According to this article:
I can’t count the number of times I have bought a song because I could sample it first. If I am forced to pay for sampling the song then there is about a zero chance I will do so and then I will almost certainly not buy the song. It just seems bizarre.
Is the article saying that iTunes would have to pay the fees or that the consumer would have to pay the fees? I couldn’t tell.
Of course, the consumers would end up paying somehow, but it’s hard to imagine that a consumer would pull money out of their electronic pocket just to hear a song sample.
Haven’t these artists ever heard of advertising? Good grief, you have to market yourself and no one can take advantage of those 30 second blips. The greedy bastids.
Well, if their songs are so repetitive and formulaic that, once you’ve heard 30 seconds you’ve heard essentially everything there is to the song, I can see their point. :dubious:
I can also (sort of) see the POV that they are so bummed and hopeless about their (just barely) existing business model, that they’re hoping to wring the last penny out of everything they can and the hell with the public opinion, they’ve lost it anyway.
My assumption when I read this is that the music industry enforcer / lawyers are becoming much like a child staring at a plate of cookies; they’ve gotten to the point that they’re going to keep grabbing and grabbing until someone in authority tells them firmly to stop. They see the 30 second clips and say, “You know, we’ve got nothing to lose by trying to get them to pay for that.” If it works, they get money and they’ll try to get people to pay for, say, 10 second clips next. If it doesn’t, they lose nothing, and can quickly blame any losses on ‘evil internet pirates’ or somesuch.
My spidey sense is telling me music piracy will rise again if this ends up happening. Surprise surprise.
Again? I thought it was ongoing, stronger than ever. Am I wrong?
Bit torrent sites are huge.
If the companies were to succeed, most likely the prices of songs would just go up to cover the sample cost.
I would say this probably is in response to a recent survey and study in the UK that found out people under 25, when given access to unlimited amount of streaming music, did not download illegally.
In other words, people under 25, who used to download music, illegally, if they were given access to a site where they simply could play the music they wanted to hear, whenever they wanted to hear it BUT only play it through their computer, pretty much ceased to download music illegally.
It basically allowed people to listen to ONLY the music they liked and in a way, create their own radio station or at least own playlist.
If this works out probably what will happen in the end is, one will pay a monthly fee of a few dollars to preview as many songs at they like and the royalties will be divided between everyone on that playlist. Or some other algorithm
It is odd, because even Borders has free previews on a lot of their music, in store I mean and a lot of used CD shops let you listen to the records before you buy.
But then again there’s always YouTube which usually has some form of the song on it, although the quality isn’t great, you don’t need that for a sample
My guess is this licensing request will get no traction with retailers. It makes no more sense than requiring a license to allow buyers to browse through a book in a bookstore. Once upon a time, when 78s were the leading format, and before shrink wrap, record stores had listening rooms that allowed buyers to play records before buying them.
It is highly unlikely that they are saying that the end of the line consumer will pay fees directly for samples. As you note this would kill the point of the preview. I expect that in this example Apple would pay a fee for the right to play the previews, but not pass that on to the consumer. So it would be an additional cost of business for Apple, but not something the consumer would directly see (although indirectly of course it would result in either higher prices or lower profit margins).
That said, even that is fucking nuts. If these guys are so intent on killing themselves off, why don’t they just blow their brains out and be done with it? Force other companies to pay for the right to advertise your product? Really? Are billboard companies scrambling to pay Toyota for the right to put Camry ads up? Let me guess, they’ll make up for it volume!
There’s different forms of licensing for which different people get paid - this particular issue is about performance licensing, which usually applies to when a song is played rather than purchased. While musicians will always end up with some money for various uses of their songs, composers/writers only get paid for some of the uses. In the case of things like TV episodes, they bartered away their usage fee (letting the song get used period, or a blanket use) for a performance fee (specific times the song get played - everytime the episode is on tv for example). They aren’t getting paid now for download of tv episodes because they aren’t considered an ‘airing’. I suspect complaining about the 30 second previews is just a bartering tactic to get what they really want, which is a piece of downloads and things like Hulu. I believe there’s some court ruling that says that in store previews at music shops don’t owe royalties, and this will likely be expanded to include online previews. It’s not the music industry as a whole that wants this - that would obviously be counter to their own self interest - it’s a specific part of the music community that’s losing out on royalties with the introduction of new technologies.
What? Subscription music already exists and has been around for years (see Napster or Rhapsody). They’ve hardly stopped piracy (though, to be fair, none of the subscription services ever supported iPods due to incompatible DRM schemes).
Could it have anything to do with ringtones? A friend of mine just discovered that a site called beemp3 has some of his recordings available as ringtone downloads and he’s not making a cent off of it. Just a WAG that some c@#t could make money off someone’s 30 second demo without paying the musicians.