The underlying problem with the RIAA is that they are, to paraphrase an acquaintance of mine “all power, no system”. They flooded the market with lawsuits, like those mentioned in the links, irrespective of who or what the total effect would be. Not everyone is deeply knowledgeable about the intricate nature of the legality of file sharing, nor is everyone possessive of the technical knowledge to prevent such sharing from happening. In one case, all the little girl knew was that she could get the songs she loved for free, mom was none the wiser about the legality of it all, and they got taken to the cleaners by these peckerheads, because they simply didn’t know they were doing anything wrong. Granted, there is the ‘ignorance of the law’ argument, but technology has blurred the edges so completely that the underlying legality is lost in a sea of paperwork it takes a team of lawyers years of manhours to sort out. So then, how is a simple sugar mill worker or a laid-off mother of five to do it?
The RIAA and their staunch refusal to address the future with openness and compromise, and further refusal to eke out a workable solution for all involved have become like the goons from Goodfellas; "“The place burned down? Fuck you pay me. Lightning struck? Fuck you, pay me. Slow business? Fuck you, pay me.”
Next thing you know they’ll come to your house, shoot yout mother, take your computer, toss you in the trunk and beat you death Spilatro style in a cornfield.
I renew my excitation. Fuck Em!
I’m not talking about walking the thing down the hall, I’m talking about taking the CD, putting it on my Zune then leaving it in my CD changer at home after making a copy for my wife to use in her car. It’s MY CD. I paid for it. I legally own it, and if I choose to do that, that’s precisely what I will do. If the RIAA wants to come to my house and take the music off of the CD, they’re more than welcome to give it a go, until they can do that, they can kiss my fat white German-Irish-Swedish ass.
CD sales, perhaps, but not MUSIC sales. There’s an incredible divide between the two. Because of the change in production, (no CD’s, no jewel cases, no cover art, no plastic packaging, no little RFID tag, no shipping, no record store overhead, just one cut of the song and you’re ready to roll) IMO, digital music can, and I believe has, increased the margin of a recording artist/record company/RIAA et al.
OK, the number of CD’s has gone down, but that’s only because now, people are getting what they ACTUALLY want, and not some overpriced disc with one or two decent songs and 7 or 8 craptacular melodies.
IIRC, there was indeed some effort to stop used CD sales, before Napster popped up and became a much higher priority. Garth Brooks was involved somehow, IIRC.
The RIAA is currently addressing situations like these. They’re seeking legislation that will require all couples to submit an annual payment to the RIAA on the presumption that they are listening to each others music. In addition, any people with children in their household will be required to make an additional payment for each child. In the spirit of reasonable compromise, the RIAA has announced that it will not seek a similar payment for household pets for at least two years while they study the impact that digital technology has had on sales to the non-human market.
Your cite doesn’t trump the NYT story – it states that “units” (including ringtones!) are up 19%, which doesn’t seem surprising, but isn’t all that relevant. The NYT story I linked to cites sales dollars as declining, regardless of unit sales:
I’m suspicious of the music industry’s numbers, and this may be a case of “damned lies” vs “statisics”, but your cite doesn’t refute a trend of year-over-year decline in revenue from music sales.
On the other hand, I’ll note that the NYT story was written in the spring of 2006, so the trend may have deepened or reversed since it was written. I haven’t yet googled up a cite for the final 2006 numbers or 2007 data.
Again, I’ll point out the difference between “units” and revenue. I have no doubt that music “units” (songs, CDs, ring-tones God help us ) are up, but they are less profitable units. I’ll also defer to someone with better revenue statistics than that NYT cite, since it is somewhat stale.
No disagreement; this is absolutely a good thing for consumers.
In my opinion, the information has value only until you foist it upon the world. Something as ubiquitous and insubstantial as bits and bytes has no (or very little) intrinsic value. Why we feel it is necessary to award monopoly rights and royalty checks in perpetuity to the creator and their family is something I never understood.
Most professionals get paid to create more information. Lawyers research and argue for new perspectives and applications of laws. Doctors and scientists uncover and create new theories and information regarding physical reality. Managers and administrators reorganize and reevaluate their departments and businesses. Tradesmen constantly improve and upgrade their trades. In all these cases, men and women are paid a one-time wage or salary to create valuable and novel information. Einstein’s estate doesn’t get royalty checks every time a GPS satellite gets put into orbit. My boss doesn’t get paid every time some other organization copies his management style.
Information is at the heart of our economy. We should compensate and encourage the creation of new and valuable information. The wealth of the world increases every day because of it. But to single out a few “special” kinds of information and demand that for their small contribution to the world those creators should have ultimate (and semi-permanent) control over the distribution and access to that information; that, I feel, is counterproductive and unfair.
It means the OP quoted a one-sided article with an obvious agenda. If you do a little research, you find that Jeffrey Howell in fact used Kazaa, and that is why the RIAA went after him. Yes, reading the OP’s linked article would lead one to believe that they just picked this guy out of thin air, but that wasn’t the case. They sued the man because he was file-sharing, and, in the course of those proceedings, the lawyer argued that it would technically be illegal to make a copy of a cd on your computer. They didn’t go after him because he made one copy of a cd on his computer; they went after him for file-sharing. The difference here is that of the reason for the lawsuit vs. something that a lawyer happened to say in the lawsuit. For example, they arrested O.J. Simpson for murder, and in the course of the trial, argued that he left a glove at the crime scene. They didn’t arrest him for leaving a glove at a crime scene. Here’s some background on Howell that I found:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds to me like this is what happened: They busted Howell sharing files on Kazaa, but Howell thought he could get cute and basically say, “You can’t prove I shared files with anyone”, even though he knew he had been doing so. So in response, the RIAA decided to get cute themselves and say that everything on his computer is an illegal copy. But I’m just not seeing this gloom & doom scenario that jack-booted thugs are going to bust down your door because you transferred one cd to your ipod. Show me one example of this ever happening.
Actually, I am wrong. I had a chance to read acsenray’s posts, and it sounds like the RIAA didn’t even make that argument at all - they said the stuff in his file-sharing folder is illegal. That quote from the article is just really sloppy journalism, and possibly deliberate distortion of the facts.
The link refers to something called “track equivalent albums,” defined here as a conversion of every 10 individual tracks sold into the equivalent of an album for comparison purposes, and those equivalents are then lumped in with the sale of actual albums. Track equivalent album sales are down 1.2%.
That seems like a good metric to use as a starting point.
Why it’s down slightly is obviously open to interpretation. It could be down because of file-sharing and the like, or it could be down because people like me are buying single tracks quite legally from Amazon.com, and are glad to finally be rid of the need to buy a whole album just to get the two or three tracks that we want to listen to.
If the latter reason suffices to explain why track equivalent album sales are down, then the RIAA hardly deserves any sympathy. They had a great deal going for a long time, where they could charge for a bunch of extra product on top of that which the consumer actually wanted, but that time is coming to an end.
No, I simply said that if you don’t like the music industry’s terms, then you should not buy their products, but if you obtain the works anyway without paying, then that’s theft. I made no distinction between the recording companies and the artists here.
Despite all the rhetoric on the internets regarding the complete subjugation of Congress by the RIAA, it will take more than the standard lobbying to wipe out the first sale doctrine.
And in this respect, I think the Washington Post was just flat wrong about what the plaintiff’s argument was.
Record companies have historically pressured new music retailers to stay out of the used music business. Same for book publishers. This is nothing new. However, there is nothing they can do to merchants with whom they have no contractual relationship.
Historically, the law and society has treated “information” very differently from creative works. You can’t get exclusive rights in “mere facts,” which is what information is. Just because you can convert both to digitized form doesn’t suddenly mean they’re the same thing. Under your argument the only recourse an artist has is to keep his or her work secret until a buyer who’s willing to pay hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of dollars is found. Unlike you, I believe an author of a creative work does deserve to be paid each time a new person chooses to obtain a copy of the work.
Don’t confuse revenue and profit. CDs by their physical nature will have a lower profit margin since you have to make the damn thing, store it, and ship it. These costs are incurred whether or not someone actually buys the damn thing. Online sales “production costs” are so miniscule as to be non-existent. Your “inventory” consists of one small file that can be sold an infinite number of times.
Would you rather make 10% of 15.99 or 50% of $1.99 x3? If you choose the second option your revenue will go down substantially even though you actually have almost twice as much money in your pocket at the end of the day.
That depends on whether you take a mark-up on them. If you do, and the industry would be fools not to, then you make more money on the CD. Demand for music has traditionally been extremely inelastic. No one passed up a Doors LP in favor of a Crystal Shit disc because they could get it for $5 instead of $7.
Thanks. Sans more documentation, I’ll stick with revenue (or RTFirefly’s “Album Equivalent Tracks”, if you wish). “Profit” can be a sketchy term – I don’t know how much the profit from music revenue is eaten up by necessary costs like jewel cases, marketing and promotions and shipping, or optional costs such vicious lawyer’s fees (or hookers and booze, for that matter).
But is that accurate? I’m paying 89¢, not $1.99, per track at Amazon, so those three tracks come to $2.67, not $5.97, and Amazon’s getting a chunk of that $2.67 for handling all the bandwidth and transaction costs, plus their share of profit.
Meanwhile, I’ll bet the record company’s profit on each CD sold is a bit more than $2.67, if they’re selling for $15.99 and assuming it only costs a couple of bucks per unit to make the thing, including the jewel box, liner notes, shrinkwrapping, etc.
Do we have any info on what Best Buy or whoever typically pays for those CDs they sell for $15.99?
I don’t have a cite for this, but from what I understand, Best Buy has historically taken a margin hit on CD’s in the hope that customers would purchase other items while they’re in the store. That’s why you’d see a CD for $11.99 at Best Buy while a music-based store like Sam Goody would have it on sale for $17.99. My guess is that the cost for the CD is probably around $11 or $12, possibly even a dollar or two more. But like I said, I don’t have any numbers to back this up so I could be mistaken.
Hmph, I should pay more attention – I didn’t realize that the “Big Four” music companies were all privately held. I went digging for their financial disclosures, and there aren’t any because unlike publicly traded companies, they aren’t required to disclose very much or anything about their profits and expenses.
) are up, but they are less profitable units. I’ll also defer to someone with better revenue statistics than that NYT cite, since it is somewhat stale.