Go back to selling CD's in stores? The record labels never stopped selling CD's in stores. They are still sold in stores and online. I still buy CD's from my favorite artists, either locally or from Amazon.
I also buy from iTunes when I am only interested in one song. But I think the record label wants to INCREASE prices, not decrease them. A few prior posts talk about .49 cent songs. I don't think that is what the record industry wants to do. I think they want to charge $2.99 or $3.99 for current singles. They don't like the .99 cent pricing for current top songs. They want to make more money.
And the sad thing is that through iTunes, the labels make TWICE the amount of money they make selling CDs. No distribution, no physical product to produce, and no overhead other than advertising.
They truly are the greediest scum of the earth.
While I applaud their creative means, I am glad apple keeps them in check through competition.
If property that can be proven to belong to you is in any way used in a crime, the burden of proof is on you to prove that the property was taken from you through no fault of your own. That is why if your gun is ever stolen, you sure better report it stolen as fast as you can.
I can assure you that if music that was proven to once belong to you was on a file sharing site, you'll have to give a positive defense to show that you didn't put it their AND that it wasn't taken from you by your own willful neglect.
Bands must surely be thinking 'Different' these days when it comes to distribution for the future. Why pay a middle man (who has screwed you all along anyway) to do nothing but argue with Apple? Why not cut them out of the food chain and deal directly. Contracts do expire!
Well, perhaps because you are a songwriter or a musician, and that is where your skills lie, rather than in publicity & marketing and getting radio/TV play and negotiation and raising money to fund tours and recording. Manufacturing and distribution has been a solved problem since the 70s, although getting shelf-space was of course still a problem. ebay and Amazon solved that one, giving everyone equal retail space. The problem is that over the same time control of publicity has narrowed more and more - and not always to the majors benefit.
It's always been possible for musicians to build up a grass roots following bypassing the normal media, but only to a certain scale. Numerically, far more musicians operate independently than are signed with major labels.
So the question is, why do we focus on the tiny minority who are on majors? Or even labels?
And that is back to the point about publicity and marketing. At least you're heard of most of the bands having problems with their label. If you want to shift hundreds of thousands, rather than thousands, you need someone who knows how to reach hundreds of thousands.
Also, the facts are that both Apple and Amazon have tried screwing the indie labels (and all artist run labels are in that category) with worse deals than they offer the majors. There was no indie content on iTunes UK at first because Apple refused to deal with AIM UK (Association of Independent Music) - even when AIM members were selling DRM-free on other sellers. As a retailer, the iTMS is NOT artist friendly.
There are actually good reasons you might want to pay someone to argue with Apple, and that is so Apple don't negotiate even more of your royalties than the record company would.
Contrary to what people seem to think, labels do want to lower prices for some individual tracks. Old back catalog tracks though. Sure, they do want to raise the price for current hit singles.
And the sad thing is that through iTunes, the labels make TWICE the amount of money they make selling CDs. No distribution, no physical product to produce, and no overhead other than advertising.
To get all Wikipedia, can I have some cited research please? My understanding was that the shift to per song purchasing on iTunes has meant that revenue has declined - i.e. rather than buying a bundle of 8-12 songs for $12, people are maybe buying 3-4 songs per CD - i.e. $4 of revenue on the same costs.
Of course, the answer is for the labels to return to a more Motown like model of only letting artists record potential hits, or alternatively, only signing artists with a cult fanbase who will download every last thing they do, even the band holding a wine-tasting session (Einsturzende Neubauten).
I know my parents used to buy hundreds of dollars of albums from the iTMS until I explained DRM and audio quality to them. Now they use Amazon and they'll continue to do so until iTMS is DRM-free.
So, they couldn't tell and didn't know the difference until you explained it to them? And now they won't buy DRM tracks? That makes a lot of sense. Not.
I understand completely what DRM is. It doesn't bother me. I understand the miniscule quality difference between 128kbps and 256kbps and I prefer the lower because more tracks will fit on my iPod and hard disk. Perhaps you should explain that to your parents.
