That Digital Music Service You Love Is a Terrible Business (fortune.com) 240
An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes an article from Fortune:
Rdio goes bankrupt, Pandora hangs out a 'For Sale' sign and then gets rid of its CEO, artists and labels ramp up their criticism of YouTube. Now we have Tidal in acquisition talks with Apple, while Spotify complains about Apple treating it unfairly... the digital music business is becoming an industry in which only a truly massive company with huge scale and deep pockets can hope to compete... Rdio went bankrupt last year in large part because it couldn't afford to make the licensing payments the record industry requires of streaming services. Deezer, a European service, postponed a planned initial public offering partly because its business is financially shaky for the same reason... [Rhapsody] is still racking up massive losses... Spotify has found it almost impossible to make money, primarily because of onerous licensing payments...
[A]ll the available evidence seems to show that the digital-music business, at least the way it is currently structured, simply isn't economic. The only way for anyone to even come close to making it work is to make it part of a much larger company, like Apple or Amazon or Google. That way they can absorb the losses, they have the heft to negotiate with the record industry, and they can find synergies with their other businesses. In other words, music as a standalone business appears to be dead, or at least on life support.
The article links to an essay by a former eMusic CEO arguing high royalty rates make it impossible to have a profitable business, and the music industry "buried more than 150 startups -- now they are left to dance with the giants."
[A]ll the available evidence seems to show that the digital-music business, at least the way it is currently structured, simply isn't economic. The only way for anyone to even come close to making it work is to make it part of a much larger company, like Apple or Amazon or Google. That way they can absorb the losses, they have the heft to negotiate with the record industry, and they can find synergies with their other businesses. In other words, music as a standalone business appears to be dead, or at least on life support.
The article links to an essay by a former eMusic CEO arguing high royalty rates make it impossible to have a profitable business, and the music industry "buried more than 150 startups -- now they are left to dance with the giants."
Uhh... (Score:4, Insightful)
So it seems like there's 2 problems here :
1. These "services" all offer an awful lot of service for free, but have to pay per song played. This is a guaranteed trip to the poorhouse.
2. Those payments per song? They don't go down with scale or time. Google and other internet companies, their cost of delivering service goes down with technology advances and sheer size. It costs google a lot less to deliver gmail service or web searches than when they started.
The only way this can work is if the record labels - who own everything and do not have to pay themselves - offer a service. Kind of how all of the free porn sites who also own most of the porn producers are owned by the same company.
Re:Uhh... (Score:4, Interesting)
The better way this can work is reset copyright back to its original length of time - 14 years, and also set maximum royalties that they can charge for the privilege of their copyright. The industry might suffer a bit (boo hoo), but the artists will come out ahead since self publishing is much easier now. Their royalties would climb dramatically without the industry skimming so much.
Of course the best way is to abolish copyright altogether, and artists get paid for performing their work like the rest of us. Getting paid when a machine plays a recording is ludicrous!
Re:Uhh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course the best way is to abolish copyright altogether, and artists get paid for performing their work like the rest of us. Getting paid when a machine plays a recording is ludicrous!
Hey Anonymous Coward, quick question. My brother is an author. How does he get paid for 'performing' his work?
Re:Uhh... (Score:5, Funny)
The topic was music, but maybe he can sell hats.
Re:Uhh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, nobody actually WRITES music, it's just people on stage singing whatever and playing random notes.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, nobody actually WRITES music, it's just people on stage singing whatever and playing random notes.
Not really - it only sounds that way.
Re: (Score:2)
Did you not read the comment that I replied to? His brother is an author, and he cannot get paid for performing his work. A musician can certainly get paid for performing his work. Unless you are arguing that he meant "music author", in which case - nice try.
In a vain attempt to move the discussion forward, I think perhaps ending copyrights for non-commercial uses would give enough monopoly money to authors while ending the undue burden copyright places on the populace at large. Let the booksellers and Holl
Re: (Score:2)
Did you not read the comment that I replied to? His brother is an author, and he cannot get paid for performing his work. A musician can certainly get paid for performing his work.
