Whoa! Now hold on there, pldennison. No need to get all worked up. W-A-M’s post implied that the mp3/Napster crap had no detrimental effect on sales and profits. You contradicted his post with the data you selected. It’s not so much of a stretch to think that you were posting that data to contradict the implication.
Sorry to upset you.
It would be cool if there was a country where if someone wanted to sell you something, but if there was some aspect of it you didn’t like then you could refuse to buy it. That would be cool.
I don’t think priveledge is quite the right word. That suggests that the copyright holders kindly gave us an ability that we had no right to have. But that’s not true.
The capability to do this was inherent in the Redbook spec,
But orignally the hardware to do it was too expensive for most people. The makers of CD’s didn’t plan for us to have this ability, but they could have forseen it. We’ve always had the right to pull the data off the CD to use within the restrictions of copyright law.
Because we had that right, an industry gradually grew up to enable that right for us. That industry also enabled large scale sharing in a way that arguably violates copyright laws. (also arguably doesn’t, the supposed copyright violators weren’t making a profit or performing the works, but rather something entirely new to the law)
You have the right to use a CD and the data on it in any way that you see fit as long as you don’t violate copyright laws.
That means have the right to make copies for your own use, excerpt parts of it for a school report, analyze the bits for hidden messages, or anything else that isn’t a commercial use or distribution of said data.
Copyright holders have the right to all commercial exploitation of the information that is copyrighted. AND NOTHING ELSE. There is no such thing as intellectual property. What copyright holders have is a monopoly on sale and non-scholarly publication of the information, that is all. All other rights belong to whoever owns the CD itself.
They have the right to withhold the information from publication, but once published and purchased, you you have the right to do everything BUT re-publish. And if your re-publishing is parody or scholarly, you can even do that.
Now, rights and capabilites are two different things, We certainly have the right to make our own MP3’s from CD’s that we have purchased, but we won’t necessarily continue to have the ability.
tj
I’m looking for a cite as well but I saw an article a few days ago stating that the music industry is showing a major slump right now.
I’m not so much defending the music industry as I am my right to put out a creative work without people being able to copy it illegally. In that sense though, yes, the record companies protect their artists.
It is very true that the first profits go to the record company. That is because they paid to have the recording made and with a new unproven artist, will recoup their investment off of the top. Remember that many new artists don’t sell more than a few units and it is the record companies that lose in this case. Furthermore, it is the music BUSINESS. They are in it to make a profit. But the flip side is they have much more marketing and distribution power than any independend artist could ever hope for or afford. A band that tries to market their product on their own is never going to reach the market that a label can. So if you want to sell 100,000 units, that many people are going to have to have heard of you.
On the subject of getting compensation to artists, while allowing people free access to all sorts of music even if they haven’t heard it before, I’ve just had an idea. It may be crazy and unworkable, but…
Suppose there was a sort of database of music on the web, which people could get access to by paying a fee (monthly, yearly, whatever.) They could download whatever they wanted to, and if they liked the item/thought they would listen to it more than once, they would tell the database so, and the database would pay the artist or label (as musicguy says, labels are good for production, marketing, etc.) a fixed amount out of their common funds. The user wouldn’t be paying anything extra so they’d have no motivation not to want to compensate the artist. This way, the money would go to people whose music was actually being appreciated.
One reason this might not work is that in order pay people for their music, the access fee might have to be unreasonably high. But the cost-per-item would be less than with recorded music, digital distribution being cheap, and some middlemen would be cut out.
Has anyone else had an idea like this?
“Right. And the music on the CD appears on it by magic, never having been produced by human beings, played on costly musical instruments, or laid onto digital or magnetic tape in expensive recording studios. Oh, and all the artwork, packaging, distribution, advertising, and promotion is free and appears by magic as well. Remarkable, no?”
forgive me for ever assuming anyone had a brain, ok lets do this in detail.
press the cd .10$
packaging and inserts .10$
shipping per unit .10-.25$
still under a dollar here.
queens bohemian rhapsidy cost (so I have been told and itll work for an example) 1,000,000 bucks to produce. one song cost a million freakin dollars. that is WAY over the average cost of any one album. I dont have a contract handy but bands I have talked to on the subject tell me they get around .10$ per sale. so since we are just over a million bucks Ill just round down.
if theres a 7.00$ profit per sale then at the platinum lvl bohemian rhapsidy made 6 million bucks. less 100,000 per band member. thats still 5mil plus PROFIT!
now I could be way off on a few numbers but it seems to me that the only place all that money could be going is straight to the label. we arent talking about subpop here we’re talking sony or A&M. even with double the cost to produce and ship an album with a million dollar song on it and doubling the bands pay rate you still have a good profit.
considering that most bands work out new albums while on the road and spend relativly little time in the studio. And dont have a few to opera singers on hand for backing vocals the cost to produce and album should come in at well under 1mil.
of course I could be on crack.
Posted by MusicGuy
As an artist who relies on royalty checks to help pay my bills, I resent this a great deal. I can understand why you wish that artists would just give their music away to everyone.
I would buy music if the seller gave me an option to buy only the song I want. I loathe buying 15 songs for $16.00 when I simply wanted one song!!
Also, how do I do that nifty “originally posted by” thing??
