OT: Recording Industry Ripoff

[Xrati]

Caught a blurb this morning on TV. It mentioned that Apple was blasting the recording industry for being greedy. Something to the effect that they wanted to raise prices from .99 USD for "downloaded" music. Apple was stating that the recording industry was getting greedy and if they raised their prices that piracy would increase. Here we go again!

[El_Phil]

Well of course it could be Apple is increasing their cut (they do make cents per copy if that) and wants to blame someone else, and the record industry is a good target. Or not. :shrug:

As you can buy a CD delivered for £6/7 with no DRM rubbish why would you bother downloading anyway, unless you want just one track off an album or something?

[Atrocities]

Whats bad is that people are moving to moble music devices with huge storeage capacities and the Record Industry sales for cd's has fallen. They "SAY" that he sales are down do to piracy, but the truth is, they are down because people are sick and tired of the same old trash.

The same with hollywood. Movie ticket sales are down and they claim piracy is doing it when in fact people just don't want to spend $30.00 to $50.00 taking the family to crowded theater when they can stay home and pay $20.00 for the DVD. DUhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Also factor in that most of the movies being released these days are TRASH.

I hope Apple can bring a lot of anti-greed presure down upon the record industrie. But those greedy bastards will do what they want. And by doing it, they will have created the very thing they have been claiming has been going on for years. And you know what, they deserve a good spanking.

[El_Phil]

Atrocities said:
I hope Apple can bring a lot of anti-greed presure down upon the record industrie.



That would be funny. I mean really, really funny. Apple, the company famed for over priced, under speced hardware and forcing people to pay extra for almost any feature gets someone else to stop being greedy. Ohh the irony....

[Baron Munchausen]

Yeah, and what else is new? Corporations learned a long time ago that the best way to make profits is to make the product scarce and then extort the highest possible price from people. The 'Oil Industry' has been shutting down refineries for decades. They haven't built a new one since the 1970s as I recall? Every time some 'accident' closes one of the remaining refineries down for a while, they get to charge huge markups because of the 'tight supply'.

This is just the music industry trying to do the same old thing a bit prematurely. They must think that most people are 'intimidated' enough to have given up on piracy.

[Renegade 13]

Give up on piracy? When it's so easy? Why would people do that? Guess that's what you meant by "premature". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[El_Phil]

Baron Munchausen said:
Yeah, and what else is new? Corporations learned a long time ago that the best way to make profits is to make the product scarce and then extort the highest possible price from people. The 'Oil Industry' has been shutting down refineries for decades. They haven't built a new one since the 1970s as I recall? Every time some 'accident' closes one of the remaining refineries down for a while, they get to charge huge markups because of the 'tight supply'.



I'd like to think that the evil corporation that would actually deliberately kill lots of people for profit only exists in fiction. Given that quite a few of these refinery accidents do kill people (or get damn close and injure large numbers), I hope they are actually accidents.

[Fyron]

Any chance that BM gets to defame the name of corporations is a good day. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif What he says has absolutely nothing to do with corporations themselves, but rather with anyone trying to make money. Such artificial product scarcity occured eons before the first corporation was ever chartered.

The RIAA wants variable pricing on music tracks so that they can charge 1.50 or more for popular songs, and likely the same as now for less popular songs. Absolutely none of their actions in recent years have done anything to curb piracy, but instead to destroy the last vestiges of reputation that they had and to provoke further piracy. I seem to recall that in recent years, piracy (of all forms) has approached the levels of bandwidth usage of pornography on the Internet as a whole...

[Baron Munchausen]

Oh, it's not necessary for them to 'deliberately' arrange for accidents. They and the government knew quite well that a major hurricane like Katrina could shut down a major part of our national refinery capacity. But the corporate boards didn't want to cut into their profits by buying more refinery capacity than absolutely necessary to met demand and the government didn't want to violate the 'free market' by forcing them to. So now that the inevitable has happened, we all pay the price and the owners of Exxon, Shell, BP, etc. make even fatter profits off of a disaster. What do they care if ordinary working people who can barely afford to drive to work every day are being ruined by this huge price rise?

[El_Phil]

Nothing to stop other people opening refineries. Or just buy shares in an oil firm if your that convinced they actually make money from petrol. That would be a bad thing to do by the way, check the published accounts and it's all upstream and oil production that makes money. Fuels (and that includes aviation gas, ships fuel oil, etc.) aren't that much, not in the scheme of things.

Does remind me though, start of Bush's term in office the emergency planning chappies produced the list of three worst potential threats to the US
1. Cat 5 hurricane on the US Gulf coast
2. Terrorist attack on New York
3. Huge quake in San Fransisco.

