From Greg Earle Sent Thu, May 28th 1998, 15:11
From Greg Earle Sent Thu, May 28th 1998, 15:11
David Hodgson transcribes another "The Sky Is Falling" article from the U=
K:
> A new CD costs =A314.49. Or, you could download it for free on the Int=
ernet
> ROCK STARS and record companies lined up to complain yesterday that fan=
s
> downloading free music from the Internet is costing them millions and c=
ould
> kill off the British music industry.
And it's about fucking time!
"Home Taping is Killing Music!" Sound familiar?
When are artists going to wake the fuck up?
"ROCK STARS and record companies lined up" ...
The genie is out of the bottle, folks.
Just because Microsoft and the Software Publishers Association doesn't li=
ke
WaR3Z, do you think they've stamped them out? Of course not, there's a
million floating FTP sites, Web sites, Hotline servers et al. out there n=
ow.
It can NEVER be stopped ... and ... like WaR3Z ... MP3's are just a new
kind of WaR3Z, a new form of currency for trade in this underground econo=
my =
=2E..
Do you want to know how bad this is, people? Let me give you an example =
=2E..
At work, we're Apple Certified Developers ... so we get monthly mailings =
from
Apple with CD-ROMs of New And Cool Stuff on them. The latest (April/May)=
just
came in, with MacOS 8.2a4c2 (a.k.a. "Allegro") on it. We're still waitin=
g for
our Rhapsody DR2 (Developer Release 2) package that was just introduced a=
couple of weeks ago. Meanwhile, on Hotline servers they already *have* M=
acOS
8.2a4c2 and Rhapsody DR2 and are already begging for MacOS 8.2a6 ... and =
some
of these sites are on 30 Mbit links to the 'Net ... 450-700 Kb/sec (burst=
)
transfer rates ... a compressed CD-ROM image can be downloaded in 9 minut=
es.
If the artists had any brains they'd realize that if they sold their own =
music
*directly* from their own Web site (which will be semi-broadly feasible R=
eal
Soon Now - i.e. a sufficient segment of the populace having access to che=
ap
CD-R burners and high-speed Internet connections) they could make twice a=
s
much money per-unit and sell it for half the end cost that the buyer woul=
d
normally pay ... which means if the punter has X amount of monetary units=
they
can buy twice as much music ... which means more artists get their work
purchased, and overall not only does the artist double their money but th=
ere's
the chance of increased sales because of more people having more disposab=
le
income to try other things they wouldn't ordinarily buy when they're gett=
ing
ripped off (yes - RIPPED OFF - e.g I paid US $28 for the Reflection singl=
e-CD
album on Clear, what part of "RIPPED OFF" don't you understand?). The
artists need to realize that ultimately the only thing that matters is th=
at
their music gets out and they get recompensed for the sale of it, and all=
the in-between stuff - record labels, distributors, etc. - is just bullsh=
it
that jacks up the prices at each stage and gets in the way.
Artists and thieving record companies, middlemen distributors et al. kept=
DAT
from being widely available - don't you all think it's fucking absurd tha=
t a
DAT Walkman still costs in the stratosphere *years* later when time, cost=
of
materials and economies of scale dictate that they should be not much mor=
e
than say, double the cost of a cassette Walkman? Around here (Los Angele=
s)
they go for about US $699 on the low end, if that isn't ludicrous I don't=
know what is ... Unfortunately this time 'round the companies are too la=
te,
the Genie is out of the bottle (i.e. DAT recorders -> fast Internet conne=
ctions
and CD-R burners) and there's no putting it back in (I can see the record=
companies demanding a high tariff on CD-R burners now because "people mig=
ht
download songs from the Internet and burn Audio CDs with them", Shock Hor=
ror).
> "It's virtually impossible to earn money through touring. After four y=
ears
> we still owe our record company =A3350,000."
And you wouldn't owe them a dime/10 pence coin if you could sell direct t=
o
your audience, you sod ...
> William Booth of Sony Music said: "My company invests millions of pound=
s
> each year in new writing talent and new composers and to recover that m=
oney
> we need to be paid. If we don't get paid because it goes on the Intern=
et we
> can't continue to make that investment in new talent and we can't conti=
nue
> to pay people to collect money for those new composers."
Whinge whinge whinge ... what a load of rubbish ...
> The irony for the music industry is that the Internet is likely to be t=
he
> distribution system of the future for music sales.
Well no shit Sherlock! You (the article author) get the Gold Star on the=
forehead award! Now if only the artists were to realize that those "musi=
c
sales" could be going directly into their own pockets, we could get the
"British Music Industry" killed (and the American Music Industry ... and
so on ... ). And the sooner the better.
Viva la technologie!
[Sorry for the sm-stylee, Tubthumping rabid Punk rant, but this is really=
one
of my hot buttons ... one reason being the joke of copyright and royalti=
es;
my better half has had 2 albums, 2 singles and a handful of compilation
appearances out, and she hasn't received one *penny* from royalties - ei=
ther
mechanical or performance - in part because (in the latter case) ASCAP c=
an't
be arsed to lift a finger to track down those royalties for artists that=
don't
sell gobloads of records. How'd you feel about these people bitching an=
d
moaning like the above if the same "industry" was keeping a few thousand=
s of
dollars out of your pocket?]
- Greg