Sony to blame tube sites too?

[griffin8r]

Originally Posted by rhetorical

Did I miss something here? "They" didn't create the us versus them mentality. Like it or not, "they" created, paid for and marketed a legal product. "They" didn't steal anything. And "us" aren't people who don't want to pay for high quaility content. Us are thieves. Or is that "we".
I always thought it was crystal clear who was on the wrong side of this issue and when I see the waters being muddied, alarm bells wring. This sounds awfully like pretzel logic.

I reckon you don't recall the history of the music industry's positions regarding "piracy".

The record labels fought tooth and nail against the advent of cassette tapes, because they said "no one will buy our records if every Tom, Dick, and Harry can copy them off of friends"

Suddenly, they realized that the cassette was a highly degradable format, and releasing music on it was a sure vehicle to getting not only first-time sales, but repeat sales of the same music, over and over again as the tapes went to crap.

The advent of CD spelled the end of LP's because of the music industry marketing hype - "they're indestructable! And they sound better than any other format!" (both of which were abject lies)

Then along came recordable CD's - and man, was there ever hissing and spitting coming out of Sony, Capitol, Geffen, and the rest. "Perfect Digital copies will kill the industry" - and they fought tooth and nail against the producers of writable media, and finally extracted a settlement that artificially drove the price of that media up as a pre-emptive "royalty" for using it to do things like back up your own music collection. Extra fun for indie bands like the one I was in at the time, because the cost of the blank CD's killed most of our profit margin on producing our own discs, because we didn't have the budget to meet the minimums all the reproduction houses wanted back then (1999) - so we got to pay major labels a fee to sell our own damned music.

Then came Napster. Why was Napster such a huge hit? Because, particularly at that time, the industry was cranking out sorry album after sorry album with one good song and a bunch of filler, and selling it for ever-higher prices (this was when CD's were around $16 at most places, prior to the apex of $20 more recently) and people were sick of getting soaked for $16 for one song. This gave people a chance to listen to a few other songs on the album and decide if it was worth buying.

Here's the comedy:

If the record industry had brought a for-pay a la carte download service back then, they wouldn't be chasing down every tom, dick, and harry now, because back then, Napster, Grokster, and all the other P2P free services were rife with spyware, distributed viruses, and all manner of other issues, and people would have gladly paid for the convenience of not dealing with that shit.

Instead, the industry begins the litigation-mania, right at a time when the American public has little tolerance for high-profile litigation.

And what's worse is, they come after the most bizarre targets. I don't reckon you recall the grandmother who got sued by the RIAA for something in the neighborhood of $165,000 because she had MP3's on her computer that her grandson had downloaded...

That's what I mean about them creating the "us vs. them" mentality. Heavy handed, litigious, and indiscrete. Instead of adapting to new technology, the music industry has fought it, all the way down the line.

When the Harry Fox agency opened their online license shop, it was the smartest move they ever made, because prior to that, people who wanted to "cover" songs had no clue where to go to get that permission. Now, it's $40 to get your license (as long as you don't sell more than 500 copies) and you're nice and legal.

No different with music distribution. Instead of suing everybody, they could have nipped it all in the bud by opening an iTunes long ago.

I'm not saying the pirates are right, I'm just saying the music industry has historically treated their customers like thieves, long before the internet existed....

[softball]

Originally Posted by griffin8r

I reckon you don't recall the history of the music industry's positions regarding "piracy".

The record labels fought tooth and nail against the advent of cassette tapes, because they said "no one will buy our records if every Tom, Dick, and Harry can copy them off of friends"

Suddenly, they realized that the cassette was a highly degradable format, and releasing music on it was a sure vehicle to getting not only first-time sales, but repeat sales of the same music, over and over again as the tapes went to crap.