Do you actually believe a large number of performers write their own music? Man if you heard any of the original creators of many works sing you'll be booing them off the stage, not asking them to perform.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So instead of allow authors and alike to treat their job as "normal" as any regular job, they should throw themselves at the mercy of a handful of Gates and Bezos and pray their work isn't insulting or too critical for their royal highness.
Well, yes, it worked for a while and got us the Sixtine Chapel and similar, but that's not really the independence any artist should be looking for.
So the basic idea of making "art" a tradeable good so that a composer or author can live from selling his products like any
Re: (Score:2)
Hey Anonymous Coward, quick question. My brother is an author. How does he get paid for 'performing' his work?
The same way artists through the ages have earned a living: Through the patronage of wealthy benefactors.
For musicians, before recording, one way you made money was to charge for live performances. We are coming full circle. Musician who are talented make good money performing live. Recorded music is an advertisement, and cost a lot less to produce and distribute these days.
Re: (Score:2)
The value of "art" is entirely arbitrary, there are many extremely wealthy people who are willing to spend millions on works of art and often do so and this is precisely why some works of art are so expensive. They would be entirely worthless if noone was willing to pay.
On the other hand, production costs are over inflated by various groups demanding huge amounts because they can get away with it. There are many out of work actors who would work for close to minimum wage, which is a lot less than the millio
Re: (Score:2)
My brother is an author. How does he get paid for 'performing' his work?
He could go to Kickstarter and post his ideas, and only write the actual work when the funding is provided. Many authors have done that. I have chipped in to fund a few books that I was interested in. All were eventually published (either on paper or PDF) and I was happy with the result.
Re: (Score:3)
Does your brother expect to be making money from his writing 30 years after he's dead? Because Spotify is still paying royalties for works where absolutely everyone involved in the recording has been dead that long.
If you reform copyrights, you'll have better, more plentiful music.
Re: (Score:2)
If you reform copyrights, you'll have better, more plentiful music.
And you'd have additional incentive for living artists to continue making new works, which is what copyright was intended for after all.
Re: (Score:3)
Another way is serialization. Release a chapter and then when certain funding goals are met, release another chapter. If it's a good book, the funding goal can increase with each chapter released. Authours used to do similar except releasing in a magazine or such.
There's also things like book signings, release a limited amount of signed books, can even print up personalized copies.
Personally I think it would be better to go back to the original 14+14 copyright term and make the authour make a token effort t
Re: (Score:2)
Very few works actually make money and even fewer make money for more then a decade. Good authours would still make money, the best just wouldn't be quite as filthy rich.
Aaaaahahahaha filthy rich authors! hee hee good joke!
Uh
you were joking, right?
Very, very few authors are even wealthy, let alone filthy rich. You get the very occasional one like J.K. Rowling or inexplicably E. L. James, but for the vast majority of authors, even really good ones, writing is not a well paid profession.
And if you're not one
Re: (Score:2)
Of course the best way is to abolish copyright altogether, and artists get paid for performing their work like the rest of us. Getting paid when a machine plays a recording is ludicrous!
Hey Anonymous Coward, quick question. My brother is an author. How does he get paid for 'performing' his work?
By selling books and writing new ones? Do you think he should be paid every time someone reads a chapter of it?
Re: (Score:2)
Step 2: Run VST to turn MIDI instructions into musical tones
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit
Re: (Score:2)
then you make the real money with movie/TV adaptations.
You mean plays, right? I mean; recordings of plays are like recordings of musical performances. In the words of GP: Getting paid when a machine plays a recording is ludicrous!
Re: (Score:2)
You're making a good case for an unconditional basic income. Artists and entrepreneurs would be free to take risks that they can't take today with our almost nonexistent social safety net.
Re: Uhh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Although copyright is not required to sustain a living, it helps. A lot.
However, copyright as it is - effectively indefinite - is basically stealing. From the public.
The entire reasoning for the "limited monopoly," as specified in at least the United States Constitution, is to encourage the development of works for the public benefit. It is by definition for a limited time, because copyright, at its core, is an INFRINGEMENT on the rights of the general population. It is a TOLERATED violation of basic principles laid out there.
