A World Gone Mad, The Anti-Piracy Movement, and Recommended Listening…
Posted January 24, 2008 — in Music News
A World Gone Mad: Giving up control of content and giving it away free are not rational ideas in a market economy, yet everyone is cheering says PC Mag. Has the world gone mad? If you think FREE is a good sensible business model then read the PC Mag article entitled “DRM-Free Music Spells Trouble” that discusses basic principles of content, commerce, and our economy.
Music Biz Pushes Piracy Blame To ISPs: ”Copyright theft has been allowed to run rampant on their networks under the guise of technological advancement,” writes John Kennedy, chair of the IFPI. Paid Content says the music industry will begin to shift the blame for piracy on to ISPs.
Busted: Lil Wayne loves his sex, drugs, and rock n roll and got himself in Lil trouble. He was arrested on drug charges In Arizona.
New Music and Recommended Listening:
Check out the rock act Jet Lag Gemini. The band has toured with Hellogoodbye, The Almost, The Matches, and Halifax. The new CD ‘Fire The Cannons’ was produced by Jon Kaplan (The Starting Line, he Jonas Brothers’) and was released through Doghouse Records on January 22. Listen to the lead single Run This City.
Listen to the track Welcome To Your Doom by newcomers Bright Light Fever. These tracks on myspace are definitely an alternative to the mainstream but they could find an audience in today’s marketplace. The band cites Fugazi among many others as a main influence. More information here…
by newcomers Bright Light Fever
newcomers? they’ve already released an album on stolen transmission/island def jam … hardly ‘newcomers’. but maybe you meant newcomers because they sold 5 copies of their record.
Comment by Charlie Horse — January 24, 2008 @ 3:28 pm
Meh…That PCMag nyyerrd is leaving out an important point in his piece…he’s under the impression that the only way an artist can survive is by selling recorded music.
Couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Comment by Stu Gots — January 24, 2008 @ 3:38 pm
Stu -
I think the article hit the point home. It was about music being free and DRM Free music. The talk of giving music away is really silly. It doesn’t make any sense and defies the laws of economics. If the music sucks, then of course it should be free, but quality always sells..
Comment by rich — January 24, 2008 @ 4:39 pm
I disagree, Rich. Fact of the matter is, recorded music is free. Ain’t no changing that. Time to embrace it and focus on the myriad of other methods of funding a career as a musician.
Regarding the laws of economics - think about this — Economics 101: If there is an unlimited supply of something, the price should be zero.
Comment by Stu Gots — January 24, 2008 @ 9:22 pm
Mixer/Producer Billy Hume explained it to me best. In today’s climate, recorded music is now a Loss Leader, meaning the recordings are made at a loss in order to get music fans to buy concert tickets and merchandise. His example, if Home Depot has a sale on vacuum cleaners, they mark them down at a loss to get people in the stores, who will more than likely buy additional regular-priced items. Let’s face it, music will be free until some kind of legistation is put into place, if ever. Record sales are quickly becoming a thing of the past, so musicians need to focus on playing live, licensing, and selling merch if they hope to make a living at it.
Comment by longino — January 25, 2008 @ 10:17 am
Oh, and great recordings are still the key to being successful. Without them, no one will care anyway!
Comment by longino — January 25, 2008 @ 10:22 am
stu -
I see you point, but disagree with your analogy
Economics 101: If there is an unlimited supply of something, the price should be zero.
correct me if I’m wrong, but i believe you are making a point that we have an unlimited supply of music, therefor the price should be zero.
We have an unlimited supply of water too, but the bottled watered industry is a multi billion dollar industry. Most people dont want to drink tainted or dirty faucet water and are more than happy to cough up 2 to 3 bucks.
Music is the same. If the music is bad, tainted, mediocre it will and should be free. But of course, great songs like pure filtered water should have a price tag.
Great artists that give away free music may as well throw themselves into the unfiltered mucky reservoir.
Comment by rich — January 25, 2008 @ 10:37 am
Water can’t be duplicated with a right click. It’s not that there is an unlimited supply of musicians or songs, but there is no longer a scarcity of recorded music. It has nothing to do with the quality.
Comment by Jon Cole — January 25, 2008 @ 12:06 pm
it has a lot to do with quality and experience. Pricing is always associated with quality.
Comment by rich — January 25, 2008 @ 12:46 pm
So let me get this straight. “If the music is bad it should be given away”. And if the music is good it should be sold for X amount of dollars. With statements like that, no wonder everything is so crazy. The only music that should ever ever be given away is if the ARTIST chose too or the record company is doing some promo or something. Now I can understand up and coming artist giving out some demos because that is the start up cost for any company. But for the industry to just roll over and give it away goes against economic sense. Sitting around waiting for artist to make a living through concerts and t-shirt sales is plain crazy. Obviously these people have never toured. It cost real money just to get in the van, bus whatever and get on the road. I could write a book about it…
Comment by Leslie Breaux — January 25, 2008 @ 1:14 pm
I think saying “the value of music is 0″ is overboard, but not necessary that far off. You can’t ignore that the value of a song has dropped significantly at the hands of quality control & technology. It’s got to make sense for people to buy music & for that to happen the price has got to drop.
The volume spike would, ideally, counteract the price drop (this is when paid downloads would really take off), & then merch & ticket sales still comes in on top of this. If we’re saying music still has a monetary value, the key is getting people participate in the process of buying music again. In my opinion, dropping the price of a song by 75% or so is the only plausible solution.
The ISP solution is only going to push users towards encrypted transfers. In all likelihood, the Pirate Bay’s successor to the torrent will address this & propagate pretty quickly, making all the effort for naught. Litigation & filtering are not the answers. This needs to be addressed from the consumer’s perspective.
Comment by Jon Cole — January 25, 2008 @ 4:14 pm