The music biz has'nt changed at all!!!

[Dean Roddey]

Just tax the net. Sheesh. I'd willingly pay a usage tax to see to it that artists would be properly compensated for shared copyrighted works. I think I could withstand another dollar on my isp bill. How many people have internet access (in the US)?

 

 

Do you have any idea the size of the beauracracy that would create, and how do you apportion that money? Who decides what artists get how much?

[Ed A.]

' Maybe next you can work to destroy the software industry as well. Lots of really rich, snotty people there. Then we can have all our software written by poeple as a hobby. That would be really great for our country and the availability of high quality software. Then you could start on, say, the consumer electronics industry. Enormously rich and snotty people there. They don't deserve to make all that money. Bring them down, and we can go back to using electronics made by people as a hobby.

I'll go one further. Why don't we do the same for the medical profession. There's a bunch of rich, snotty, egomaniac doctors who can all take a hike. We'll just have home remedies and voodoo doctors instead.

You crack me up the way you exaggerate things.

Maybe it's that you can't see the difference in importance between the music industry and the mission critical software industry.

[Ed A.]

 

'Profession' implies you can make a living at it. I doubt many people will be able to make much of a living at it.

 

 

Sure they can. They'll just play live, sell music for commercials/film projects and sell their music via their websites. So they make $50,000+- a year instead of $50 million a year. That will keep them on level ground. They should do the same thing with professional baseball, maybe making a modest amount per year will weed out everybody but those that have an actual passion for it, like in the early days.

[Dean Roddey]

You crack me up the way you exaggerate things. Maybe it's that you can't see the difference in importance between the music industry and the mission critical software industry.

 

 

You think that the thousands of non-rich, non-snotty people who work in regular old jobs in the music industry think it's an exaggeration? You think that the places where those jobs and taxes are a big difference in the local economy think it will be an exageration? Who put you in charge of deciding which industries deserve to live and which don't?

 

The point I was making is that you cannot just deciding arbitrarily that it's fine to allow one industry to be destroyed by allowing everyone to steal their stuff. Why shouldn't that same rationale be applied to your industry? Why shouldn't it be applied to the software industry? Did this country not run just fine before the software industry came along?

[The Chosen Few]

If I can add to this, for it is an important topic to an up and coming musican.

First I want to say Ed A. You have no idea what the hell you are talking about. I am behind Dean 100%. Ed your just trying to make an objected side cause that's what you feel like doing. You have no facts and you have shifted your argument around as Dean pulls your lack of knowledgeable facts from underneith you.
The reason why the Music business is struggling to fix this situation is due to the fact it's a hard line to draw. We can't say tax everyone, do this do that. For it's not that easy.
The reason why the music industry is alive today is due to the snobby assholes trying to make their cut. In the exact same way the artist is might I add.
Everyone has their own personal reason to go to work everyday. Not everyone can be a star , not everyone can be a c.e.o. same {censored}.
The reason why America and other democratic nations thrive ( compared to communist ) is for the pyramid of money.

[Ed A.]

Ed your just trying to make an objected side cause that's what you feel like doing.

 

I am? (What'd he say?)

With all due respect, after reading your post, I'm not sure you're informed enough to argue the point.

[Ed A.]

 

The reason why America and other democratic nations thrive ( compared to communist ) is for the pyramid of money.

 

 

Actually, Communist China is doing better economically than the U.S. is right now.

[Dean Roddey]

No, Communist China is growing faster than the U.S. right now. That's not the same thing. They have massive corruption and abuse of human rights. The vast majority of their people live in rural poverty. They have massive polution in their cities, etc... They have a growth at any cost approach, which is going to bite them in the butt before long.

[Ed A.]

Gonna have to disagree again (We can keep doing this for days).

Increasing growth (as in China) is better economically than stagnant or declining growth (as in the US).

Look at international (particularly Chinese) ETFs compared to domestic ETFs as an example.

The US is about to enter a recession according to many economists.

Put your stops on your stock portfolio now, so you won't be sorry later.