As-is, copyright is an abomination, and people who want to suck on it for the rest of their lives and assert dominion over whatever they wrote or sang or belched have made it both dangerous and far more trouble than it was ever worth. Back it down to a duration that will be WELL within the lifetime of most of those who see the work in the first place, and not "maybe my grandchildren if Disney doesn't pay for another extension," and it will contribute to society again. As-is, it's just an impediment to just about everything it was designed to help with, from storytelling to software development to innovation of all kinds. And it is this kind of encroachment that is being used to justify forbidding fixing your tractor, reselling your car, and a host of other ridiculous things. These new stipulations on copyright, however, say nothing of the far more vast damage that it does to other intellectual works. Society is built upon that which came before, and it does it without rental fees. Giving a cut to the person who advanced it is fair. Giving them control in effective perpetuity is anything but.
As a final note, this is usually replied to with, "you wouldn't work for free, would you?" As a matter of fact, I would, if I had the skill. And fortunately for all of us, hundreds of thousands of people do, as is evidenced by this web site, which wouldn't even exist if it weren't for projects like Linux and Apache, which are but a relatively small portion of the wealth of open source software available. And if you look around the Internet, there is plenty more talent to contribute that in fact does it out of love, only it doesn't have the corporate backing to dump it in everyone's face, nor the corporate lawyers to ruin the lives of anyone who even looks at them funny.
Rights (Score:2)
This whole problem could be boiled down to the fact that Corporations are allowed to own the "rights" to Copyright. It is fabulously profitable. They lobby for it. Artists want to keep it, because they can get a big payday. Corporations transfer rights to other corporations...
This would all be solved by either caps on the term of copyright to something reasonable, say 10 or 20 years, or by simply not allowing a corporation to hold rights to copyright. If they want to sell your song, they pay a human to do s
Re: (Score:2)
simply not allowing a corporation to hold rights to copyright.
And there was never a good movie ever made again. Nor commercial OS or software. No financial incentive to create anything beyond the scope of one man.
Re: (Score:2)
making a living off the arts is like winning the lottery.
There's too much free/discounted stuff out there for the masses to want to pay top dollar for something that can be easily acquired for free.
Just because there's free art out there doesn't mean that's why people aren't buying. I don't buy CDs or books because I find them inconvenient, but that doesn't mean I'm replacing them with something that's free. I don't buy paintings either, because I don't find them interesting. In fact, there's a lot of 'art' (be it a painting, book, film, photograph, song, poem, etc.) that gets produced that nobody finds interesting. The reason it's hard to make a living as an artist is the same reason it's hard to ma
Re: (Score:3)
And what if he isn't a playwright?
Re: (Score:2)
How about i clean your toilet once for free, and you keep paying me a royalty every time you use the toilet for the next 70 years?
Re: (Score:2)
The barrier to entry is basically zero. From bandcamp, to cd baby and tunecore, right now it's ridiculously easy to self publish. There is no barrier to self publishing. And we're still not making any money.
There's a bit more to it than just publishing and recording.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Reality is they are all fucked. Too much old content preserved and available to compete against new content. For some reason the corporate delusion is people will continue to buy content like cheetos no matter how much content they already, think what the cheetos market would be if they could be recovered and reused infinitely.
Sure like the sick adults they are, they can target minors for their pocket money, with new content, which the minors are fooled into believing they pathetic losers if they do not
Re: (Score:2)
The only way this can work is if the record labels - who own everything and do not have to pay themselves - offer a service.
One service offered by labels is relationships with vehicular listening platforms that do not require a cellular data subscription, namely FM stations and SiriusXM. (SiriusXM requires a subscription, but the annual rate is less than that of a typical postpaid cellular data plan.)
I make an educated guess that another such service is familiarity with a large repertoire of music. Clearance personnel in a label and/or its affiliated music publisher might help review your songs to catch having accidentally copie
Re: (Score:2)
> 1. These "services" all offer an awful lot of service for free, but have to pay per song played.
How come there is no free (pirate) P2P music streaming service, or at least no popular one? Build it on top of the existing torrent network or something similar so you don't have to start from scratch, add a distributed database so you know where each song is, and tada... is it that difficult?