The advent of CD spelled the end of LP's because of the music industry marketing hype - "they're indestructable! And they sound better than any other format!" (both of which were abject lies)

Then along came recordable CD's - and man, was there ever hissing and spitting coming out of Sony, Capitol, Geffen, and the rest. "Perfect Digital copies will kill the industry" - and they fought tooth and nail against the producers of writable media, and finally extracted a settlement that artificially drove the price of that media up as a pre-emptive "royalty" for using it to do things like back up your own music collection. Extra fun for indie bands like the one I was in at the time, because the cost of the blank CD's killed most of our profit margin on producing our own discs, because we didn't have the budget to meet the minimums all the reproduction houses wanted back then (1999) - so we got to pay major labels a fee to sell our own damned music.

Then came Napster. Why was Napster such a huge hit? Because, particularly at that time, the industry was cranking out sorry album after sorry album with one good song and a bunch of filler, and selling it for ever-higher prices (this was when CD's were around $16 at most places, prior to the apex of $20 more recently) and people were sick of getting soaked for $16 for one song. This gave people a chance to listen to a few other songs on the album and decide if it was worth buying.

Here's the comedy:

If the record industry had brought a for-pay a la carte download service back then, they wouldn't be chasing down every tom, dick, and harry now, because back then, Napster, Grokster, and all the other P2P free services were rife with spyware, distributed viruses, and all manner of other issues, and people would have gladly paid for the convenience of not dealing with that shit.

Instead, the industry begins the litigation-mania, right at a time when the American public has little tolerance for high-profile litigation.

And what's worse is, they come after the most bizarre targets. I don't reckon you recall the grandmother who got sued by the RIAA for something in the neighborhood of $165,000 because she had MP3's on her computer that her grandson had downloaded...

That's what I mean about them creating the "us vs. them" mentality. Heavy handed, litigious, and indiscrete. Instead of adapting to new technology, the music industry has fought it, all the way down the line.

When the Harry Fox agency opened their online license shop, it was the smartest move they ever made, because prior to that, people who wanted to "cover" songs had no clue where to go to get that permission. Now, it's $40 to get your license (as long as you don't sell more than 500 copies) and you're nice and legal.

No different with music distribution. Instead of suing everybody, they could have nipped it all in the bud by opening an iTunes long ago.

I'm not saying the pirates are right, I'm just saying the music industry has historically treated their customers like thieves, long before the internet existed....

I still gotta disagree. Whether you like it or not, copyright theft is still copyright theft. It seems you don't like the way the music business works. Hell I never liked the way the Film and TV business worked and I made my living out of it. The record industry and the "indie" bands have been at war for years. Most of the indie bands were and are kinda shitty with zero commercial potential outside of their garage and a few groupies who believed in their "art". The few that understood business and were good did and will do well. This is a chicken and egg situation that will never be resolved. David and Goliath. You pick the winner.

[griffin8r]

Originally Posted by rhetorical

I still gotta disagree. Whether you like it or not, copyright theft is still copyright theft. It seems you don't like the way the music business works. Hell I never liked the way the Film and TV business worked and I made my living out of it. The record industry and the "indie" bands have been at war for years. Most of the indie bands were and are kinda shitty with zero commercial potential outside of their garage and a few groupies who believed in their "art". The few that understood business and were good did and will do well. This is a chicken and egg situation that will never be resolved. David and Goliath. You pick the winner.

You just completely glossed over my argument and set yourself up a straw man to knock down. Congratulations, he's dead. Perhaps you might try windmills next?

[softball]

Originally Posted by griffin8r

You just completely glossed over my argument and set yourself up a straw man to knock down. Congratulations, he's dead. Perhaps you might try windmills next?

Damn, I just can't keep up. Which corner you standin in at the moment? Or, perhaps, you are the board's creative anachronist and tilting expert. Let me know so I can choose my target, with your permission.

[Toby]

Originally Posted by rhetorical

Let me know so I can choose my target...

Shoot 'em all, let allah sort them out. durka! durka!

[griffin8r]

Originally Posted by rhetorical

Damn, I just can't keep up. Which corner you standin in at the moment? Or, perhaps, you are the board's creative anachronist and tilting expert. Let me know so I can choose my target, with your permission.

