Download Uproar: Record Industry Goes After Personal Use

[I_H8_Crawford]

So where were they when my brother was transferring songs from his record to his tapes so he could listen to them in his car or on his ghetto blaster???

Guess they can nail me too; back in HS I transferred songs from CD to a tape to play in the car.

Funny that they didn't make a big stink about it back then...

[Burninator]

Ugh. The more I read about these regulations/laws and lawsuits the less I want to purchase music legally. The last music I bought was the newest Radiohead album. Suing a student for transferring legally purchased music onto his computer is punishing the innocent. I can't even comprehend what this organization is trying to prove with this bone head move. Obviously they want absolute control over their music, something that is totally impossible this day (or any) and age.

What this is doing is putting a sour taste in peoples mouths and encouraging downloading. This lousy organization suffers, record companies suffer and the artist suffer. How come more artists aren't speaking out against this kind of stuff? Or are they blinded by the propaganda that this will lead them to make more money?

[ricosuave]

Originally Posted by fotze

This will be as successful as the campaign to stop Fotze from masterbating.

edited

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Burninator

What this is doing is putting a sour taste in peoples mouths and encouraging downloading. This lousy organization suffers, record companies suffer and the artist suffer. How come more artists aren't speaking out against this kind of stuff? Or are they blinded by the propaganda that this will lead them to make more money?

I think you're slowly going to see more artists go their own route, and sell the CDs through their website.

But its funny how idiots like Prince think suing 12 year olds will actually help him make more money.

[Bobblehead]

A quote from Thom York I read today:

In terms of digital income, we've made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever — in terms of anything on the Net. And that's nuts.

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/m...urrentPage=all

[kermitology]

The only artists who care about downloading are the ones who have profit sharing deals with their label. Metallica was so prominent in the fight against downloading because they were receiving 10 times what most bands get from CD sales (which is probably around 15 cents per album)

Embrace the new age and you can make even more (as Thom Yorke has pointed out)

[Flamescupbound!]

Originally Posted by Bobblehead

A quote from Thom York I read today:http://www.wired.com/entertainment/m...urrentPage=all

Wow, that's exceptional considering Fortune reported that 62% of people decided to pay nothing, and the remaining 38% averaged just $6. In fact, they rated the idea as one of the 101 dumbest business decisions of 2007. Must of sold an incredible number of downloads to surpass their previous albums.

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/...ortune/59.html

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by Flamescupbound!

Wow, that's exceptional considering Fortune reported that 62% of people decided to pay nothing, and the remaining 38% averaged just $6. In fact, they rated the idea as one of the 101 dumbest business decisions of 2007. Must of sold an incredible number of downloads to surpass their previous albums.

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/...ortune/59.html

the quote is misleading..he said digital income..which in the past they hadnt had any at all in their deals...so even if they one person paid 10 bucks, its still more "digitally speaking" than they have made in the past

[Resolute 14]

My understanding is that the artist receives a pittance from the label on album sales anyway. Doing it directly, even if the you only make a little over $2 on average from every download probably means they aren't losing anything, even if 62% choose to download for free. That statement by Radiohead really argues at just how much overhead the label slaps onto CDs.

[burn_baby_burn]

Originally Posted by kermitology

The only artists who care about downloading are the ones who have profit sharing deals with their label. Metallica was so prominent in the fight against downloading because they were receiving 10 times what most bands get from CD sales (which is probably around 15 cents per album)

Embrace the new age and you can make even more (as Thom Yorke has pointed out)

One would think that a band as huge as Metallica could go in alone and rake it more than they ever dreamed.

I heard Jon Bon Jovi on Stern this summer. He said the music album was dead. Stern asked him how he was going to earn a living. "Touring" was his reply.

[Barnes]

Originally Posted by burn_baby_burn

.........

I heard Jon Bon Jovi on Stern this summer. He said the music album was dead. Stern asked him how he was going to earn a living. "Touring" was his reply.

This has been true for a long time now though. Maybe artists are finally realizing that labels are ripping off consumers as well as the artists.

[habernac]

Originally Posted by Barnes

This has been true for a long time now though. Maybe artists are finally realizing that labels are ripping off consumers as well as the artists.

I think most of them have known that for a long time.

[burn_baby_burn]

Originally Posted by fotze

I think the problem is that when a young band signs, they have absolutely zero bargaining power, because its highly unlikely they will go anywhere without the label, so they sign this awful one-sided deals fro 12 albums if the label chooses to release them.

Thats just it. A lot of the Bands being mentioned in this thread that are offering their own music for sale are well established artists that are hugely poular and have been around for years. They have the money and the fanbase to be able to market their own material. The young band just starting out needs funds to not only produce an album. But to get promoted as well. Its easy to say bands should just sell their own stuff. What does the new guy do?