Frankly as yet another cat5 hurricane prepares to hit the gulf coast I'd be moving out of Frisco right now.

[Xrati]

Remember El_Phil "CHANGE IS GOOD!" I think? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif

I find it funny that as always the RIAA goes after the small people rather then the 'Site or soure' of the downloads. I guess that they figure it would be easier to go after people who probably can't afford a lawyer rather than a larger target that could. It's like going after the 'drug users' rather then going after the 'dealers' and 'suppliers'. Go to the source of the problem to eliminate it, NOT those effected by it!

[El_Phil]

It's not a site is it though? It's peer to peer networks, so there is no 'source' to go after. You can only go after the people who download (and upload of course) because there is no central point to chase. The 'source' of a peer to peer network is the people who write the protocls (too late to get them, the programmes are already out there. And ther are dozens of legit uses of peer to peer anyway).

So they have to chase the users, there is no-one else. Of course they are scum sucking maggots, but not being American I really can't work up much enthusiasm for the issue. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Fyron]

They (and the MPAA) have gone after the people that run large bit torrent tracker sites catering to piracy of music (or movies). They went after Napster, and Sharman Networks (owners of Kazaa), and other larger p2p software makers. They do not always go after just the little people.

[Baron Munchausen]

Ah... NOW we see why the move for the price increases. They had sent 'cease and desist' letters to a bunch of the P2P software companies and some of them have folded as expected. WinMX network is now disconnected. Several others are having serious problems.

[Fyron]

Unfortunately for them, the biggest "threat," Bit Torrent, is impossible to eliminate, as literally anyone can start up a new tracker. The MPAA and RIAA (to a lesser extent) have sued/threatened to sue the major trackers out of existence, but 10 more popped up to replace each of them. Of course, BT pales in comparison to the threat posed to sales by producing more and more of the same old crap every year, with just a handful of decent artists/movies in their lineups.

[Combat Wombat]

Imperator Fyron said:
Unfortunately for them, the biggest "threat," Bit Torrent, is impossible to eliminate, as literally anyone can start up a new tracker. The MPAA and RIAA (to a lesser extent) have sued/threatened to sue the major trackers out of existence, but 10 more popped up to replace each of them. Of course, BT pales in comparison to the threat posed to sales by producing more and more of the same old crap every year, with just a handful of decent artists/movies in their lineups.



100% right on

[Atrocities]

Imperator Fyron said:
Unfortunately for them, the biggest "threat," Bit Torrent, is impossible to eliminate, as literally anyone can start up a new tracker. The MPAA and RIAA (to a lesser extent) have sued/threatened to sue the major trackers out of existence, but 10 more popped up to replace each of them. Of course, BT pales in comparison to the threat posed to sales by producing more and more of the same old crap every year, with just a handful of decent artists/movies in their lineups.



Well said.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Hey - Anybody want to list places to get independant music?

[Baron Munchausen]

Imperator Fyron said:
Unfortunately for them, the biggest "threat," Bit Torrent, is impossible to eliminate, as literally anyone can start up a new tracker. The MPAA and RIAA (to a lesser extent) have sued/threatened to sue the major trackers out of existence, but 10 more popped up to replace each of them. Of course, BT pales in comparison to the threat posed to sales by producing more and more of the same old crap every year, with just a handful of decent artists/movies in their lineups.



Not just Bittorrent. All of the P2P networks are adapting to the threat. A new peer cache for the WinMX network is being developed in 'real time' while the machines online when the original Frontcode sites went down try to hold the network together. They've got it partly working already. And of course lots of people are just going to other networks. The Kazaa/WinMX generation of P2P developed after the original Napster was sued out of existence. Now a new generation of even more decentralized P2P will be developed that doesn't need a central server. (I think at least one program already has this 'completely independent' system. Gnutella? Sharezaa? One of those newer ones.)

The thing is, online P2P has only a small fraction of the potential of simple CD copying that anyone and everyone can now do with their home PCs. The bandwidth of all those CD-RW drives is a whole lot more than the internet. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Xrati]

I guess that the RIAA is going to have to deal with a problem that they helped to create! Now Apple is telling them that their greed is not good. Will they listen or continue to waste money on aggressive legal actions that will never end p2p? OR will they start putting their money into better products. I already resent the fact that they are now heading for another format change. They've gone from vinyl to tape to DAT to CD and now to mp3, and now want a new format to combat piracy! The only piracy going on here is by them.