Re: (Score:3)
The only way this can work is if the record labels - who own everything and do not have to pay themselves - offer a service.
I don't get why Apple doesn't just buy the 4 major labels and be done with it. Seriously, Apple has more in spare change than the value of the entire music industry combined.
Re: The real solution (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah about that: I've worked at companies with millions of indie tracks. No one listened to them. Our top tracks mirrored the top 100, and all the cool indie stuff? Not even a blip.
Re: (Score:3)
I think the finance managers at the streaming services should re-think their strategies. Putting aside free, ad-supported playback for the moment, they seemed to think that $10 or $12 per month was a "sweet spot" - the point at which consumers were happy to pay, without frightening them off to a cheaper service. It seems obvious that wasn't enough to cope with the licencing/royalties set by the CRB.
I was a Live365 subscriber, listening to stations that *weren't* full of material by well-known artists - I li
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You don't understand. If they start charging their subscribers more, the media companies will also increase their license fees and the company will have the same issue but with less profit for itself (fewer subscribers) and more profit for the media companies (their only expense is negotiating the contract). I don't understand why they want all streaming companies to die, but they are purposely killing them. Considering this drives more people to pirating, I'm even more confused. Maybe they make more mo
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't understand why they want all streaming companies to die, but they are purposely killing them
There are a number of reasons why this is the case. To touch on but a few briefly...
Re: (Score:2)
The problem for a lot of these services is that their audience is young and doesn't have much money, but does have lots of time and lots of alternatives.
I'd love to know how subscription charges compare to ad revenue. Commercial radio stations obviously make ad revenue work for them, while offering much less choice.
So what? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
By calling them dot-coms and using the phrase e-commerce, you sounds like a throwback to the 90s! On the other hand, it fits really well. So... yeah.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly this. Netflix, a similar business, had figured out they needed leverage, so they started to produce their own content to draw a user base. They use that to negotiate more favorable deals with content providers. Valve did the same with Steam (though they started with their own content out of the gate). Nintendo did the same ages ago, etc.
1. Stop whining.
2. Get a better vision and understanding of business and competition.
3. Profit!
RIAA and MPAA shoot own foot (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead of working closely with the smaller companies to create a diverse and competitive market, their predatory (legal) and greedy (bad business) tactics caused the shutdown of many music startups, angering music lovers, and ultimately, they are shooting themselves in the foot because when only have Apple and Amazon to deal with, they will:
1. Negotiate terms that leave the music industry with lower profits
2. Eventually launch their own music labels, mimicking what Netflix did with Movies & TV series, to create further leverage
Re: RIAA and MPAA shoot own foot (Score:4, Interesting)
I saw an interview very recently with one of the popular bands. The band's leader said they used to make no money at all from touring. Touring was done mostly to promote your music (and get in touch with your fan base, sleep with groupies, etc), and money was made primarily from record sales. Now, he says, they make most of their money from ticket sales during tours.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah unless they play in large venues, where the scalpers and concession owners are the ones making money since a shitload of seats are reserved for season pass or VIP box customers. Or in small venues, where the landlord/owner is the one making money with booze and food sales. And don't forget the people that inject themselves between the band and the venue, like those event app startups who take a cut for printing tickets and posting facebooks.
What's left? Merch. And I'm surprised there's not yet a startu
Re: (Score:2)
Tell me about it. I just experienced this recently. I purchased tickets to a Kraftwerk event here in Los Angeles. I purchased the tickets almost two months ago, and the event is in September. Despite the huge amount of time between the purchase and the event itself (and this is Kraftwerk, an obscure German band, not something like Taylor Swift), we discovered most tickets have already been purchased by professional scalper companies.
If Kraftwerk really wanted, they would hire a small management company and
Re: (Score:2)
Re: RIAA and MPAA shoot own foot (Score:4, Insightful)
There are many reasons to have zero sympathy for the music industry. You don't have to be a kid to appreciate that the labels are ultimately reaping what they've sown.
They really are the real thieves here.
