifer know!
Time to cue SOI's "It's become the Rockadelic Show Thread" post.
That's not fair - I only said that when I felt you were de-railing a thread into a subject you wanted to discuss instead of the one at hand. In this case, you are completely on topic, so the attention is warranted. I've followed this thread with interest. On an off-topic aside, it's now looking like ARC may not happen for me after all, due to various issues
The closest analogy I can think of is with computer software.
If a company spends millions of dollars to develop a computer game and then that game is downloaded and made available for free, you don't think that company should have recourse??
I don't think so, unless the person using the software illegaly is using it to make profit.
Really....does everyone here feel this way....any software engineers/game designers want to chime in??
I was thinking about your post on software/games. Anything you want, anyone can get. If you look into software companies. Then tend not to go after the end user. But will go after any company who might have their product on any of their computers. Fair enough, since the company profits off using their products.
Look at Microsoft. Windows might be the biggest bootlegged software out there. For years they have been battling piracy trying to stop it. Going after people who profit from it, But tending not to go around looking to sue individuals. Even today, look how they might be changing their tune.
In part because of the reasons stated in the article, but also because they are having to compete with "free"[/b]. Things like firefox and google & Linux (IMO) could be making MS having to depend on what might be more important down the line (marketshare). Even with MS Office they realize that companies are offering free services (Look into what Google is rolling out in a bid to take market share).
Getting to games. I bet you there isn't a gamer out there, that couldn't find a way to get Halo 3 for free if they really wanted to. But that still didn't stop Microsoft with selling $300 million in the first week of the game. Plus, I bet MS does alright getting as many people as they can signing up for their online service to play Halo 3. Even if they are playing it from a bootleg! Though, I'm sure they are still trying to stop them from playing off a boot!
In any case. if you are worried about software companies. Look into what many linux distros are doing and ask yourself "HOW WILL MICROSOFT EAT??"
It's because MS will adapt and innovate & survive. So will other tech companies. They won't cry about it.
You should read what Rick Rubin has to say on the matter (Pretty interesting read). With one of the points of how the big tech companies will just wait for the recording industry to crash and burn with the way they are going and someone like Microsoft or Google will come in, buy it all on the cheap and do it right. And make a profit doing it.
Rubin sees no other solution. "Either all the record companies will get together or the industry will fall apart and someone like Microsoft will come in and buy one of the companies at wholesale and do what needs to be done," he said. "The future technology companies will either wait for the record companies to smarten up, or they'll let them sink until they can buy them for 10 cents on the dollar and own the whole thing."
Hello. My name is Ian Rogers. I???ve been building digital media applications since 1992, dropped out of a Computer Science PhD program to tour with Beastie Boys in 1995, and have been purchased by both AOL and Yahoo! in the ten years since then, with a stint running the new media department for a record label in the middle. Currently I work at Yahoo! Entertainment on Yahoo! Music.
First, a question: How many of you have tried Amazon???s MP3 download service?
Back in 1999 I ran Winamp.com for Rob and Justin. Napster came on the scene and we thought, ???Wow! There???s a market for MP3s!??? We had millions of people using Winamp, visiting Winamp.com for skins and plugins ??? it was by far the largest community of MP3-lovers. We naively and enthusiastically suggested to labels that we???d be a great place to sell MP3s. The response from the labels at the time was universally, ???What???s MP3???? or ???Um, no.???
Instead they commenced suing Napster. We were naive to be sure, but we were genuinely surprised by the approach. Suing Napster without offering an alternative just seemed like a denial of fact. Napster didn???t invent the ability to do P2P, it was inherent in TCP/IP. It was like throwing Newton in jail for popularizing the concept of gravity.
Nullsoft subsequently built and prematurely released a program called Gnutella which became the basis for true P2P of the coming years. When Tom Pepper told Time Magazine that Gnutella was for ???sharing recipes??? he really said it all: This is so much bigger than just sharing music. This is physics. It???s trivial for one person to transfer bits from one person to another. Trivial. Unstoppable. PUT YOUR ENERGY ELSEWHERE, we thought out loud.