[Makinus]

Baron Munchausen said:
Not just Bittorrent. All of the P2P networks are adapting to the threat. A new peer cache for the WinMX network is being developed in 'real time' while the machines online when the original Frontcode sites went down try to hold the network together. They've got it partly working already. And of course lots of people are just going to other networks. The Kazaa/WinMX generation of P2P developed after the original Napster was sued out of existence. Now a new generation of even more decentralized P2P will be developed that doesn't need a central server. (I think at least one program already has this 'completely independent' system. Gnutella? Sharezaa? One of those newer ones.)




If you view the situation from a darwinian point of view, the BC´s (Big Corporations) are forcing the developlment of more advanced software that allows free sharing of information in the world.

Piracy is only the most famous (and bandwidth hungry) use of these programs, but they can be used to share information freely and wthitout any kind of censure, so, forcing the development of newer and better sharing software by the pirates worldwide, the BC´s are in fact creating better tools to ensure the freedom of information for everyone.

Of course, the BC´s don´t have a clue of that their actions will ultimately cause...

[Baron Munchausen]

And yet... as long as they have those long lists of captive 'artists' they will be a problem. They can claim to be 'defending the rights of the artists' and request more changes to the law and more hardware hassle to 'protect' their artists even while everyone (including the artists) know very well that they are defending their own )(*$^(^@$ profits. Recording artists usually end up owing money to the music companies because they structure all the fees and business risks to protect themselves not the artists. They have little choice but to sign the contract that the company offers because almost all new artists start out relatively poor. Then the artists make their own profits (if any) on tour following the publicity generated by the album and (sometimes) promotion by the music company.

So, if more and more artists start to realize they can just release tracks on P2P to 'promote' their tours and they don't need the exploting music companies then the end will truly be near for the suits. That is what they are afraid of, even more than the immediate losses of piracy of some of the works of their currently contracted artists. They are terrified that a new kind of music business could grow up that they aren't even part of and when the contracts run out, the artists just walk away...

[Atrocities]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
Hey - Anybody want to list places to get independant music?



Not here Narf, it would violate the rules of the forum. Unless you were talking about legal independant music downloads approved by the artists and their lables.

[Atrocities]

A long while back I posted about how the RIAA had copied KaZaa software and had released its own version in order to "gather" evidence against people who happened to use their P2P program. I was laughed at but later that year the developers of KaZaa sued the RIAA for doing it and the RIAA sued a great many people for piracy. I think one of them was an 11 year old girl and her destitute Grandmother. Way to go RIAA, make those examples.

[Captain Kwok]

There's nothing wrong with seeking out independent artists, which in most cases by defination are 'label' free. Anyhow, most P2P networks actually try and promote the legimate use of their networks for downloading approved files for these sorts of artists.

In most cases, a given genre will have websites where you can download independent artists of that style. Usually an interweb search will bring up said sites. Some have fees per song, while others allow free downloads hoping that you might some of the artists' albums.

[Baron Munchausen]

Atrocities said:

narf poit chez BOOM said:
Hey - Anybody want to list places to get independant music?



Not here Narf, it would violate the rules of the forum. Unless you were talking about legal independant music downloads approved by the artists and their lables.



Most of the online services like iTunes make at least some room for new artists. There are also completely 'Indie' enterprises. The most famous is CD Baby, where you can buy CDs with samples of many artists on a single disk. There are others with some rather obvious names. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

http://www.cdbaby.com

http://www.indie-music.com/

http://www.indiemusic.com/

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Yes, I did mean legal.

[El_Phil]

Atrocities said:
A long while back I posted about how the RIAA had copied KaZaa software and had released its own version in order to "gather" evidence against people who happened to use their P2P program. I was laughed at but later that year the developers of KaZaa sued the RIAA for doing it and the RIAA sued a great many people for piracy. I think one of them was an 11 year old girl and her destitute Grandmother. Way to go RIAA, make those examples.



Looking at it first off, well yes its awful. BUT and it is a big but, she was breaking the law. Either the law applys to all or scrap it. Complain about the entire system all you like, but the girl wouldn't have been in trouble if she wasn't breaking the law.

I'm not condoning the RIAA or their actions, but if people didn't pirate they wouldn't be in trouble. When you can get legal music from Hong Kong imports at £6 or so each then I start to lose sympathy. Yes in a standard retailer music is overpriced, but at ~50p a track on legal CD you can't say that is a ripoff.

[TurinTurambar]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
Yes, I did mean legal.



http://www.mperia.com/

... if you create a user-account (no charge) and browse around a bit, you can even sign up for them to tell you when new stuff comes out that you might like, or new stuff is available from a band you've found that you want to keep track of. Lots of great stuff there.