Re: (Score:3)
There are many reasons to have zero sympathy for the music industry. You don't have to be a kid to appreciate that the labels are ultimately reaping what they've sown.
They really are the real thieves here.
It would be impossible to launch an industry invigorating service like MTV, or VH1 today. Dunno whether the coke addled their brains somewhere along the line, but today's music industry leaders are worried about every play garnering money for the industry leaders.
And it isn't working. It might have something to do with the requirements shifting from musical talent to pretty pretty, with autotune making everyone's voice sound the same, with ADHD hook ridden music, with scizophrenic lyrics that make 1970's
Luckily music files are relatively small (Score:2, Insightful)
Easy to pirate, easy to store. No excuse for people to not already have a large personal music collection.
Re: (Score:2)
That's just another reason to explain the difficulty companies are having at this whole idea of "selling music". Why buy the new stuff when you already have copies of the originals that the modern remakes are based off of?
In any media format, you eventually get to the point where you've seen it all before and you would rather just consume the earlier works.
Re: (Score:2)
Here's something original that you likely never heard: https://youtu.be/AS6AA6Pe2lo?t... [youtu.be]
Re: (Score:2)
Try searching for 'Mr Methane' to get you started.
Mister Methane stinks.
Who would have thought? (Score:2)
That business where Pandora lets people stream music for free isn't making much money? Holy crap!
Re: (Score:2)
Remember that business where companies stream video programming over the airwaves ... It seems to be doing OK.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Pandora has 2 options: 1. Paid subscription, 2. Ad supported.
So, yes, Pandora does have ads.
What's so terrible about Bandcamp? (Score:5, Interesting)
What's so terrible about Bandcamp (which is the digital music service I love)?
They seem to be doing pretty good [bandcamp.com], they're growing as well as being profitable.
Best part (IMO) is that they also have lots of artists saying they appreciate Bandcamp. Here are some comments from that blog post:
Bandcamp is the greatest platform for independent artists. I am glad to be a part of it, without it getting new fans would be difficult.
We release small independent music compilations since three years here on BC. We worked together with more than 200 artists in these years. The most of them publish their music on BC too. I can confirm: More people buy the music on BC. That is what the musicians say in talks. And even our pay what you want releases have a really good perfomance.
I've bought a lot of really great music on Bandcamp, the artists like it. So yeah, what's so terrible again?
Re: (Score:2)
And the money goes straight to the artists, minus a straight percentage cut for Bandcamp. Very transparent, no odd rip-off clauses and greedy record companies involved.
There's two terms to the equation (Score:4, Interesting)
When examining whether a business is, or can become, profitable - you can't just look at expenses. You have to look at the income side too.
The submitter, and the linked articles, signally fail to do so.
Re: (Score:3)
When examining whether a business is, or can become, profitable - you can't just look at expenses. You have to look at the income side too. The submitter, and the linked articles, signally fail to do so.
With physical goods the price will rise with general costs to maintain a margin because consumers have to buy their groceries somewhere. For digital music consumers could always go back to piracy, I'm pretty sure the digital music companies have already found the sweet spot for what people will pay for convenience.
Um... muscians have always been screwed (Score:2)
RIP live365 (Score:2)
Had a couple prog rock channels I'd listen to as well, but the old time radio seemed to be my go to thing.
Posting to undo wrong mod (Score:3, Interesting)
Posting to undo a mis-clicked mod.
Arbitrage (Score:3)
Introducing the EvilViper Streaming Music Service.
Front-end looks just like Pandora/iHeartRadio/etc. But on the back-end, it searches all the MP3s on your device to see if you already locally have the song it was going to play. If so, file is played locally, not streamed. No bandwidth is used, and no royalties need to be paid. Customers appreciate the superior sound quality, less cellular data usage, and fewer pauses between songs.
In addition, when you like/thumbs-up a song, in the background it is PURCHASED as an MP3 from Amazon or similar. You don't notice the purchase, but you now own the song. Repeated plays cost nothing. If your device is reset, or you use the music service on a different device, the songs you purchased are first downloaded from Amazon and playback resumes.
