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u2's Manager speaks about the decline of the music buisness


flatfinger

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The real money, whether you are U2 or you and me, is in the revenue generated by legal uses. For example, MySpace generates $800M to $1B a year in revenues, yet gives nothing to the artists who supply music that is played on MySpace and draws people there. They claim 7M artists on MySpace Music - with statutory payments for each play to the artist (whether 9.1 cents, or the 15 cents proposed by the CRB), the question of lost revenues by the artist would more than go away. I have one MySpace site that, with absolutely no promotion or fan base, has had nearly 1,000 plays - I could use the $150!

 

 

Yeah, but this has come up in other posts, and I just don't see any reason myspace should have to pay artists.

1. The artist CHOOSES to put their tunes on myspace. It's not being pirated and put up there illegally.

2. The artist's music is benefiting myspace by bringing users to the site, sure, but they're getting a service in return. They get free networking/promotion by the ability to add friends. And, they get a free website.

 

The last band I was in didn't have a myspace. After EVERY SINGLE SHOW we played, someone would come up and say "Hey, I liked you guys, that was good."

"Thanks. We're playing [insert venue] on [insert date], if you can come out, that'd be awesome."

"Yeah, maybe. Hey, do you have a myspace?"

"No...we have a regular website. It's [bandname].com"

"Oh...I probably won't remember to go to that."

I'm serious, I had that exact conversation over and over. Kids will remember your band name, but they won't bother to check you out if you don't have a myspace. It's insane.

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"The ISPs don't want to get involved, because, as stated in the speech, they're PROFITING from people stealing music/movies/apps/whatever. If people can't do that, they no longer desire the high speed connections, they downgrade to lower speed connections and save some cash."

 

Of course the ISPs don't want to get involved. They were making tons of cash off of Internet service before downloading got out of hand. And I don't know if it's right to shut off somebody's Internet connection for downloading. That's not all people do on the Internet. There's tons of great research and information circulating on the net because someone utilized it for a purpose other than downloading. And what do you about people who receive their Internet from cable providers? Just cut away from their clientele? Bear in mind, cable providers are huge corporations and have the financial resources to fight the RIAA all day.

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He's right in a way.


Copyright infringement is widespread, embedded in our culture, and enabled by our technology. It's a federal crime, yet the federal government has never seen fit to charge anyone with a federal crime for trading a file; the RIAA has succeeded in civil lawsuits against some people who have made large numbers of files available for trading. The technology will remain as individual file trading methods come and go, shutting down Kaazaa didn't seem to stop P2P, for example.

 

 

Peace

 

I agree with everything you say but would like to mention add to your first paragraph here in regards to Copyright infringement in references to artists and there music.

 

If a artists was under contract with a label then that label would seek action but artists like us do not have the resources to chase down people using there music with out mechanical rights for example, but the feds will protect a company in the interests of capitol tax, kind of like to protect the rich instead of the poor.

 

Also to add, according to law enforcement for anyone to break the law with another's intellectual property it is how they obtained the property and if they are caught red handed accepting cold cash or any sort of money, then and only then is it Copyright infringement..

 

That also said now as in your post, Myspace does not give bands who draw so many people to there site a penny for the add space they sell.

 

So maybe one day there will be a website sort of like a label to contract artists who they qualify in there roster, Apple is pursuing this idea but what is failing is it does not really give people as much as MySpace does., but what if Apple or someone did make a area where it was possible for the most popular bands on that site who score the most hits to inherit a advertising banner and have a cut as well as charge for downloads at the same time, that site the artists is on has to do allot to get people to come, myspace was a fluke! but there are reasons people like it and reasons people leave too.

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For example, MySpace generates $800M to $1B a year in revenues, yet gives nothing to the artists who supply music that is played on MySpace and draws people there. They claim 7M artists on MySpace Music - with statutory payments for each play to the artist (whether 9.1 cents, or the 15 cents proposed by the CRB), the question of lost revenues by the artist would more than go away. I have one MySpace site that, with absolutely no promotion or fan base, has had nearly 1,000 plays - I could use the $150!

 

 

That would all be well and good, if you believe that myspace would actually stay in business if it had to shell out royalties. But it likely wouldn't. They would have to either start charging users or increase ad revenues. And if they had to pay royalties through user fees, they could then start being a lot more selective about who they accepted, which would make them like Itunes or any other pay service. Or they'd go broke, like MP3. One thing's for sure, they aren't going to willingly give up their profit.

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That would all be well and good, if you believe that myspace would actually stay in business if it had to shell out royalties. But it likely wouldn't. They would have to either start charging users or increase ad revenues. And if they had to pay royalties through user fees, they could then start being a lot more selective about who they accepted, which would make them like Itunes or any other pay service. Or they'd go broke, like MP3. One thing's for sure, they aren't going to willingly give up their profit.