Hey, I'm not the one who read a dissertation on the industry's litigious nature and its resistance to new technology and somehow interpreted it as a whine-fest about indies versus major labels. Sounds a lot like selective reading comprehension to me.

[softball]

Originally Posted by griffin8r

Hey, I'm not the one who read a dissertation on the industry's litigious nature and its resistance to new technology and somehow interpreted it as a whine-fest about indies versus major labels. Sounds a lot like selective reading comprehension to me.

WTF are you talking about? Are you even on the same page? I didn't read a dissertation, did you? Man, you been smokin' some shit. Please let me know what it is, I think I want some.

[RawAlex]

Originally Posted by griffin8r

I'm not saying the pirates are right, I'm just saying the music industry has historically treated their customers like thieves, long before the internet existed....

There is one part of history that you are missing, something really important that has changed everything:

The feeling of entitlement that younger people have towards music, the feeling that music should be "free".

It has taken an internet "generation" to go from Napster to web2.0, and in that time the systems of beliefs have changed dramatically. There are a significant number of people out there that think that anything that can be digitized should be free because with P2P and other means, they can distribute it for free, so why pay anything?

So yes, Itunes does good business, but it is a drop in the bucket. The most popular numbers I see kicked around says that 19 our of 20 copies of each song out there are pirated. That leaves a much slimmer business for the music world. When it comes to net sales (including Itunes) the record industry is taking in similar amounts of money today that it was in 1997, while inflation and whatnot has lowered the relative value of that income by nearly 40%. There is very little chance of an upside for the music industry any time soon.

Web2.0 is the land of the free. Everything is stolen, borrowed, hijacked, pirated, copied, virally spread and given away by everyone to everyone. Remember, price and value, while not always directly linked, are attached to each other with an elastic. When the price moves significantly lower, it drags down the value. At this point, music has no real market price, and very little value. It is very hard to re-create price when there is no more value.

[griffin8r]

Originally Posted by RawAlex

There is one part of history that you are missing, something really important that has changed everything:

The feeling of entitlement that younger people have towards music, the feeling that music should be "free".

It has taken an internet "generation" to go from Napster to web2.0, and in that time the systems of beliefs have changed dramatically. There are a significant number of people out there that think that anything that can be digitized should be free because with P2P and other means, they can distribute it for free, so why pay anything?

So yes, Itunes does good business, but it is a drop in the bucket. The most popular numbers I see kicked around says that 19 our of 20 copies of each song out there are pirated. That leaves a much slimmer business for the music world. When it comes to net sales (including Itunes) the record industry is taking in similar amounts of money today that it was in 1997, while inflation and whatnot has lowered the relative value of that income by nearly 40%. There is very little chance of an upside for the music industry any time soon.

This speaks directly back to the core of my argument. The record industry brought this down on their own heads by openly fighting what they should have known (based on their own experience with other media) was a lost war against a delivery format.

There's no fixing this now, it's going to be a cycle of litigate one pirate out of business, another one with a more sophisticated, less centralized delivery vehicle pops up, lather, rinse, repeat.

What I'm saying is that they could have fixed the problem by bringing an iTunes site to market back when Napster was still Napster and Web 2.0 didn't exist.

[DannyCox]

Originally Posted by griffin8r

What I'm saying is that they could have fixed the problem by bringing an iTunes site to market back when Napster was still Napster and Web 2.0 didn't exist.

Hmmmm, maybe if they had an iTunes system in place when I was seriously buying albums in the early 1970's, none of this would be going on!

Shoulda, coulda, woulda, really doesn't work in this argument. You know what they say about hindsight...

The real blame still lands on the thieves that are stealing content, not on the industry. There is no justification for that, period. Theft is theft.

[gonzo]

Originally Posted by DannyCox

The real blame still lands on the thieves that are stealing content, not on the industry. There is no justification for that, period. Theft is theft.

[Toby]

Originally Posted by DannyCox

Theft is theft.

And that seems to be the big difference. A large majority of those young enough to have grown up with Internet access don't see it as theft.