While there are a lot of folks here complaining about DRM, the fact is most people don't care. iTunes has 70% of the market. Most people only care about price and ease of purchase.
If property that can be proven to belong to you is in any way used in a crime, the burden of proof is on you to prove that the property was taken from you through no fault of your own. That is why if your gun is ever stolen, you sure better report it stolen as fast as you can.
I can assure you that if music that was proven to once belong to you was on a file sharing site, you'll have to give a positive defense to show that you didn't put it their AND that it wasn't taken from you by your own willful neglect.
I'm not a lawyer and not familiar with the case law, but . . .
RIAA et al can't prosecute crime. They could only, in this case, sue to recover damages pursuant to DMCA copyright violation. They would have to demonstrate their damages, the likelihood that the original MP3 owner named in the suit is somehow responsible for these damages, and convince a jury to award them these damages. A positive defense would be useful, but not necessary, e.g., "Oh, yeah. I think I left my computer in the library once for ten minutes untended. My friend, Billy Jean, was with me. Why should the burden be on me to protect intellectual property that RIAA repeatedly intentionally releases in a format they have continuously had problems protecting?"
Of course, the answer is for the labels to return to a more Motown like model of only letting artists record potential hits, or alternatively, only signing artists with a cult fanbase who will download every last thing they do, even the band holding a wine-tasting session (Einsturzende Neubauten).
That's what they try to do. They're just not that good at it. They lost control of the market, ironically, trying to control the market.
Maybe it's time that Apple started it's own record label negotiating directly with the artists. Cut out the record labels and give the artist a direct cut of the sales price. They could offload the CD production/distribution to someone else and conentrate on the download sales. I don't know if this is feasable but it would sure put the wind up the record labels if Apple managed to sign a few big name bands.
All iTunes purchases (including DRM free iTunes plus) already have the account info embedded in file, so what's to negotiate?
Watermarking is a different technique from simply including easy-to-remove plain text metadata. Watermarking involves altering the audio stream to leave a detectable, though supposedly imperceptable, signal in the sound. In otherwords, it degrades the audio quality of the already lossily compressed sound, for the dubious benefit of being able to trace pirated files back to the purchaser.
Comments
Go back to selling CD's in stores? The record labels never stopped selling CD's in stores. They are still sold in stores and online. I still buy CD's from my favorite artists, either locally or from Amazon.
I also buy from iTunes when I am only interested in one song. But I think the record label wants to INCREASE prices, not decrease them. A few prior posts talk about .49 cent songs. I don't think that is what the record industry wants to do. I think they want to charge $2.99 or $3.99 for current singles. They don't like the .99 cent pricing for current top songs. They want to make more money.
And the sad thing is that through iTunes, the labels make TWICE the amount of money they make selling CDs. No distribution, no physical product to produce, and no overhead other than advertising.
They truly are the greediest scum of the earth.
While I applaud their creative means, I am glad apple keeps them in check through competition.
Laptops and iPods get stolen.
If property that can be proven to belong to you is in any way used in a crime, the burden of proof is on you to prove that the property was taken from you through no fault of your own. That is why if your gun is ever stolen, you sure better report it stolen as fast as you can.
I can assure you that if music that was proven to once belong to you was on a file sharing site, you'll have to give a positive defense to show that you didn't put it their AND that it wasn't taken from you by your own willful neglect.
Bands must surely be thinking 'Different' these days when it comes to distribution for the future. Why pay a middle man (who has screwed you all along anyway) to do nothing but argue with Apple? Why not cut them out of the food chain and deal directly. Contracts do expire!
Well, perhaps because you are a songwriter or a musician, and that is where your skills lie, rather than in publicity & marketing and getting radio/TV play and negotiation and raising money to fund tours and recording. Manufacturing and distribution has been a solved problem since the 70s, although getting shelf-space was of course still a problem. ebay and Amazon solved that one, giving everyone equal retail space. The problem is that over the same time control of publicity has narrowed more and more - and not always to the majors benefit.
