Speaker: Copyright Must Change
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Response to Sheppard's opinion piece by Greg Cotmore, former Radio Active programme director. Mark Harris will enjoy the reference to Darwin, and I quite like this from comment#4:
The MP3 format was created in early 1994, and with the proliferation of high speed broadband into homes in the late '90s it was clear that the horse had bolted. Not only bolted, but well and truly down the road taking up residence in a greener paddock and sire to a number of healthy yearlings.
And I can just picture the conversation in the RIANZ head office more than a decade later:
Recording Exec: "I've got an idea. Lets make it illegal to open stable doors" -
It makes the same mistake as a lot of the reaction to Shepherd's piece, in that it supposes that he is still running Flying Nun, which I don't think he has since Warners bought Festival.
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It makes the same mistake as a lot of the reaction to Shepherd's piece, in that it supposes that he is still running Flying Nun, which I don't think he has since Warners bought Festival.
it also faulters on the issue of if technology makes it possible to do something we see as a crime should we then make that crime legal?
My matter transporter moral question from miles back trying to frame the issue from a different perspective to illuminate and which everyone avoided contemplating.
If technology made it possible for us to remove physical objects from peoples houses would we attempt to control said technology or simply shrug our shoulders, say the horse has bolted and accept it.
also Roger is a music industry adviser now. he doesn't run a record company but he has experience with the business of working to make projects break even and or turn a profit. That's not nothing.
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Instead of sitting on their laurels counting the royalties they receive after the record company takes its percentage, many artists are resorting to going out on the road to earn a living. Just like in the days before the record companies took over.
oh god, please stop with the cliches. this is ridiculous rubbish. he has no idea what is involved in a recording project.
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It makes the same mistake as a lot of the reaction to Shepherd's piece, in that it supposes that he is still running Flying Nun, which I don't think he has since Warners bought Festival.
Roger has been out of FN since the mid 1990s.
Myself, I think the piece is far more flawed than Roger's and far more naive. Whilst I didn't agree with much of Roger's argument there is substantive life left in the recording industry. Somebody still has to make and market those records he wants to listen to and plenty of acts who are profitable recording wise. What's changed is not that a label can't make money, it's that it can't expect to exist and exploit it's properties as it has for decades, but to say
In a digital world, this is kaput.
Is just twaddle. It's a very ill informed rant.
I wanted to have a browse but you have to give your credit card to look through the site.
Not in my experience. I'm a subscriber but I've browsed it on other computers several times. Gotta say Rob, I'm amazed you've not had a look at eMusic. It's perfect for what you do.
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oh god, please stop with the cliches. this is ridiculous rubbish. he has no idea what is involved in a recording project.
Pretty much what I was thinking.
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I'm amazed you've not had a look at eMusic. It's perfect for what you do.
I talked to people who used it early on and said the payout to artists was pretty low. if they're charging 30 cents a track that's how much for the artist/label?
2 dollars a track is ridiculous but 30 cents is a bit precarious too.
I was looking for something in the middle.I also feel terrible about selling someone a shitty low quality rendition of a recording. at least with a cd you have the option of a full quality track ripped to your listening device, supporting art and information, but that's just the sound engineer in me.
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It's a very ill informed rant.
It certainly is.
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if they're charging 30 cents a track that's how much for the artist/label?
I think that the artist has the right to expect that you will offer their product to as wide an audience as possible (almost as a use it or lose it philosophy as the Europeans are currently proposing). A few CDs here and there in this digital world doesn't really count (and yes I know I'm still guilty of that but geographic issues are my excuse...like you I want to present the best possible audio quality). Myself, I think you almost have an obligation to take a catalogue to somewhere like this. It's pretty hard to complain about piracy if it ain't on offer
Plenty of sites offer a 320kbs option to the purchaser too, but most people are satisfied with the 192kbs offered by eMusic.
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Myself, I think you almost have an obligation to take a catalogue to somewhere like this. It's pretty hard to complain about piracy if it ain't on offer
It's damning that the first record released on Flying Nun is available on eMusic (along with all Roy Montgomery's solo work) -- but only because Siltbreeze re-released the Pin Group recordings. If it were left up to Warners, it would be as unavailable as most of the rest of the FN catalogue. Grrrr ...
Although I might win Lotto today, so I'll buy the FN catalogue and sort it all out.
Plenty of sites offer a 320kbs option to the purchaser too, but most people are satisfied with the 192kbs offered by eMusic.
eMusic's rips sound pretty good to my ears -- better than iTunes sounded before "iTunes Plus".
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I think that the artist has the right to expect that you will offer their product to as wide an audience as possible
applied in context of course. offering an item to as wide an audience as possible could mean releasing it free to bit torrent sites, that gets to everyone doesn't it.
But it ignores the economic imperatives of the process. if you do that then you ain't going to be doing the next recording cos you're essentially burning your money.is 15 cents a track a viable prices to get?
do you offer your stuff via emusic and what is normal return for a reasonably obscure but famous in nz track. like maybe a meemees track.also those questions from yesterday.
what stuff are you working on at the moment simon?
how have things changed for you working in the label game today to what it was like 20 years ago?
are you seeing the financial results at the end of the line in similar or better amounts compared to similar acts you maight have been involved with in past years, ie is it getting better or worse on the returns front?reason I ask is it helps to put things in a real world perspective if we get real world figures and answers, or else we end up talking in circles like Greg Cotmore and his myth of music.