[Atrocities]

We should outlaw greed and regulate the Recording industry. Any proofit over X amount would go to the Federal coffers to help pay for computers in every house hold.

[El_Phil]

The response to that is "Meanwhile, back in communist Russia."

[Baron Munchausen]

Atrocities said:
We should outlaw greed and regulate the Recording industry. Any proofit over X amount would go to the Federal coffers to help pay for computers in every house hold.



What about the artists? Shouldn't the people who create the product get some of the proceeds? I'd support a mandatory percentage of the profits being given to the artists before I'd support some sort of 'windfall profits tax' on the music industry.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Music people need unions.

[Atrocities]

Baron Munchausen said:

Atrocities said:
We should outlaw greed and regulate the Recording industry. Any proofit over X amount would go to the Federal coffers to help pay for computers in every house hold.



What about the artists? Shouldn't the people who create the product get some of the proceeds? I'd support a mandatory percentage of the profits being given to the artists before I'd support some sort of 'windfall profits tax' on the music industry.



The record company signs the artists, refines their material, and then market the music. What do the artists do? They write the songs, in most cases, record the songs, make a video, and sit back and collect $0.006 per every album sold. They might go on tour where they make some fair bank but otherwise they struggling to make ends meat like the rest of us in the face of super greedy corporations. So ya, if the above quoted sarcasm of mine were ever to come to pass, then sure, a larger chuck of the Record industries profits should go to the people who actually create the music we love.

The point is the greedy bastards at the top have always gotten the money while the poor fools doing the work get the shaft and the stupid saps buying the product pay the bill.

Greed is what its all about. Hell look at the black music artists and how bad the record industry stroked those poor saps. The black music artists of the US should get together and have the NAACP sue the record industry for all the royalties they have stolen over the years from the black musicians of America. I would support such an action because it would be the right thing to do. Then go after them for all the money they ripped off of other artists.

The record industry has made bank ripping off artists and consumers for years. The P2P issue isn't really an issue so much as it’s a movement. People want access to older music that is no longer being sold. They want access to specific songs without having to buy ten songs that they do not want. If I were the Record industry I would embrace P2P and make it work for me. Right now they are treating it as the enemy and not the future cash cow that it could be.

They are in a nutshell blind, ignorant, narrow-minded, short sided, fools.

[Atrocities]

El_Phil said:
The response to that is "Meanwhile, back in communist Russia."



ORDER TO THE KGB: Citizan El_Phil is to be arrested for treason!

[El_Phil]

In other news AT was awarded a 'Hero of the Soviet Union' medal for his tireless work against capitalism. In true Homo sovieticus fashion he was modest "I just hate the bastards and want to see them all working in the salt mines. This medal is not for me, it's for the people."

[Atrocities]

Power to the people baby. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[El_Phil]

Xrati said:
Caught a blurb this morning on TV. It mentioned that Apple was blasting the recording industry for being greedy. Something to the effect that they wanted to raise prices from .99 USD for "downloaded" music. Apple was stating that the recording industry was getting greedy and if they raised their prices that piracy would increase. Here we go again!



Hmmmm (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/03/itunes_royalty_fight/)

Apple is in fact screwing the artists worse than ever. So if the recording industry is greedy, what does that make Apple?

Hypocritical bar stewards I believe.

[Fyron]

That is a problem with the music labels constantly shafting the artists, not necessarily iTunes... Apply pays the fee to RIAA et all, who then dole it out in small chunks to artists.

[El_Phil]

No Apple sets its own rates. Look at the original article, you have the head of Warner Music complaining about Apple. Now you may doubt his motives for complaint, but this is Apple shafting the artists. And the writers as well.

No-body in that industry is particularly nice, but at least the rest aren't that hypocritical. Its breath taking.

[Fyron]

"For all his complaints about iTunes and Steve Jobs, Clark's problem really lies with the labels. iTunes, Napster, Virgin Digital, Wippit and co. are all retailers - performance royalties are negotiated by the labels and artists' managers, not by the retailers."

The pricing Apple dictated was 79 cents to the label and 20 cents to Apple, where the label gives out the standard royalty rate to the artists... The proportions really aren't that much different from CDs sold in physical retailers.

[El_Phil]

I think the whole point is that the artists only get 1/2 the rate (percentage wise) for downloads as CDs.

Given Apples power they could pretty much dictate the pricing, as the labels were panicing mildly at the time they got badly screwed by Apple on that deal. Of course they kept a good cut for themselves (they weren't panicing that much) so it was bad for the performers and writers. They are getting much less than standard %s on iTunes sales, of course this is nothing to do with Apple that isn't my complaint about Apple.