It's always been possible for musicians to build up a grass roots following bypassing the normal media, but only to a certain scale. Numerically, far more musicians operate independently than are signed with major labels.
So the question is, why do we focus on the tiny minority who are on majors? Or even labels?
And that is back to the point about publicity and marketing. At least you're heard of most of the bands having problems with their label. If you want to shift hundreds of thousands, rather than thousands, you need someone who knows how to reach hundreds of thousands.
Also, the facts are that both Apple and Amazon have tried screwing the indie labels (and all artist run labels are in that category) with worse deals than they offer the majors. There was no indie content on iTunes UK at first because Apple refused to deal with AIM UK (Association of Independent Music) - even when AIM members were selling DRM-free on other sellers. As a retailer, the iTMS is NOT artist friendly.
There are actually good reasons you might want to pay someone to argue with Apple, and that is so Apple don't negotiate even more of your royalties than the record company would.
And the sad thing is that through iTunes, the labels make TWICE the amount of money they make selling CDs. No distribution, no physical product to produce, and no overhead other than advertising.
To get all Wikipedia, can I have some cited research please? My understanding was that the shift to per song purchasing on iTunes has meant that revenue has declined - i.e. rather than buying a bundle of 8-12 songs for $12, people are maybe buying 3-4 songs per CD - i.e. $4 of revenue on the same costs.
Of course, the answer is for the labels to return to a more Motown like model of only letting artists record potential hits, or alternatively, only signing artists with a cult fanbase who will download every last thing they do, even the band holding a wine-tasting session (Einsturzende Neubauten).
I just hope that's what people actually want.
I know my parents used to buy hundreds of dollars of albums from the iTMS until I explained DRM and audio quality to them. Now they use Amazon and they'll continue to do so until iTMS is DRM-free.
So, they couldn't tell and didn't know the difference until you explained it to them? And now they won't buy DRM tracks? That makes a lot of sense. Not.
I understand completely what DRM is. It doesn't bother me. I understand the miniscule quality difference between 128kbps and 256kbps and I prefer the lower because more tracks will fit on my iPod and hard disk. Perhaps you should explain that to your parents.
While there are a lot of folks here complaining about DRM, the fact is most people don't care. iTunes has 70% of the market. Most people only care about price and ease of purchase.
If property that can be proven to belong to you is in any way used in a crime, the burden of proof is on you to prove that the property was taken from you through no fault of your own. That is why if your gun is ever stolen, you sure better report it stolen as fast as you can.
I can assure you that if music that was proven to once belong to you was on a file sharing site, you'll have to give a positive defense to show that you didn't put it their AND that it wasn't taken from you by your own willful neglect.
I'm not a lawyer and not familiar with the case law, but . . .
RIAA et al can't prosecute crime. They could only, in this case, sue to recover damages pursuant to DMCA copyright violation. They would have to demonstrate their damages, the likelihood that the original MP3 owner named in the suit is somehow responsible for these damages, and convince a jury to award them these damages. A positive defense would be useful, but not necessary, e.g., "Oh, yeah. I think I left my computer in the library once for ten minutes untended. My friend, Billy Jean, was with me. Why should the burden be on me to protect intellectual property that RIAA repeatedly intentionally releases in a format they have continuously had problems protecting?"
Of course, the answer is for the labels to return to a more Motown like model of only letting artists record potential hits, or alternatively, only signing artists with a cult fanbase who will download every last thing they do, even the band holding a wine-tasting session (Einsturzende Neubauten).
That's what they try to do. They're just not that good at it. They lost control of the market, ironically, trying to control the market.
All iTunes purchases (including DRM free iTunes plus) already have the account info embedded in file, so what's to negotiate?
Watermarking is a different technique from simply including easy-to-remove plain text metadata. Watermarking involves altering the audio stream to leave a detectable, though supposedly imperceptable, signal in the sound. In otherwords, it degrades the audio quality of the already lossily compressed sound, for the dubious benefit of being able to trace pirated files back to the purchaser.