I caught a lot of heat from my music industry friends for Nullsoft???s Gnutella leak. In a long and impassioned email in 1999 I wrote to everyone I knew in a band, at a label, or music journalism (whatup, Jay!) and urged them to sell their content to their users in the format they were asking for: MP3. Make it easy, I wrote, and convenience will beat free.
Well, we (you included) did lots of other things instead. While running ???New Media??? at Grand Royal I released the first day/date digital/physical release with At The Drive-In???s ???Relationship of Command???. Thanks to EMI requirements (hi Ted! hi Melissa!) it was DRM???d WMA and we sold about 12 copies in the first month, probably all to journalists. Years later I helped Yahoo! build Yahoo! Music Unlimited, a Windows Media Janus DRM-based subscription service. Record labels for their part participated in no end of control experiments: SDMI, Liquid Audio, Pressplay, Coral, etc, and they continue to this day.
But now, eight years later, Amazon???s finally done what was clearly the right solution in 1999. Music in the format that people actually want it in, with a Web-based experience that???s simple and works with any device. I bought tracks from Amazon (Kevin Drew and No Age), downloaded them, sync???d them to my new iPod Nano, and had them playing in my home audio system (Control 4) in less than five minutes. PRAISE JESUS. It only took 8 years.
8 years. How much opportunity have we lost in those 8 years? How much naivety and hubris did we have when we said, ???if we build it they will come???? What did we spend? And what did we gain? We certainly didn???t gain mass user adoption or trust, two prerequisites to success on the Internet.
Inconvenient experiences don???t have Web-scale potential, and platforms which monetize the gigantic scale of the Web is the only way to compete with the control you???ve lost, the only way to reclaim value in the music industry. If your consultants are telling you anything else, they are wrong.
Yahoo! Music demonstrates this scale discrepancy perfectly. Yahoo! is the world???s #1 Internet destination. Hundreds of millions of people visit Yahoo! each month. Yahoo! Music is the #1 Music site on the Web, with tens of millions of monthly visitors. Between 10 and 20 million people watch music videos on Yahoo! Music every month. Between 5 and 10 million people listen to radio on Yahoo! Music every month. But the ENTIRE subscription music market (including Rhapsody, Napster, and Yahoo!) is in the low millions (sorry, we don???t release subscriber numbers, but the aggregate number proves the point), even after years of marketing by all three companies. When you compare the experiences on Yahoo! Music, the order of magnitude difference in opportunity shouldn???t be a surprise: Want radio? No problem. Click play, get radio. Want video? Awesome. Click play, get video. Want a track on-demand? Oh have we got a deal for you! If you???re on Windows XP or Vista, and you???re in North America, just download this 20MB application, go through these seven install screens, reboot your computer, go through these five setup screens, these six credit card screens, give us $160 dollars and POW! Now you can hear that song you wanted to hear???if you???re still with us. Yahoo! didn???t want to go through all these steps. The licensing dictated it. It???s a slippery slope from ???a little control??? to consumer unfriendliness and non-Web-scale products and services.
But this isn???t news, nor is it particular to the digital age. History tells us: convenience wins, hubris loses. ???Who is going to want a shitty quality LP when these 78s sound so good? Who wants a hissy cassette when they have an awesome quadrophonic system? Who wants digitized music on discs now that we have Dolby on our cassettes? Who wants to listen to compressed audio on their computers???? ANSWER: EVERYONE. Convenience wins, hubris loses. [check Fredric Dannen???s comments here]
I???m here to tell you today that I for one am no longer going to fall into this trap. If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I???m not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I???ll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. I won???t let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally don???t have any more time to give and can???t bear to see any more money spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life???s too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out.
If, on the other hand, you???ve seen the light too, there???s a very fun road ahead for us all. Lets get beyond talking about how you get the music and into building context: reasons and ways to experience the music. The opportunity is in the chasm between the way we experience the content and the incredible user-created context of the Web.