My problem is that Apple got a very good deal to start with and fleeced alot of people. Lets be honest they don't do much, certainly not enough to justify a 20% cut. So with their cut now under threat as the record labels start wondering why Apple gets so much money for so little, they accuse everyone else of greed, when they themselves have spent the last few years being epically greedy.

[Fyron]

Lets be honest they don't do much...

Which is precisely why downloaded songs should have an upper cap of 50 cents, not a dollar, or up to two dollars as some of the labels are pushing for... There is a hell of a lot larger profit margin in them than CDs, and for lower quality sound... Until pricing becomes more reasonable, piracy will not be abated.

[Phoenix-D]

El_Phil said:
My problem is that Apple got a very good deal to start with and fleeced alot of people. Lets be honest they don't do much, certainly not enough to justify a 20% cut. So with their cut now under threat as the record labels start wondering why Apple gets so much money for so little, they accuse everyone else of greed, when they themselves have spent the last few years being epically greedy.



Apple doesn't do much?

They host the servers, make the software, etc..and pay all the bandwith costs! This isn't a trival undertaking.

And, er, lets just say I'm rather more inclined to trust the company that hasn't been convicted of price fixing..in this case that'd be Apple.

[El_Phil]

Phoenix-D said:
Apple doesn't do much?

They host the servers, make the software, etc..and pay all the bandwith costs! This isn't a trival undertaking.

And, er, lets just say I'm rather more inclined to trust the company that hasn't been convicted of price fixing..in this case that'd be Apple.



Software, one off cost and not tricky. Bandwith costs while not trivial aren't even close to 10c for a few meg song. Server hosting, not that expensive given the loading involved. None of that lot is worth 20% of the cost of the song. Does any other online retailer claim such an exorbitant markup? Sure the low value and lack of shipping costs make music a bit different, but not that different.

Well as Apple is running a natural monopoly they don't have to price fix. Macs are over priced for what they are, but as competition is impossible for Mac hardware they can't be done for price fixing.

As I said neither side is particularly good, but only Apple is so hypocritical.

[Fyron]

El_Phil said:
Well as Apple is running a natural monopoly they don't have to price fix. Macs are over priced for what they are, but as competition is impossible for Mac hardware they can't be done for price fixing.

With the move to Intel hardware, this will all change...

[Atrocities]

I want to be a rich record industry producer who is so narcisitic that the only thing that matters to me is ME. If the world is being destroyed around me I would be on the phone to my lawyer trying to sue the aliens for wrecking my way of life or something selfish like that. >(

[El_Phil]

Imperator Fyron said:

El_Phil said:
Well as Apple is running a natural monopoly they don't have to price fix. Macs are over priced for what they are, but as competition is impossible for Mac hardware they can't be done for price fixing.

With the move to Intel hardware, this will all change...



Maybe. Although the only difference hardware-wise between a current Mac and a PC is the motherboard and processor. The rest of a Mac is all wintel off the shelf.

I don't think that getting volume x86 mobos is going to make that big a change to Apples costs or the huge markup they paste on their products. They've spent years saying that not being beige is worth the extra you pay for a Mac, why change now?

[Sivran]

RIAA claim: Sales are down
True.
RIAA claim: Sales are down due to piracy
False.
Actual Reason: Sales are down due to less product being shipped, a deliberate decision on the part of the RIAA.

El_Phil claimed: Apple is screwing artists.
False.
Truth: RIAA is screwing artists. Apple makes no money off of iTunes, every last cent goes into maintaining and improving the service. The RIAA receives the lion's share of the revenue from iTunes, while Apple bears all the costs.

[El_Phil]

I rarely meet people like you. Can I possibly interest you in a Baghdad timeshare? It's a up and coming area, great potential. You'd be foolish to miss out this chance!

Apple is making shedloads from iTunes, there is no way in hell that their costs are that high. Yes other people are making money out of this and the artists are losing out. But claiming Apple makes nothing off this is ridiculous.

[Fyron]

Apple makes their money from selling feature-deprived iPods...

[rdouglass]

I agree wholeheartedly that artists should get a bigger percentage of "the cut" however I'm having a difficult time with most other aspects of this thread.

1. Companies can charge whatever they want for their product. If it only costs $0.00000000001 to make and they can sell it for $1,000,000.00 who are we to say they're charging to much? If we think they're charging too much, we don't buy it. Period. We as consumers should not be dictating what something is priced at but just decide whether it's worth the money or not.