A portion of the money, at least, that is going to the labels is used to subsidize up and coming acts that have a very small following. The record companies are lucky on most of these if they recoup a fraction of what they put in. The less profit the record companies make, the less new artists you will hear about.
Bands spend a great deal of time in the studio working on their music. I speak from experience when I say that 1 song can take anywhere from 20-80 hours to record with studio costs running $200-$500 per hour not including engineer, producer fees, studio musician fees, equipment rentals, cartage, etc… It’s not as easy or cheap as one might think.
So should you not have to pay for a book when only one chapter has the information you want? I’m not against online music which would allow you to PURCHASE one song but I am against people stealing one song so they don’t have to pay for the whole thing.
I would go to the library (Napster) and copy the chapter.
If I’m not mistaken, photocopying copywritten material is illegal as well.
Anyone who thinks the recording industry is losing money because of Napster, et.al. is pulling it out of their rear end. Every evidence is contrary. Let’s start with the CNet article which cited an independent study showing that Napster use actually increased sales.
Then there’s the discussion on Slashdot entitled, “Pirates Steal Negative $1,400,000,000 from Music Industry”.
And finally, there’s the actual data that’s referred to in the Slashdot thread (the link there doesn’t work anymore–you can find it at: http://www.riaa.com/MD-US-3b-00.cfm ).
Note that the .pdf file which is downloadable from the above riaa site has the market data since 1991.
The trend is clear in the pdf file. Total sales were approximately flat in 1995-1997, but rocketed up in both 1998 and 1999, when Napster was peaking. Sales actually declined in 1996-1997. We’ve now returned to a nearly flat period, when the economy is headed for recession. Big surprise.
The underlying numbers are even more revealing. Since 1991, cassette sales have been dropping. Doing the regression on CD sales shows that they really haven’t slowed at all. The only really sharp dropoff is in cassette singles (by 90% in 2000), and of course there’s no data about how many of those were produced (also, it was only an acceleration of an existing trend).
Finally, note that the cost/unit is going up, largely because of increasing volume of sales in CD’s and DVD’s, and decreasing sales in other formats.
Didn’t say you couldn’t make Mp3 copies of your CDs. I just said that there is no obligation on the part of the manufacturer to make it easy for you.
I concede on that one. I apologize for making myself unclear… while I do agree that people can make copies of a copyrighted medium for their own, archival use, I believe that a company also has the right to take whatever steps necessary to try to keep their intellectual property sealed.
Basically, you have the right to a copy of the things you buy, but you don’t have the right to have it an easy task.
Questions about “What if I don’t have Windows Media Player?” shouldn’t even be part of the debate, in my opinion. That’s like saying “What if I don’t have a CD player?” when the market made the switch from cassettes to CDs.
I bought 130 CDs because of Napster. Since the suit, I bought 3. I know of a lot more music fans who are disgusted like me of the heavy-handed way the record companies shell out records and distribute the riches. I have to say it, but I tolerate the Taliban a little more than the record industry as it is today.
Right. Remember when the RIAA executed women for showing their faces in public, and pushed brick walls over onto homosexuals? They sure are much worse than the Taliban. :rolleyes:
Grow up.
Well I personally know many people who downloaded multiple gigabytes of material off of napster and never bought one CD during the process. How did this help the artists? Are you saying that every song you downloaded from napster, you went out and bought the CD? That would be very noble but highly unlikely.
And lastly, your comments about the taliban vs. the record industry were idiotic, ignorant, and highly offensive.
Hmm, those CDs are completely useless to my new portable CD/MP3 player. It reads the discs like a CD-ROM (supports multisession, ISO9660, Joliet, etc.) so I doubt these protected CDs will work in it, and if I can’t rip the tracks to MP3s I can’t play them that way either.
I have no use for a CD that will only play on my roommate’s stereo, so I don’t plan on buying any of them. If I do buy one of these defective CDs because it isn’t marked, I will return it to the store.
I will then come back with some friends the next day, buy a few more copies, and return them… we’ll repeat until all the defective CDs have moved from the “new” racks to the unalphabetized “pre-owned” racks where no one will ever stumble across them. 
Are you seriously saying that people did not have the freedom to rip CD’s? Then how did all those songs get onto Napster? Did the labels put them there?
pldennison
That is relevant only if Napster started in 2000. My understanding is that it was around a while before that. Unless you have a cite disproving that, Whack-a-Mole’s point stands.
Isn’t it far more relevant as to when Napster really caught on (mid 2000) rather than when it started?
The Ryan…
Jesus H. Christ, is that even an argument? Tell me you don’t seriously believe that I mean “freedom” to refer to a person’s ability to physically move or perform an action. Considering that the topic had to deal with “rights”, I don’t see how an intelligent mind could possibly misconstrue the meaning.
That is the most anally simplistic view of the events I have ever seen. Napster did not zoom to popularity overnight… indeed, it was relegated to it’s original purpose (allowing amateur musicians swap music/ideas) for a long time. Only when the Mp3 boom hit (late 1999/early 2000) did Napster catch on… and when that happened, the music industry started feeling the loss of revenue, and as a result they tried to get Napster shut down.
Capacitor…
Obviously, you are not a typical Napster user. Off-hand, I personally know seven people who never bought a single CD because of Napster.
Wow. You’ve just invoked the modern-day version of Godwin’s Law. Congratulations.