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But it ignores the economic imperatives of the process. if you do that then you ain't going to be doing the next recording cos you're essentially burning your money.
is 15 cents a track a viable prices to get?
It's a hell of a lot better than the alternative, which is likely nothing. Really, you have to get your stuff out into as many outlets as possible and when digital is such a massive part of the pie in 2009, and going to grow I can't ignore, and I'd say neither should you, the outlets that will get to to an audience millions of times larger than that corner dairy equation you used earlier.
That's one of the things that fucked the music industry, thinking they could get more all the time. In 2000 they were offered a massive cut of Napster, with 26 million fans already tied in to it and they, especially Doug Morris, the head of Universal, were greedy and lost the lot, until Jobs came along and offered iTunes, by which time they were thorough freaked out and rolled over without a fight. All that stuff is the real story of how the recording industry fucked it, not tilting at piracy windmills.
My old stuff will be up on eMusic mid year-ish...and iTunes and a few other places.
I'm working on a few bits which I don't really wanna go into, but mostly I'm an observer with a few vested interests, and a bit of an understanding, like you, of how it works.
Most of the income I get comes from sync, performance and comps but then that's way much catalogue income is derived even for the big boys. Selling a CD is nice but that CD is often no longer the valuable part of the equation, which Greg Cotmore doesn't get at all.
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which everyone avoided contemplating
Because the number of people willing to keep rasing false equivalences despite being told repeatedly they are unwarranted is thankfully close to zero. How about we make it zero?
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My old stuff will be up on eMusic mid year-ish
keen to hear how that works out. I've talked to some who had stuff on there and the returns were infinitesimal, ben howe was quite pleased with the work ioda were doing for him but that really highlights the importance of a good distro/aggrigator.
Greg Cotmore doesn't get at all.
that and the whole t-shirts gigs rubbish.
if that's an acceptable business model I'll look forward to bumping into islander on her book reading tour. -
How about we make it zero?
I get that you like to speak for people that haven't asked for you to speak for them, and that you don't do lateral or extrapolation when it isn't about your own personal world view, but ..... the link to an article by an ill informed radio dude speaking about things he has little experience of was worthwhile and enjoyable. can we have more of that?
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Hilarious.
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Hilarious
someone has to be, you're so letting your team down
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The story of Taylor Swift is instructive.
She was the biggest-selling artist in America last year, having succeeded in making country music cool with teenage girls.
She's on Big Machine Music, an indie founded by a former Dreamworks executive (distribution by Universal). RCA missed out on signing her when she was 15 because it wouldn't let her write her own songs.
Her label did innovative things: exclusive CDs with both Target and Wal-mart, and putting her debut album on eMusic, where it was the best-selling release for what seemed like months (she even got the nod from Lenny Kaye!). She is now officially freaking huge. I don't think a major label would have gotten her there.
There's an interesting bit about eMusic here.
Killer fact: for a while there at the beginning of the decade, Universal owned eMusic. It wasn't until it was onsold to a private capital management company that it started to work.
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anyone know anyone who has stuff on emusic and what an average return for their effort is? simon? russell?
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Renderers and Terminals stuff is up there. Lots of Roy Montgomery. I'd be astonished if any of them were getting big fat pay-cheques. But it does mean the music is out there, and it's certainly better than nothing.
Emusic gets several things right. First up, if you're competing with free- and if you're in Mark's paradigm of abundance rather than scarcity- you need to sell cheap. The emusic account I had was US$9.99 a month for 30 tracks, which really is very cheap. But no stock or retail rental...
Other pluses: a pretty good interface, stuff is easy to find (mostly)and like amazon et al, it lets you browse around other people's preferences- who perhaps like a few of the same things. There are user generated reviews, as well as "staff picks".
There's also a very wide range of music available.
I quit my subscription for a range of reasons: 30 songs a month was too much new music; I didn't have time to research enough stuff I loved; there's no back catalogue of majors to just dip into as well to use up those downloads; some key things I wanted- kiwi stuff- was available everywhere else, but not in NZ; the credit card company was probably making more than the bands... and emusic so often offer freebiue sign-up deals that it's probably even cheaper to opt out every few months, and take up again with extras!
If they had some major's catalogue, it'd be huge. If you know your independent music, it's a treasure trove. It's a great way to earn an honest buck. But it doesn't feel to me like anyone is getting rich. -
This has been a most fascinating thread but - despite occaisional quoting of my name & position - it ultimately has diddlysquat to do with me & my personal state/stance. Print copyright really is different from music (or visual) copyright.
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it ultimately has diddlysquat to do with me & my personal state/stance. Print copyright really is different from music (or visual) copyright.
Apology Islander. Not trying to take your name in vain at all.
I was trying to highlight the insanity of expecting any artist in a non performance medium (and I think writing literature and recorded music are non performance mediums). Yes you can read your book and yes it is possible to establish a band an perform a recorded work (many are not performed live in the studio by an established line up) but to devalue the written or recorded work with the argument that the artist can just get out on the road and perform those works to make up for the loss of income from hard copy forms of their work is just bollocks. That was my point. not that I think writers should hit the highways to cover for piracy. -
Renderers and Terminals stuff is up there. Lots of Roy Montgomery.
I'd be really interested to know what a standard sort of payout is for them.
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Point taken, robbery ( and I totally agree with those comments - all best n/n me
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sorry. uncompleted sentence in a bizzarre cut and paste mistake from above
should readI was trying to highlight the insanity of expecting any artist in a non performance medium (and I think writing literature and recorded music are non performance mediums) to get out and hit the road .
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