Certain things that can only be derrived from 1 main source (ie. electricity, water, sewer, etc.) are regulated under monopoly and anti-trust regulations and so are not included in the above. But let's face it folks, there is more than 1 company to purchase personal music players and to buy downloadable software.

Apple made the iPod that only works with iTunes and IIRC you can only get the music from their site. They (the iPod) cost more to boot. Why do people buy them? I don't know and actually the reason is irrelevant to this arguement. Regardless, people do buy them because they think they're worth the money. Actually, that's the only reason people buy anything that is a 'discretionary' purchase.

So my point is that using a 'what it costs' arguement to justify 'what is the price' IMO is totally irrelevant and a waste of good thought processes.

2. The artists get ripped off by the production companies.

Hey, don't sign the contract then. Put up your own money to promote, market, master, produce, etc. your own album / single / mp3 / whatever. Develop your own independent label. Definitely not easy and not cheap to do those things. I think a lot of people forget that the production companies take *all* the risk so IMO should get all the reward. Nobody twists anybody's arm (anymore anyways) to sign a recording contract.

The fact of the matter is that record producers make money on a very small percentage of recording artists they sign. A few they make a lot of money from but they are very few. Many of the big ones have their own label so maybe you ought to start putting some of this arguement onto the artists themselves. When was the last time a group with their own label lowered thier prices?

These points have nothing to do with the piracy issue but all to do with some misconceptions about big business.

Big biz always is out to screw the little guy. I don't believe that 'cause there is always 'little guys' out there crying "foul". Just like a car race when the winner's car get's torn down to pieces to see if he's cheating. They never care about the last place car only the first place car.

Bottom line is that we all have a choice in these matters. We can choose *not* to purchase those things we think are unfair / overpriced / socially irresponsible / etc. Apparently too many people have not chosen that option.

(I do not work nor have any affiliations with any recording industry companies whatsoever. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif )

Just IMO...

[Fyron]

rdouglass said:
We as consumers should not be dictating what something is priced at but just decide whether it's worth the money or not.

Supply and demand would argue that consumers play a large part in dictating the price of a product... Anyways, why do you think there is so much "piracy" (which isn't piracy because you aren't raiding any ships to steal cargo for plundering/selling... but I digress) going on? Overpricing is a contributing factor...


Apple made the iPod that only works with iTunes...

You can enable a setting on the iPod to make it act as an external hard drive.


...IIRC you can only get the music from their site.

Any CD can be ripped to iPod compatible format.


The fact of the matter is that record producers make money on a very small percentage of recording artists they sign. A few they make a lot of money from but they are very few...

Well if they would stop trying to shove so much calculated music down everyone's throats, they wouldn't have so many ****ty, money-sucking "artists" to pay for...


Bottom line is that we all have a choice in these matters. We can choose *not* to purchase those things we think are unfair / overpriced / socially irresponsible / etc. Apparently too many people have not chosen that option.

Except for the millions that do not buy music from the big labels anymore, and instead swap it online illegally...

(I do not work nor have any affiliations with any recording industry companies whatsoever. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif )

Just IMO...

[/quote]

[narf poit chez BOOM]

You're missing a point here. Money should go from the publisher to the developer, period.

If Asimov and Joe D. Writer both write for an honest publisher, they both get checks. Asimovs' is bigger, and that's the only difference. And it's bigger because he sold more books. Sure, some writers get more per word. But none of them get nothing.

And artists have been complaining about getting nothing. That is not honest.

You say the publisher takes all the risk. You do realise that the band likely had to quit their jobs, some of which were probably well-paying, to play, and play and play - To go out on the road and play in all sorts of places, many of which you probably wouldn't go in if you didn't have to.

Art takes work. Work takes time. Time is money, in many ways.

[Atrocities]

I hear there is a way now to circomvent the Apple IPOD music code.

[Fyron]

There was a way a few months after it was released... DRM is not a protection of content, just an infringement on just fair use laws.

[rdouglass]

Fyron, I think you missed my point. It was not about whether piracy was wrong or right - it is wrong, no questions asked. My point was about how folks are trying to tell companies what they should charge "because they make too much money".

If these same folks took a little peak into the real business world, they would find that things aren't greener on the other side at all and are *never* that 'cut and dried'.

[rdouglass]

And Narf, the publishers do absolutely take the risk. They are the ones that develop the cover art, send promotional stuff to radio stations and the like, pay for studio time, etc. Yes, band members may quit their jobs but that is not necessary to do any studio work - only when the band goes on the road and the producers don't get much from that.