[Bobblehead]

Thom Yorke full admits that in that article:

Byrne: And that works for you guys. You have an audience ready. Like me — if I hear there's something new of yours out there, I'll just go and buy it without poking around about what the reviews say.

Yorke: Well, yeah. The only reason we could even get away with this, the only reason anyone even gives a ****, is the fact that we've gone through the whole mill of the business in the first place. It's not supposed to be a model for anything else. It was simply a response to a situation. We're out of contract. We have our own studio. We have this new server. What the hell else would we do? This was the obvious thing. But it only works for us because of where we are.

[Phaneuf3]

Originally Posted by Flamescupbound!

Wow, that's exceptional considering Fortune reported that 62% of people decided to pay nothing, and the remaining 38% averaged just $6. In fact, they rated the idea as one of the 101 dumbest business decisions of 2007. Must of sold an incredible number of downloads to surpass their previous albums.

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/...ortune/59.html

lol.

i know people who downloaded that album. and they did it twice - downloaded it first and paid nothing for it so they could have a listen, decide what it was worth and then pay for it the second time they downloaded it. if more than a couple people did that it would really throw off the numbers like that.

second of all, like someone else said... the bands gets just about all of that money unlike when the album is sold in stores. the record stores, distribution companies, record labels, etc, etc all take a cut of that $12 to $20 you fork over at HMV. how much do you think the band actually sees? (hint: its less than $6).

[You Need a Thneed]

Originally Posted by Phaneuf3

lol.

i know people who downloaded that album. and they did it twice - downloaded it first and paid nothing for it so they could have a listen, decide what it was worth and then pay for it the second time they downloaded it. if more than a couple people did that it would really throw off the numbers like that.

second of all, like someone else said... the bands gets just about all of that money unlike when the album is sold in stores. the record stores, distribution companies, record labels, etc, etc all take a cut of that $12 to $20 you fork over at HMV. how much do you think the band actually sees? (hint: its less than $6).

The 15 cents that was mentioned above sounds about right from what I know. If you are an artist that doesn't sell a lot of albums, the number is likely zero, as the record companies hold back the artist's cut until their costs are made up.

[Barnes]

Originally Posted by fotze

$0.17 Musicians’ unions
$0.80 Packaging/manufacturing
$0.82 Publishing royalties
$0.80 Retail profit
$0.90 Distribution
$1.60 Artists’ royalties
$1.70 Label profit
$2.40 Marketing/promotion
$2.91 Label overhead
$3.89 Retail overhead

Look at how many of these costs are eliminated by selling online independently or semi independently.

[gottabekd]

Just to clear the air about the whole Radiohead thing...

Originally Posted by Flamescupbound!

Wow, that's exceptional considering Fortune reported that 62% of people decided to pay nothing, and the remaining 38% averaged just $6. In fact, they rated the idea as one of the 101 dumbest business decisions of 2007. Must of sold an incredible number of downloads to surpass their previous albums.

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/...ortune/59.html

It's a shame that journalists can pass around false information so easily, even months after the fact.

"In response to purely speculative figures announced in the press regarding the number of downloads and the price paid for the album, the group's representatives would like to remind people that, as the album could only be downloaded from the band's website, it is impossible for outside organisations to have accurate figures on sales," they explained.

The statement added: "However, they can confirm that the figures quoted by the company comScore Inc are wholly inaccurate and in no way reflect definitive market intelligence or, indeed, the true success of the project."

http://www.nme.com/news/radiohead/32393

NOW, as for this Washington Post article, it appears that this latest lawsuit isn't about ripping CDs to a computer, but sharing them.

Okay, so we've done some digging into the RIAA's lawsuit against Jeffery Howell, in which the industry is claiming that ripped MP3s are "unauthorized copies," and it turns out that Jeffery isn't actually being sued for ripping CDs, like the Washington Post and several other sources have reported, but for plain old illegal downloading.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/30/r...erks-about-it/

Once again showing how lazy journalists are, and all they do is paraphrase the stories from one source without doing any research of their own to back it up.

Here's more, if you are insterested: http://www.tenreasonswhy.com/weblog/...bly_st_1.html?

[MarchHare]

They're not suing him for ripping, but they still think ripping is illegal. Sony's own lawyer said the following:

Sony BMG’s head of litigation Jennifer Pariser equated Fair Use to stealing when she testified that if “an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song,” adding that making “a copy” is just “a nice way saying ‘steals just one copy.’”

[llama64]

Can't wait for the Canadian arm of this vile organization to sue someone for ripping a CD onto their computer for personal use. The sooner a precedent can be set for the enforcement of fair use, the better.

This is getting ridiculous.