By way of illustration (and via exaggeration), in a manner of speaking iTunes is a spreadsheet that plays music. It???s context-free. You just paid $10 for that album ??? who plays drums? I dunno, WHY DON???T YOU GO TO THE WEB TO FIND OUT, BECAUSE THAT???S WHERE THE CONTEXT IS.
But the content experience on the Web is crap. Go to Aquarium Drunkard, click an MP3. If you don???t get a 404, you???ll get a Save As??? dialog or the SAME GOD DAMN QUICKTIME BAR FROM 1995. OMFG. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? THIS IS ALL WE???VE ACCOMPLISHED IN 15 YEARS ON THE WEB? It makes me insane.
So we have media consumption experiences with no context (desktop media players) and an incredible, endless, emergent contextual experience where media consumption is a pain in the ass, illegal, or non-existent (the Web). FIX IT. Your fans are pouring their music-loving hearts into blogs, Wikipedia, etc and what tools have you given them to work with? Not much, unfortunately.
This is wha
t I???m vowing to devote my energy, and Yahoo!???s energy to.
Lets envision the end state and drive there as quickly as possible. Lets not waste another eight years on what is obvious today. Lets build the tools of a healthy media Web and reward music-lovers for being a part of it.
In the end you get what you pay for. I won???t spend another dime paying engineers to build false control, making listening to music harder for music-lovers. I will put all of my energy into making it easier and making the experience better. I suggest you do the same.
yes, lets all get behind the noble cause of STEALING. i was just about to give money to Darfur...
Just posting a development in this issue, not advocating that you make a donation.
Although I would say a contribution to her defense wouldn't be a vote for stealing, but rather a vote against scapegoating and vastly inappropriate penalties... as well as a vote against the RIAA's increasingly out-of-control behavior.
yes, lets all get behind the noble cause of STEALING. i was just about to give money to Darfur...
Just posting a development in this issue, not advocating that you make a donation.
Although I would say a contribution to her defense wouldn't be a vote for stealing, but rather a vote against scapegoating and vastly inappropriate penalties... as well as a vote against the RIAA's increasingly out-of-control behavior.
Maybe the chick should have told the truth up front....what a unique concept.
The PRS claims that it has logged over 250 incidents of Kwik-Fit employees audibly playing music since 2005.
...suggests to me that the PRS had some goon who spent his/her time going to 250 Kwik-Fit locations to record this wrongdoing (or 250 times at a single Kwik-Fit location or any combination of locations and occurences).
Comments
Is someone eventually going to become the digital Rockadelic Records?
Surely there has to be a successful business model for a business such as yours, even given the problems that crop up due to advances in technology. SS and Waxidermy surely indicate that there is a hardcore group of "object fetishists" still out there. Am I not seeing the forest for the trees?
I have no doubt that some young folks out there with the technical savvy will figure out a way to create a similar business that I had with Rockadelic.
I'm even willing to help them as I have with a few more "modern" labels.
Folks like Numero Group, etc. seem to have taken it to the next level with success.
I did this because I loved the music and my original partner and I agreed that the day it felt like "work" we would hang it up.
We were good at releasing vinyl.....and you should stick to what you're good at.
Until you can't do it anymore.
And it's not fair to my family to do this and lose money.
Yeah, that makes sense--regardless of whether your particular niche is directly affected by downloads, the other businesses that you have to rely upon in order to get your music out there are affected.
It makes me sad to hear, though, and it's messed up to hear about people who are supposedly so devoted to the music not making more of an effort to support your endeavors and instead undermining them.
The really sad part is that these were grown men, not kids.
And they were on some absurd "We're gonna give the music back to the people, man" type bullshit.
That really sucks. What do you think motivated them to eff with you like that?
I suspect these grown men live in their parents' basements and have Beatles-inspired bowlcuts as well as underdeveloped senses of personal hygiene.
Simple......they contacted me and asked that I contribute some unreleased tapes of Texas Garage bands for them to up/download.
When I asked if the artist would get paid they said no.
So I refused.
And this was their retaliation.
I believe ANY haircut is overestimating their hygiene.