 

 

You're right. Myspace is not going to willingly give up their profit. But to some extent, you can't blame them. Of course they've made millions off of artists for providing their music, but did we not use myspace's quick and easy software coding language to reach our fans? If you use someone's resources for free, the trade off has to be mutual. I'm not paying myspace or youtube to host my videos and songs. Besides, the little bit of profit that they get from me is not worth fussing over. It took THOUSANDS of artists to make that entire pie. Besides, myspace no longer pitches just music as its mainstay. They've got actors, comedians, movie shorts, all types of entertainment that they're making money off of and promoting.

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No kidding. There's always porn!

(seriously, that's one of the top three uses for the internet....)

 

 

Yeah. And in the United States, I'm sure that (along with any other art the religious-right type crowd gets !!!OUTRAGED!!! by) will become *the* political football if McGuinness's mandatory Internet content filtering idea takes off.

 

Hell, Australia's already looking into going this route. It's for the children, yada yada, and if you disagree with the mandatory filter idea, you must be a child pornographer! If implemented over there, I can't wait until the political types abuse this China style.

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But to some extent, you can't blame them. Of course they've made millions off of artists for providing their music, but did we not use myspace's quick and easy software coding language to reach our fans? If you use someone's resources for free, the trade off has to be mutual.

 

 

Bingo!

No one forces anyone to use myspace, and it is the intent by the user that he benefits from the service. If he benefits, and it costs him nothing, what does he care that myspace sells ads? If he thinks he can set up his own page and sell ads, more power to him.

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Yeah. And in the United States, I'm sure that (along with any other art the religious-right type crowd gets !!!OUTRAGED!!! by) will become *the* political football if McGuinness's mandatory Internet content filtering idea takes off.


Hell, Australia's already looking into going this route. It's for the children, yada yada, and if you disagree with the mandatory filter idea, you must be a child pornographer! If implemented over there, I can't wait until the political types abuse this China style.

 

 

 

I don't know if you've noticed, but it ain't just the 'religious right' trying to clamp down of free speech and expression. Go visit a university campus sometime. And so-called 'liberals' are using "the children" as excuses to curtail expression, as well. This ought not be a partisan issue.

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I don't know if you've noticed, but it ain't just the 'religious right' trying to clamp down of free speech and expression. Go visit a university campus sometime. And so-called 'liberals' are using "the children" as excuses to curtail expression, as well. This ought not be a partisan issue.

 

 

Correct. Although they don't have as much political clout in the United States (right now), in other nations it would be the liberal groups would be chomping at the bit to get their paws on any "mandatory filtering" to push some agenda through. The situation in any nation differs, I didn't mean to make it left vs. right, just pointing out that filtering will often be misused for political reasons.

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Though of course the porn folks are being even more ripped off (relatively speaking at least) than the music industry, so it's still about copyright. I can't see how they stay in business. I wonder if it's not mostly just young guys who have inherited money who are financing the industry or something, as a way of getting banged by porn starlets.

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Though of course the porn folks are being even more ripped off (relatively speaking at least) than the music industry, so it's still about copyright. I can't see how they stay in business. I wonder if it's not mostly just young guys who have inherited money who are financing the industry or something, as a way of getting banged by porn starlets.



Being young, rich, and banging porn starlets...I could do that :thu:

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Though of course the porn folks are being even more ripped off (relatively speaking at least) than the music industry, so it's still about copyright. I can't see how they stay in business.

 

 

The porn industry shift to amateurs is now almost complete... anyone can be an amateur "porn star" for hobbyist money, and a lot do. There are some corporate megabrands producing soft porn for Skinemax and hotels, but aside from that I'm guessing that the real meat and potatoes are the heavily competitive networks that provide the network that backs the hobbyists. Content wise, you can perhaps make money in porn by managing brands of several unique niches, but on an individual level making real money in porn is probably impossible these days (you can make hobbyist change, sure).

 

Oddly enough, there are some counterpoints regarding piracy by using other industries. The software industry has had to deal with piracy for years and years, since the beginning really. They have done fine. Games responded by bloating, which even today is a deterrent -- torrenting many gigs of data is a pain in the butt. (Part of music software seems to be going the same route -- I think the "huge-ass gigabytes of samples!" competition for many software synthesizers is half to discourage pirating versus for quality reasons. The rest seem to be going to dongle type systems.) Businesses responded by, in essence, focusing on business in violation of copyright, and/or cutting off services and updates to pirated copies, etc. DVDs too can be pirated easily (the gigabytes do deter, but there are formats which reduce the size), but DVDs have sold fine as well -- perhaps because the cost of DVDs is not too high, and there is still a quality value-add that people perceive compared to compressed formats.

 

Part of what makes music especially vulnerable to piracy, I suppose, is that you can download an illegal MP3 in minutes, it doesn't sound that much worse than a CD, and CDs really don't provide a whole lot of additional value add, especially considering the cost.

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Part of what makes music especially vulnerable to piracy, I suppose, is that you can download an illegal MP3 in minutes, it doesn't sound that much worse than a CD, and CDs really don't provide a whole lot of additional value add, especially considering the cost.

 

 

Indeed. And the fact that while thousands or even tens of thousands of people might want a particular software, millions of people want certain songs or albums.

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