The EvilViper Streaming Music Service will also make deals with smaller and independent artists and labels. Those who offer the cheapest terms will see their songs featured more prominently, and repeated more often (until/unless customers vote not to hear them again), at the expense of a little less big-name music, for a big savings.
Re: (Score:2)
Sign me up!
Re: (Score:2)
IF:
* the app had configurable limits for local storage and purchases
* it started with non-RIAA artists only (yes, painful, but worth it in the long run if you survive)
* it had a rating system with novelty, similarity, and unique user request frequency per day
* it cut out Amazon - have your own secured cloud service
* you charge for a resync (it's only fair, to cover your storage and bandwidth costs), keep the cost low but still profitable. Bandwidth and storage aren't that expensive.
THEN I think you could h
My music service is still there (Score:2)
... and still run by the founder. Magnatune [wikipedia.org] ... I love it and have gigabytes of their music, much of which is regularly played..
Just change the model to match the money coming in (Score:3)
I've said this all along.
Say Spotify gets $10 a month from you, they take $5 for themselves and their expenses then they just divide the other $5 up evenly between whatever artists you listened to weighted by number of songs and time. Don't "pay per play" instead "pay what's available". If you only listened to one artist in that month, that artist would get all $5, even if you listened to only one song.
Then Spotify is simply guaranteed $5 a month, and royalty fees take care of themselves.
The service I would pay for (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Because you want more to be created.
Re:Pay for music? (Score:4, Interesting)
So you realy dont know many musicians do ya? They are going to do their thing regardless.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, they'll try. But 'doing your thing' around the constraints of a day job and 'doing your thing' as a professional artist will yield two very different results.
Re: (Score:2)
We've seen more than enough of the second...it sucks balls.
Everything good in the last 30 years has been done by independent labels with bands full of people working day jobs.
You can keep the Beiber.
Re: (Score:3)
Who are those 9-to-5 day job indy artists you like so much?
Labels FIND artists, PRODUCE quality sound, PROMOT (Score:3)
There are more unsigned artists than there are artists signed to record labels. A great many, probably most, artists stream their stuff for free. MySpace is no longer a general social networking site, it's a million bands giving away their"music free or almost free.
Since most music is not made by record labels, why do people seek out the music produced by labels? Apparently there is something of value there, Maroon 5, Justin Bieber etc have many more fans than Leannasaurus Rex. Why do people want the mus
Re: (Score:2)
Since most music is not made by record labels, why do people seek out the music produced by labels? Apparently there is something of value there,
Time largely. I don't have all day to research out music that I would like to hear. So for years, we trusted that the major labels would sift through the dross and bring to us good music.
But this is no longer true. Modern Pop music is pretty people who may or may not be able to sing. Dancing is more important to pop music today than music. Coupled with ADHD hooks and psychotic lyrics, it's obvious that the trust is broken. And this trend of marketing to 12 year olds, either in age or intellect, has gone
For some reason that reminds of (Score:2)
I wonder if you have an idea why approximately nobody (well under 1% of listeners) prefer that great music recorded with nothing but a tape recorder, with no post-production work? Virtually everyone inside buys or unlawfully aquires the heavily produced studio work.
Anyway, your comment reminded me of "Million Dollar Quartet". Itcs a raw recording from the famous Sun studios with no production work. The artists are Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash . If you like raw recordings
Re: (Score:2)
So you realy dont know many musicians do ya? They are going to do their thing regardless.
No, they won't, not when they have to be realistic and realise that their passion will just put them into debt. Getting involved with the music industry is a path to poverty.
Re: (Score:2)
I never said they were rational and yes many of them will spend all their spare cash etc into the hobby.
Re: (Score:2)
I never said they were rational and yes many of them will spend all their spare cash etc into the hobby.
How many musicians do you know?
Re: (Score:3)
Seriously...pay for music?
Why would I do that?
I have a Google Play Music family account. This gives me, my partner, our siblings and one parent access to service for AUD$18 per month. It also gives all of us ad-free YouTube Red as part of the package.
I work in a fairly relaxed office environment in which I'm allowed to listen to music over headphones. I also have a pretty eclectic taste in music, so I like to switch beats depending on my mood or what I'm working on. It also lets me discover new artists.