Well, you took a commendable stand there. They sound like true turdburglers.
how long does a copyright last ?
if you share a file from a label that has been defunct for 30 years and 500 copies in existance is it still illegal to share if it's copyrighted ?
what if you own the only copy in existance but it is still copyrighted ? wouldn't it be a service to share this record and get it out there ?
how do you find out if something is still copyrighted and by whom ?
i'm really having a hard time seeing it as stealing.
if a dj plays a record in a club and people listen to that that is not stealing. if they record said song on a tape recorder and listen to it later...i know the dj may object but is that really stealing ? really really stealing ? if someone makes you a blank cd of mp3s ripped from some record and you listen to it in your car, is that really stealing ? it's like people are trying to sue you to prevent you from just LISTENING to music, not even selling it or anything.
i mean you see advertisements for dells and stuff with the option of cd burning being marketed as something you'd want and should have. why else would they even have cd burning technology on computers now ?
i don't know about most people but i have this experience with mp3. for instance, there was this record by egisto macchi called fauna marina on leondardi record from 1974. it is a very obscure italian library record on an obscure italian label by a pretty obscure artist. someone shared that album with me. after hearing it, i HAD to have that record. i sought it out and finally won one off ebay.
am i stealing now by not paying royalties for the purchase of the used item to the copyright holder ?
when i hear something i like i HAVE to have it on vinyl whether it's obscure or a reissue, i like the tactile feel of a record more than an mp3. i wonder if a lot of people are like that ?
That's one of the things I find amusing. You have Jennifer Pariser (head of litigation for Sony BMG) saying something like
"When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Making "a copy" of a purchased song is just "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy',".
But then you have Sony pushing burners & MP3 players and phones and software all geared to taking advantage of using mp3's.
I watched an ad today for a Sony MP3 player talking about being able to hold 15,000 MP3's. How do they figure your going to put that much stuff on there without at the very least of ripping CD's that you already own. Buying every single track again for just that MP3 player???
OH SHIT! Sony is helping you steal. Someone let Jennifer know!
http://reviews.cnet.com/4531-10921_7-6548636.html
The music on the record belonged to the artist. When you bought a used copy without paying any royalties you were ripping off the artist. There is no difference between buying a used record and ripping food out of the mouth of the artist.
Now if you had some way to clone that record and make MULTIPLE copies from that one original it would be a different story.
That's not fair - I only said that when I felt you were
de-railing a thread into a subject you wanted to discuss
instead of the one at hand. In this case, you are completely
on topic, so the attention is warranted. I've followed this
thread with interest. On an off-topic aside, it's now looking
like ARC may not happen for me after all, due to various issues
I was thinking about your post on software/games. Anything you want, anyone can get. If you look into software companies. Then tend not to go after the end user. But will go after any company who might have their product on any of their computers. Fair enough, since the company profits off using their products.
Look at Microsoft. Windows might be the biggest bootlegged software out there. For years they have been battling piracy trying to stop it. Going after people who profit from it, But tending not to go around looking to sue individuals. Even today, look how they might be changing their tune.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,138125/article.html#
In part because of the reasons stated in the article, but also because they are having to compete with "free"[/b]. Things like firefox and google & Linux (IMO) could be making MS having to depend on what might be more important down the line (marketshare). Even with MS Office they realize that companies are offering free services (Look into what Google is rolling out in a bid to take market share).
Getting to games. I bet you there isn't a gamer out there, that couldn't find a way to get Halo 3 for free if they really wanted to. But that still didn't stop Microsoft with selling $300 million in the first week of the game. Plus, I bet MS does alright getting as many people as they can signing up for their online service to play Halo 3. Even if they are playing it from a bootleg! Though, I'm sure they are still trying to stop them from playing off a boot!
In any case. if you are worried about software companies. Look into what many linux distros are doing and ask yourself "HOW WILL MICROSOFT EAT??"
It's because MS will adapt and innovate & survive. So will other tech companies. They won't cry about it.
You should read what Rick Rubin has to say on the matter (Pretty interesting read). With one of the points of how the big tech companies will just wait for the recording industry to crash and burn with the way they are going and someone like Microsoft or Google will come in, buy it all on the cheap and do it right. And make a profit doing it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/magazi...all&oref=slogin
The part I was talking about above.
