Sccts guy contradicts RIAA document

[Craig White]

On Thu, 2008-01-03 at 13:26 -0700, Micah DesJardins wrote:
> I've tried to keep out of this, but I feel like we're missing
> something important here.
> 
> The actual legality of it is marginal at best.  What the RIAA is doing
> is criminalizing their customers in an effort to shore up a failing
> business / distribution model.  Any way you look at it, that's bad.
> It's bad for customers and it's bad for the record industry.
> 
> Artists traditionally make very little off the album sales themselves.
>  Most of their money comes directly from touring, merchandising, and
> if they're lucky enough to be writing their own material AND they
> didn't assign the rights to their record company (which is common,
> usually the record company gets AT LEAST half) then they get some
> publishing which is often where the real / long term money comes from.
> 
> For more information on how "artists" make out on the music industry,
> check out Steve Albini's site (warning, he likes 4 letter words and
> he's a bit jaded, but he's a smart fellow)
> http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
> 
> The point is, album sales are really only a big deal to the record
> companies.  Record companies thrived for decades because they
> controlled the gateways to the American public.  The big four (used to
> be the big five) own virtually all retail distribution of recorded
> sound in the US.  Whether it's illegal or not, they've been bribing
> the radio industry since there was a radio industry to heavily promote
> music they want to push as the next big thing.
> 
> There's lots of references, here's a fairly current one. This isn't
> about Sony, it's standard practice all around:
> http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,163537,00.html Here's a slightly
> older, but more informational article about how radio bribery (You
> can't call it Payola, that's illegal!) works -
> http://archive.salon.com/ent/feature/2001/03/14/payola/index.html
> 
> It worked great for a while.  The truth is, record companies were
> making good product.  Yes they were making a lot of money off of
> talented people, but those people who went on to become stars were
> also making piles of cash.  The problem is, their business model,
> which worked great for a long time, no longer works.  People aren't
> listening to the radio like they used to.  MTV doesn't play music
> videos.  Song placements in television shows is a hot market these
> days, but it's a far cry from the feeding frenzy radio used to
> produce.
> 
> Growth in the music industry was considered something of a given, but
> they are reaching saturation.
> 
> People who download music are generally music fans and more likely to
> buy more music than people who don't.
> 
> http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2347/125/
> 
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/3052145.stm
> 
> The record companies. Regardless of any legal basis, are alienating
> and criminalizing the people who they need the most.  Young music fans
> who are statistically the most likely to spend money on anything music
> related (merchandise, shows, recordings, DVDs and legal downloads.)
> 
> Unless they significantly change how they do business, they are going
> to litigate themselves into a corner.  You can't win by suing your
> customers. Public opinion is that sharing music (Which frankly has
> been done for thousands of years) isn't considered morally "wrong" and
> these lawsuits are just making the RIAA look like a bunch of money
> grubbing bastards.
> 
> Look.  Businesses centered in the production of music have a right to
> make money.  But they need to come up with smart models for doing so.
> People have a right to feel like they are getting a good deal for the
> money they pay and the music industry hasn't been providing that to
> most customers for a while now.  And if a model no longer fits because
> the world around us all is changing every day.. then companies can
> either adapt to a new business model or face extinction. That's just
> the way it works.
> 
> Luckily, record companies didn't get rich by being incredibly stupid.
> They realize things have to change.  That's why they're hiring guys
> like Rick Rubin in the hopes that they can help move things in a new
> direction:
> 
> http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2006-07-06-rubin-main_x.htm
> 
> Enough about all of this.
> 
> I just wanted to say that I'm a musician, and a song writer and I
> totally support digital downloading of music at little or no charge.
> 
> (So does Radiohead, and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and a lot of
> other musicians)
> 
> For further reading:
> 
> http://www.downhillbattle.org/
----
there is of course the issue of control over the industry, the music,
the artists the intellectual property rights themselves with which I
wholeheartedly agree and made that point very early in the discussion
where I even pointed out, just ask John Fogerty who is one of the poster
boys for how an industry screws the artists.

Clearly the RIAA doesn't speak for the artists but rather the companies
which have collected the collateral rights (however unfairly is another
issue) to the music.

It is true that this represents the death knell for the model at large,
which was the point of the Motley Fool article that I linked earlier.

I know that I brought it up to the list a couple of years ago but one
Wired story has stuck with me for years now, which was the story of Sony
Corporation and the battle within which pitted their
'Software/Entertainment' division (which included their music and movie
divisions) versus the 'Hardware' division which felt that they should
have been the company to market the iPod and not Apple as the successor
to their immensely popular Walkman. Software division won the argument
because even the the hardware division had higher revenues, the profit
margin tilted in favor of the software division and thus, no innovative
media invention that wasn't crippled. Self-immolation isn't an art
practiced only by the RIAA.

Craig