So all in all, I think it's a fantastic service
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously...pay for music?
Why would I do that?
Because the musicians had to pay around $250000 to record it. Most of them have been saddled with a massive debt to be able to get that music to you and at the end of the day, they won't have copyright or even possession of their own IP.
Don't read this as support for the music industries business model, it isn't. You asked why you should pay, that's why. They have conditions that would make most programmers laugh and walk away.
To give you an idea what it is like for a musician, imagine being told that t
Re: (Score:2)
To give you an idea what it is like for a musician, imagine being told that to write a computer program you were told that to write code for something you wanted to do, you needed to take out a loan, you would have to code on something out of your control, you would not own the copyright and when it was complete, not only would you not have possession of the source code, you would have to pay the record industry back for your labor.
Yet for every one 'artist' that realises it's a massive con and rejects it there are a thousand more before behind ready to take the arm and all.
Re: (Score:2)
Yet for every one 'artist' that realises it's a massive con and rejects it there are a thousand more before behind ready to take the arm and all.
Sorry friend, I've read this about 10 times trying to understand what you mean and I am at a loss.
It's irrelevant what the artists do, they are subject to the music industry model as it is. The larger issue being that the music industry quite happily subverts the rights of everyone so they are subservient to their property 'rights'.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It means for every band that rejects the industry there are a lot more behind that will sign without a second thought only to find them selves in the grinder afterwards.
ok, so is that the justification not to pay for music?
Of course it matters what the artists do. Without them the labels have no product.
The labels have TV shows to manufacture artists so that they have more control. It pretty much guarantees you will get shit music.
Ok, there's not much can be done now or about the stuff they already have but say for arguments sake new talent stopped signing and everyone self published. That would be a completely different landscape.
That would be a completely different business model and more likely to attract better artists. Would you participate in a new model and buy music from artists that were self signed, so to speak?
Let's say it was an app of some kind and you downloaded the app which contained the music - would you buy it if it was something you
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Because if you download a song (or torrent an album, or copy a friend's CD, whatever) to keep it and listen to it more than once, you have conceded that it has value to you.
What's left is negotiation about the amount.
Unless you think that artists *owe* you their efforts?
Re:Pay for music? (Score:5, Insightful)
Mozart had to take on private students to pay his bills, so can Justin Bieber, if he can find any paying students.
Musicians getting rich was a historical aberration caused by the technology of the day. They can all get day jobs and cover their beer with tips when playing at night for all I care.
Re: (Score:2)
And if you don't want to support them, then you can listen to your dad's favorite music, for all they care.
Re: (Score:2)
Kids have been listening to their Dad's favorite music, on car radios, ever since car radios were invented.
Re: (Score:2)
And if you don't want to support them, then you can listen to your dad's favorite music, for all they care.
I have friends in bands, they get paid next to nothing yet still do it because they love it. I'm pretty sure if millionaire musicians went away there would still be new music. In fact there would probably be better music because it would only be musicians doing, not fame-whores.
Re: (Score:2)
I hope to steal your work someday.
That is, if you work.
Go right ahead, most people don't do the work once then expect to keep getting paid from it.
Re:blind spot (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:blind spot (Score:4, Insightful)
...and a lot of that music was distributed for free.
Free distribution of media has pretty much existed since the beginning of time for the sake of this discussion. Commercial supported content began about a week after the first radio station went on the air.
There are bands that I have enjoyed for years without pirating or paying one red cent. That's because "free music" is in fact nothing new. The only reason that Pandora is having a hard time is that the music industry decided to be leeches this time rather than paying to promote artists.
This whole getting paid versus paying makes a big difference.
Re: (Score:2)
The content belongs to the artists and the publishers.
That is a very rare circumstance. Most of the time the publishing rights and the 'content' (or IP being the pre-produced stems of the recordings) belong to the record company who paid the artists and advance.
It's the shittest business model ever - where the record industry rips off the artists who created the music and then treats the fans like theives. The entire music industry is on the verge of collapse and all it can do is get worse.