Oh, but what about the folks that do their own? That is the point. There are independant labels out there but are they charging less for their music. I say "ABSOLUTELY NOT!" They are charging the same as any other record labels. People will pay for it if they think it has value. If not, why in the world would someone wait 3 years to pay $400,000 for a Ferrari when they can buy a Neon this weekend for less than $10,000.

The point is is that folks need to look at the real world and what things *really* cost to produce to do before they make judgements. Stop spending so much time arguing the merits and do some *real* research - not just browse the National Enquirer or other tabloid and make judgements based on that. If not, I'm afraid some folks have a bitter outlook ahead of themselves and I do feel sorry for them.

[Fyron]

All of my opinions on RIAA and music are based directly on "real world research," as are most peoples, even if indirectly. Please do not attempt to dismiss valid arguments with ad hominem attacks. Thanks.

The outlook is indeed bleak... RIAA complained about piracy driving profits down in 2000/2001, when the truth was that raw sales were down because they produced thousands fewer albums in those years by choice. Net profits were in fact up over previous years due to the reductions in production costs...

They produce thousands of talentless "artists" that give them more of the same tripe every year. Maybe if they started employing some quality standards and stopped trying to milk money off of every copycat of even mildly successful music trends each year, they wouldn't lose so much money on utter failures of "bands." But if they want to keep digging their collective graves, that's their problem.

The only difference between boycotting a media/software company over price gouging and other companies is that less scrupulous people can still acquire the "product" (how art can be denegrated to a "product" is beyond me, but I digress) while not purchasing it.

Your example of a Ferrari vs. Neon is irrelevant. There is no "budget" or "luxury" music... An interesting "real world fact" is that it is a lot cheaper to manufacture a CD than a cassette tape, yet CDs still cost more. Digital music downloads are even cheaper (bandwidth for a single quality-degraded album is trivial; SEnet could spend 0.19 cents per song at a generous size of 10 MB per song), yet a digital album costs the same as a physical CD, and they want to charge even more...

I (and many others) don't care so much how much money they make. I care that they are producing a very tiny amount of music amidst a deluge of filth and charging an insane rate for it, even for low cost digital downloads. I care that they are constantly attributing a decline in the indrustry to "piracy" (which it is most certainly not) when profits are at an all time high. Being blatantly lied to is not what I consider conducive to getting my money. I care that they are constantly trying to destroy my fair use rights to use legally purchased music however I want (non-commercially) and trying to prevent me from encoding music however I like so that I am not stuck with unusable formats in 5 or 10 years time (thank you DRM!). et cetra...

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Bands have also complained that the only money they make is going on the road - Nothing from the publisher.

[Fyron]

It's clearly all the band's fault.

[rdouglass]

Your example of a Ferrari vs. Neon is irrelevant.



Actually, I think it is quite relevant. They are both cars yet sell for drastically different amounts. Ferrari's do not cost 1/3 as much to build as they sell for whereas Neon's have a very small markup / margin - probably less than 5%. From my standpoint it was relevant to the point I was trying to make. My point was the selling price really has very little to do with manufacturing costs but rather what people will pay for it.


I care that they are producing a very tiny amount of music amidst a deluge of filth and charging an insane rate for it



Another supporting arguement. Yes it is crap - I totally agree. Yet it sells and makes someone money - sometimes a lot of money. And that crap does not cost much to make vs. what it sells for. Again price has very little to do with cost.


I care that they are constantly trying to destroy my fair use rights to use legally purchased music however I want (non-commercially) and trying to prevent me from encoding music however I like so that I am not stuck with unusable formats in 5 or 10 years time



Of that, I am in total agreement.

[Hunpecked]

rdouglass writes: "...however I'm having a difficult time with most other aspects of this thread."

Except as a consumer, I don't know much about the recording industry (or the whole entertainment business, in fact). However, I have to agree with rdouglass here just on general principles. AFAIK nobody's being forced at gunpoint to record, distribute, or buy music. Since "greed" and "unfairness" are extremely subjective concepts, I'm reluctant to base any regulatory action on someone's interpretation of these terms.

I do know that advancing technology provides more choices for everyone concerned, and that's a Good Thing. I certainly prefer choice to "fair" regulation of the entertainment industry or--God forbid!--the Internet.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

I don't want to regulate the RIAA, I just want to point out the complaints of unfairness have basis.