It's sadder than being scared......I don't know how.
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/page/news/46250-website-set-up-to-help-defendant-in-riaa-case
yes, lets all get behind the noble cause of STEALING. i was just about to give money to Darfur...
http://www.fistfulayen.com/blog/?p=127
Hello. My name is Ian Rogers. I???ve been building digital media applications since 1992, dropped out of a Computer Science PhD program to tour with Beastie Boys in 1995, and have been purchased by both AOL and Yahoo! in the ten years since then, with a stint running the new media department for a record label in the middle. Currently I work at Yahoo! Entertainment on Yahoo! Music.
First, a question: How many of you have tried Amazon???s MP3 download service?
Back in 1999 I ran Winamp.com for Rob and Justin. Napster came on the scene and we thought, ???Wow! There???s a market for MP3s!??? We had millions of people using Winamp, visiting Winamp.com for skins and plugins ??? it was by far the largest community of MP3-lovers. We naively and enthusiastically suggested to labels that we???d be a great place to sell MP3s. The response from the labels at the time was universally, ???What???s MP3???? or ???Um, no.???
Instead they commenced suing Napster. We were naive to be sure, but we were genuinely surprised by the approach. Suing Napster without offering an alternative just seemed like a denial of fact. Napster didn???t invent the ability to do P2P, it was inherent in TCP/IP. It was like throwing Newton in jail for popularizing the concept of gravity.
Nullsoft subsequently built and prematurely released a program called Gnutella which became the basis for true P2P of the coming years. When Tom Pepper told Time Magazine that Gnutella was for ???sharing recipes??? he really said it all: This is so much bigger than just sharing music. This is physics. It???s trivial for one person to transfer bits from one person to another. Trivial. Unstoppable. PUT YOUR ENERGY ELSEWHERE, we thought out loud.
I caught a lot of heat from my music industry friends for Nullsoft???s Gnutella leak. In a long and impassioned email in 1999 I wrote to everyone I knew in a band, at a label, or music journalism (whatup, Jay!) and urged them to sell their content to their users in the format they were asking for: MP3. Make it easy, I wrote, and convenience will beat free.
Well, we (you included) did lots of other things instead. While running ???New Media??? at Grand Royal I released the first day/date digital/physical release with At The Drive-In???s ???Relationship of Command???. Thanks to EMI requirements (hi Ted! hi Melissa!) it was DRM???d WMA and we sold about 12 copies in the first month, probably all to journalists. Years later I helped Yahoo! build Yahoo! Music Unlimited, a Windows Media Janus DRM-based subscription service. Record labels for their part participated in no end of control experiments: SDMI, Liquid Audio, Pressplay, Coral, etc, and they continue to this day.
But now, eight years later, Amazon???s finally done what was clearly the right solution in 1999. Music in the format that people actually want it in, with a Web-based experience that???s simple and works with any device. I bought tracks from Amazon (Kevin Drew and No Age), downloaded them, sync???d them to my new iPod Nano, and had them playing in my home audio system (Control 4) in less than five minutes. PRAISE JESUS. It only took 8 years.
8 years. How much opportunity have we lost in those 8 years? How much naivety and hubris did we have when we said, ???if we build it they will come???? What did we spend? And what did we gain? We certainly didn???t gain mass user adoption or trust, two prerequisites to success on the Internet.
Inconvenient experiences don???t have Web-scale potential, and platforms which monetize the gigantic scale of the Web is the only way to compete with the control you???ve lost, the only way to reclaim value in the music industry. If your consultants are telling you anything else, they are wrong.
Yahoo! Music demonstrates this scale discrepancy perfectly. Yahoo! is the world???s #1 Internet destination. Hundreds of millions of people visit Yahoo! each month. Yahoo! Music is the #1 Music site on the Web, with tens of millions of monthly visitors. Between 10 and 20 million people watch music videos on Yahoo! Music every month. Between 5 and 10 million people listen to radio on Yahoo! Music every month. But the ENTIRE subscription music market (including Rhapsody, Napster, and Yahoo!) is in the low millions (sorry, we don???t release subscriber numbers, but the aggregate number proves the point), even after years of marketing by all three companies. When you compare the experiences on Yahoo! Music, the order of magnitude difference in opportunity shouldn???t be a surprise: Want radio? No problem. Click play, get radio. Want video? Awesome. Click play, get video. Want a track on-demand? Oh have we got a deal for you! If you???re on Windows XP or Vista, and you???re in North America, just download this 20MB application, go through these seven install screens, reboot your computer, go through these five setup screens, these six credit card screens, give us $160 dollars and POW! Now you can hear that song you wanted to hear???if you???re still with us. Yahoo! didn???t want to go through all these steps. The licensing dictated it. It???s a slippery slope from ???a little control??? to consumer unfriendliness and non-Web-scale products and services.
But this isn???t news, nor is it particular to the digital age. History tells us: convenience wins, hubris loses. ???Who is going to want a shitty quality LP when these 78s sound so good? Who wants a hissy cassette when they have an awesome quadrophonic system? Who wants digitized music on discs now that we have Dolby on our cassettes? Who wants to listen to compressed audio on their computers???? ANSWER: EVERYONE. Convenience wins, hubris loses. [check Fredric Dannen???s comments here]
I???m here to tell you today that I for one am no longer going to fall into this trap. If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I???m not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I???ll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. I won???t let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally don???t have any more time to give and can???t bear to see any more money spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life???s too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out.
If, on the other hand, you???ve seen the light too, there???s a very fun road ahead for us all. Lets get beyond talking about how you get the music and into building context: reasons and ways to experience the music. The opportunity is in the chasm between the way we experience the content and the incredible user-created context of the Web.
By way of illustration (and via exaggeration), in a manner of speaking iTunes is a spreadsheet that plays music. It???s context-free. You just paid $10 for that album ??? who plays drums? I dunno, WHY DON???T YOU GO TO THE WEB TO FIND OUT, BECAUSE THAT???S WHERE THE CONTEXT IS.
But the content experience on the Web is crap. Go to Aquarium Drunkard, click an MP3. If you don???t get a 404, you???ll get a Save As??? dialog or the SAME GOD DAMN QUICKTIME BAR FROM 1995. OMFG. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? THIS IS ALL WE???VE ACCOMPLISHED IN 15 YEARS ON THE WEB? It makes me insane.
So we have media consumption experiences with no context (desktop media players) and an incredible, endless, emergent contextual experience where media consumption is a pain in the ass, illegal, or non-existent (the Web). FIX IT. Your fans are pouring their music-loving hearts into blogs, Wikipedia, etc and what tools have you given them to work with? Not much, unfortunately.
This is wha t I???m vowing to devote my energy, and Yahoo!???s energy to.
Lets envision the end state and drive there as quickly as possible. Lets not waste another eight years on what is obvious today. Lets build the tools of a healthy media Web and reward music-lovers for being a part of it.
In the end you get what you pay for. I won???t spend another dime paying engineers to build false control, making listening to music harder for music-lovers. I will put all of my energy into making it easier and making the experience better. I suggest you do the same.
Thanks for listening.
Just posting a development in this issue, not advocating that you make a donation.
Although I would say a contribution to her defense wouldn't be a vote for stealing, but rather a vote against scapegoating and vastly inappropriate penalties... as well as a vote against the RIAA's increasingly out-of-control behavior.
Maybe the chick should have told the truth up front....what a unique concept.
YES!!! CLICK HERE & GET THAT MONEY!!!
Maybe I'm wrong, but this part...
...suggests to me that the PRS had some goon who spent his/her time going to 250 Kwik-Fit locations to record this wrongdoing (or 250 times at a single Kwik-Fit location or any combination of locations and occurences).
Pretty f*cking sad....
This is where lawyers have us headed.
Crazy Fuckin' shit!
Edit:
Cue keithvanhorn saying don't do the crime if you can't pay the fine!