[Dean Roddey]

Most every country enters recession periodically. It's the natural side effect of a free market. It cycles back and forth. How many times in the last 20 years has some other country come along that was supposedly going to do us in because we were in decline and they were on the rise? Of course no one here in this country ever bothers to wonder if they feel the same way when we are on the upswing. China will hit a wall soon enough and go into a recession, and we'll be going up again.

[Cry Logic]

The writing on the wall about this is rather ominous. Let's look 5 or 10 years into the future. Will you even be able to buy CDs?

Will it matter?

 

It looks like a dying format. For those of us who still care about sound quality and maybe buy classical or jazz CDs, is everything going to be lossy format MP3s or their replacement?

No because solid state memory will

get cheaper and better and larger....

Formats like flac and even wav will be used.

Quality will be better than CD.

As much as I think record companies are idiots, the entire basis of their existence, hooking each suceeding generation to be consumers of record co. products, seems to be ending. It seems to have reached a tipping point now.

Yes! Exciting isn't it?

[Super 8]

This discussion keeps resurfacing.

This is just flat out not true. It would have made zero difference. Do you really think that people just lost all their morals in 8 or so years? Of course not. They would have still stolen it either way.

Dean, I've said this before. If the songs are attractively priced, hi-mbps, and easy to purchase online, it becomes the path of least resistance.
People download the songs because they don't feel like shelling out 18 bucks for the whole CD.
But P2P isn't always such a simple thing. There are tons of false files, poor CD-mp3 conversions, interrupted downloads, slow transfer rates, difficulties finding what you're looking for...and so on. Next to that, a near CD quality version of the entire album downloaded fast from the artist for 5 bucks simply makes more sense.

I think NIN went about it the wrong way. They should never have given away full versions of that album at 196kbps. They should have halfed the bit rate, made it mono, and given you 2/3rds of the song as a sample.

[Dean Roddey]

No one has to pay $18 dollars for a CD. Why does everyone keep saying that? If people were paying $18 for a CD, Tower Records would still be in business. NIN's latest album is on Amazon right now for $11.99. It has 16 songs, so it's less than $1 a song, cheaper than iTunes and at full quality. Those kids out there using the p2p systems aren't, IMO, any more likely to spend $5 than to spend $12.

It makes sense for people like us, sure. But we are at tiny fraction of the market.

[Dean Roddey]

BTW, I'll give you a great example of why I believe this...

I went to a home theater meet like maybe four years ago. It was at the home of a very well off guy, with a killer home theater, probably $250K at least. The folks were there from Kaleidescape, who sell a $20,000 DVD server, so that he could evaluate it and potentially buy one, and the rest of us could take a look at it while we were there (the are just down the road from here, so it was easy to do.)

The guy whose house we were at almost immediately said, hey I can just go rent DVDs and rip them to the system and keep them. This is clearly illegal of course, and this guy had enough money to pop a really nice house in a very expensive area (Silicon Valley) that had to have cost probably a million at least, and for a $250K theater and looking at a $20,000 DVD server. And he still would have just gone and ripped those rented DVDs instead of buying them. And he was a completely otherwise normal, law abiding, decent guy.

So what do you figure the kid with a part time job is going to do, when it comes down between buying a good bag of weed or skate board vs. spending $100 on CDs? The price differential isn't between what you'd have to pay for the music or free, it's between what you could buy with that money and still have the music vs. what you'd spend for the music legally. So the company whose product isn't stealable gets the benefits and the company whose product is stealing gets ripped off.

[Super 8]

So what do you figure the kid with a part time job is going to do, when it comes down between buying a good bag of weed or skate board vs. spending $100 on CDs? The price differential isn't between what you'd have to pay for the music or free, it's between what you could buy with that money and still have the music vs. what you'd spend for the music legally. So the company whose product isn't stealable gets the benefits and the company whose product is stealing gets ripped off.

 

 

Dean, we're talking about 5 bucks here. Not a lot of money. Lunch at McD's. If access to the product is easy and fast, and the quality is at or near CD, then just makes sense to buy it that way, rather than try and cobble a decent quality version from Gnutella.

 

Maybe more can be offered to sweeten it. Exclusive blogs, or other content available online to customers. There are many options. But it has to be fast and easy, and hi-quality. I'm not sure that the infrastructure is there yet, but in time it will be.

 

One would have to be philosophically opposed to paying for music not to do this. I do not think this is the case with most people. I think they just want the songs, and they will pay to get them if the conditions are right. Right now the conditions are not right. As was mentioned earlier, the record companies could have moved on this some time ago, but chose to fight rather than use it to their advantage.

 

And yes, a CD will usually cost you around $18 when you figure in all of the costs (shipping, tax, whatever). Plus, you don't get it *now*, and people want it *now*.

[Dean Roddey]

But look at it this way. Most of these kids probably only want a couple tracks from most albums. They could get those for $2 from iTunes, and the quality level is irrelevant to most of them since they are just putting them on iPods. But they still steal them at enormously large rates than they buy them from iTunes.

And we aren't talking about one album. We are talking about a whole collection that could a thousound dollars, even at $5 an album. Even my small collection has like 250 CDs, which would be $1250. That kid is going to look at what he could buy with that money and just go download the songs (and often not even have to do that, but just get it from a friend who already has done the work and has it available on the school network.)

Never underestimate what people will do to get something for free.

[Super 8]

But look at it this way. Most of these kids probably only want a couple tracks from most albums. They could get those for $2 from iTunes, and the quality level is irrelevant to most of them since they are just putting them on iPods. But they still steal them at enormously large rates than they buy them from iTunes.

 

 

I disagree that quality is not important. Of course it's important, but the bandwidth hasn't been there.

iTunes is still new and P2P downloading is pretty well established. In fact, iTunes isn't really offering anyone anything special for there money. It's only like 128kbps. They can do much better than that.

Earbuds are improving and getting cheaper, which means quality of audio files needs to improve.

I think iTunes is a good first attempt at envisioning what the future will look like. But it has a way to go in terms of integrating itself with the culture.

 

 

And we aren't talking about one album. We are talking about a whole collection that could a thousound dollars

 

 

Nobody is going to download more than they'll listen to. If it's really just about seeing how much you can download at a time, then it probably isn't money out of anyone's pocket because it's unlikely the music will ever be listened to anyway. That's not a lost sale.

 

 

That kid is going to look at what he could buy with that money and just go download the songs (and often not even have to do that, but just get it from a friend who already has done the work and has it available on the school network.)

 

 

Well, if I looked at my DVD/CD collection and thought about having to buy it all at one shot, I'd probably save my money too. But it doesn't work that way. People buy things like that 1 or 2 at a time, and build a collection.

 

True, there will always be people who will share with each other, but how is that any different than before?

 

 

Never underestimate what people will do to get something for free.

 

 

I think you're being a cynic, Dean. I'm suggesting that easy and convenient trumps free most of the time.

I'm suggesting

[the-good-way]

I guess the image of the artist aspect is being replaced by things like music video downloads and MTV... What about lyrics, etc? With artists I like, I usually also like their packaging, artwork inside, I want to read who engineered the record, where it was recorded, who played on what tracks, etc.


I guess the average person is not really a "music fan" but just wants to hear the tunes they like.

"fan" is short for "fanatic", so, yes, it is reasonable to assume most people are not "fans".
It could be argued that the parts you mention (recording history, personnel, images, etc) are not musical content, and wouldn't point to an interest in music. There is probably a hyper-purist out there somewhere going "That stuff is a distraction fom the purity of a musical experience" not unlike a "video killed the radio star" sentiment. there is always someone more curmudgeonly than ourselves, no matter how high we wear our sock garters!
Ultimately, I suspect, yes, the "average Joe" just wants to hear tunes they like and the interest in the engineering, etc may have to do with you as a musician.

I suspect that, as you mentioned, some of the content that used to be on sleeves, etc is now being offered in "soft" formats, as additional digital content, on the web, etc

[Dean Roddey]

Nobody is going to download more than they'll listen to. If it's really just about seeing how much you can download at a time, then it probably isn't money out of anyone's pocket because it's unlikely the music will ever be listened to anyway. That's not a lost sale.

 

 

But I just gave you an example that's not out of the ordinary. I have 250 CDs. This is not a large collection. I listen to all of it. It would cost $1250 at $5/CD.

 

 

Well, if I looked at my DVD/CD collection and thought about having to buy it all at one shot, I'd probably save my money too. But it doesn't work that way. People buy things like that 1 or 2 at a time, and build a collection.

 

 

But that's just yet another reason why downloads are still going to be the preferred means over buying, because you don't have to wait. So it's both the price and the immediate availability of whatever you want.

[The_Captain]

Nobody is going to download more than they'll listen to.

 

 

Not true hehe you should meet some people I know.

 

 

... it probably isn't money out of anyone's pocket because it's unlikely the music will ever be listened to anyway. That's not a lost sale.

 

 

I agree with that.

[Dean Roddey]

It is a lost sale. Saying that they wouldn't have bought it anyway is one of those mythologies that always floats around. If I see you with an iPod full of content, while I'm paying for mine, and I know you are not. And I see that you are not suffering any punishment for it at all, and my other friends are not either. That just makes it more likely that I'm not going to pay the next time either, because why should they get all those benefits of that content and still have money for other things, while I do not?

It contributes to a culture of theft, which grows and grows and ends up with what we have now. So it does have a cost to the artists, even if the person wouldn't have purchased the content.

[ShakaCthulu]

About the only points EdV has made that I can agree with is that the majors missed a huge opportunity back with the whole Napster thing, and that ISP tax for intellectual property is about the only solution I can see (Dean Roddy is right though, it'll be a logistical nightmare and once you started implementing it all the net neutrality hippies will be up in arms).

 

It's ironic that China has come up...there's a country where intellectual property rights are clearly respected.

 

It's a myth that touring is a viable source of income for musicians. Maybe if you're NIN or Radiohead. Otherwise, you're lucky if you break even.

 

So, scoring for film or whatever as an option. Huge market there. How you going to get your foot in the door without a representative who the film studio has a relationship with? Think the movie producer is going to scour the internet or whatever? Doesn't work that way. If you haven't noticed, the film industry is having its own woes with downloading....it's at Napster stage now, but just wait until a 10 terabyte drive is $50.

 

I really don't know what the future holds. They say you can judge any society by how it treats the arts. Look at all the cuts in federal spending on arts education. Look at how people treat media now. There's a huge paradigm shift occurring. Maybe that's good, maybe that's bad. But it's definitely occurring.

[Super 8]

But I just gave you an example that's not out of the ordinary. I have 250 CDs. This is not a large collection. I listen to all of it. It would cost $1250 at $5/CD.

 

 

Yes Dean, but you didn't buy it all in a day....did you? I've always digested my music 1 album at a time. When I'd be interested in something else, I'd go out and get it. I never came home with 50 albums in my hand.

 

 

 

But that's just yet another reason why downloads are still going to be the preferred means over buying, because you don't have to wait. So it's both the price and the immediate availability of whatever you want.

 

 

No question that the internet is the way of the future. But as I've pointed out P2P downloading is often not fast or easy, and the quality isn't always there. Therefore, if the artist can give you what you want, fast, easy, and higher quality for a small charge, it would attract customers. As I said; easy and convenient trumps free.

[The_Captain]

It is a lost sale. Saying that they wouldn't have bought it anyway is one of those mythologies that always floats around. If I see you with an iPod full of content, while I'm paying for mine, and I know you are not. And I see that you are not suffering any punishment for it at all, and my other friends are not either. That just makes it more likely that I'm not going to pay the next time either, because why should they get all those benefits of that content and still have money for other things, while I do not?

 

 

 

I see your point but if someone is downloading more than they would buy or possibly could buy if they spent all their extra money on it (i know people who there is no way they could financially buy everything they pirate even if they wanted to) then i think its mathematically impossible to say those are all lost sales.

That is kind of an extreme example but im just trying to say you cant write off everything someone downloads as a lost sale and your ipod example really doesnt prove anything against that.

[Dean Roddey]

I'm saying it's way more than that one lost sale, that it's another brick in the wall of complete disregard for IP creators, and it'll result in other people who would and could have paid not doing so. So it's worse than that lost sale, even if you think it's not literally one. It dilutes the value of the product and contributes to further theft of the product by even more people.