[Will]

Just some quick comments:

You got things backwards with iPod and iTunes. The iPod will work with any AAC (with or without DRM), MP3, WAV, or Apple Lossless audio file. So, any source which you can get those files, will get you music for iPod. So, iPod will work with other services as long as you can get one of those formats. The iTunes Music Store, however, has only DRM'd AAC audio files, which will only work with iPods unless you break the DRM. So, you have it backwards; iPods can work with lots of different sources, iTunes works only with iPods (unless you circumvent the DRM in some way... like, say, burning a CD then ripping the music back off in another format).

Independant labels actually DO charge less for CDs. Maybe you're just looking at the wrong ones, but I get sub-10$ CDs from independant labels fairly often. You almost never see that from one of the major labels, and when you do, it's when they're trying to dump excess stock. The standard price range for a new release is between 16$ and 20$ for a major label, and it usually drops to around 12$ to 16$ after it's been out for a while.

Songs ARE (marginally) cheaper from downloading on iTunes compared to getting the actual CD. Quick check on prices: new Foo Fighters CD (19.98 list, 17.99 iTunes, 14.99+shipping Amazon), new Gorillaz CD (19.98 list, 12.99 iTunes, 13.29+shipping Amazon), Miles Davis' 'Kind of Blue' (11.98 list, 9.99 iTunes, 9.99+shipping Amazon), Postal Service CD (13.98 list, 9.90 iTunes, 11.99+shipping Amazon), Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' (34.98 list, 25.74 iTunes, 27.99 Amazon). There are a few titles from Amazon that would be cheaper, until you factor in the shipping, or buying enough stuff to get you free shipping.

And finally, the major labels do rip off a lot of the people they sign, mainly because they have a lot of lawyers who know how to make a 'favorable' contract, and the musicians often have little to no legal representation in the process. All the people who sign see is that there's a nice big bonus up front for signing. What they don't see are clauses in the contract that require payment for studio time (taken out of the bonus), pays tiny percentages of CD PROFITS, and locks the people in with that label for a certain amount of time, to prevent any dealings with other labels or attempts at an independant release. So, a contract might look like:
You get 500,000$ up front for signing. Congratulations, you're halfway to being a millionaire! Now, you need to record in this studio. That will be 30,000$ per hour, please. Three months later, you have spent 450,000$ on studio time, doing recording, mixing, and picking out the bits that sound the best. If you want to tour to promote the album, you have whatever is left of the 50,000$ not spent on living for three months. If there are 1,000 copies sold in stores, you get nothing, but the label will sell you a few copies of your own album so you can make a dollar or so for each one you sell personally. After a few months of this, you have none of the initial "bonus", you're lucky to get a few thousand in royalties unless you've hit it big, the money you get from ticket sales almost covers transportation and living costs, and the only thing that lets you have more money than you started with is what you get off selling merchindise. Then, at the end of the year, you have a nice big number for the IRS to look at and tax you on.

The difference with the smaller independant labels is, the musicians get a better cut of REVENUE (not profit), the studio costs are a lot smaller, and are usually in-house, and there are lots of other musicians to tour with to help offset the costs associated with that.

[Fyron]

Hunpecked said:
...I'm reluctant to base any regulatory action on someone's interpretation of these terms....

Who said anything about regulatory action?

[Hunpecked]

Imperator Fyron writes: "Who said anything about regulatory action?"

1. Atrocities: "We should outlaw greed and regulate the Recording industry. Any proofit over X amount would go to the Federal coffers to help pay for computers in every house hold." I suspect he was only semi-serious (outlaw greed?), but there it is.

2. Baron Munchausen: "I'd support a mandatory percentage of the profits being given to the artists before I'd support some sort of 'windfall profits tax' on the music industry." Response to Atrocities.

3. Imperator Fyron: "Which is precisely why downloaded songs should have an upper cap of 50 cents...". Vague, could be interpreted as a voluntary cap (though that might be illegal price fixing), but could also be interpreted as regulatory.

4. Imperator Fyron: "Who said anything about regulatory action ?" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

5. Hunpecked: In the post Fyron replied to. Historically, regulation always starts with complaints, and this isn't the only place I've seen complaints like these. I just thought it was worth pointing out that some remedies can be worse than what they're intended to "fix".

With that in mind, let's get back to the griping. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Wrong topic.

[Fyron]

I figured AT was being sarcastic. BM, yeah, guess he did mention it, though apparently I forgot about it. I wasn't talking about government regulation of any sort, just better pricing schemes from the industry itself.

Voluntary reformating of business models tends to start with griping as well. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Will, while physical CDs might be a few dollars more expensive than downloaded albums today, the labels want to change this and make them cost the same, as they did 2 years ago. Hopefully Apple can keep the lower prices with at least one label...

[Hunpecked]

With regard to volluntary reform, one can always hope. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif