The major music companies should drop their "litigation-driven antipiracy efforts" and, "embrace a world of micropayments and alternative revenue streams that target the new music-consumption habits of digital music fans, says Terry McBride, ceo of Canada's Nettwerk Music.
The company's line-up includes Avril Lavigne, Dido, Sum 41 and Sarah McLachlan and Nettwerk decided to pick up the legal bill for Elisa Greubel, a 15-year-old Texas girl who's being sued by the Big Four Organized Music family's RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) for allegedly downloading music without permission.
The multi-billion-dollar Big Four, Warner Music (US), Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany) and EMI (Great Britain) disingenuously claim they're being "devastated" by people who use the p2p networks instead of buying over-priced, cookie-cutter Big Four 'product,' as they call their releases.
Coincidentally, p2pnet which, like Nettwerk is basd in British Columbia, Canada, is also trying to help an American family that's being victimized by the RIAA.
p2pnet readers have so far contributed more than $14,000 to help Patti Santangelo, a New York mother. She'll be the first of the RIAA's 19,000 US victims to take the so-called 'trade' association on in an open court before a jury.
Ironically p2pnet, too, is being sued, but not by the music industry. Rather, it's being targetted by Nikki Hemming, the ceo of the seriously discredited p2p application Kazaa, whose owner, Sharman Networks, recently achieved its long-time goal of linking up with the corporate music industry.
Meanwhile, "[The major labels] are using fear as a tactic [to] push these kids away from these P2P systems," McBride told a crowd of 200 music and technology industry insiders, says MP3.com.
"You can't use fear to change these behaviors," the story has him saying. "It just isn't effective. These lawsuits have hurt my artists. We need to stop these lawsuits."
Some of the songs Greubel was alleged to have illegally downloaded were from Lavigne.
"Avril or any of my artists would never sue a fan," McBride said. "I want those fans to share that music. When [the original] Napster hit, we had the same knee-jerk reaction that everyone else did: 'Who are these kids, let's get them and sue them.' But after a while we realized that they were no different than I was when I was as a teenager, just looking to consume as much music as possible."
I know stats (i.e. official sales figures from the likes of RIAA etc) up to a year or two back suggested that album sales are still increasing every year. Does anyone know if this is still the case?
* Total album sales, falling from 666.7 million in 2004 to 618.9 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan, a drop of 7.2% after a 1.5% gain over 2003's sales total.
*CD sales (95% of total album sales), off even more dramatically, from 651.1 million to 598.9 million (down 8.0%).
* Most musical genres, many (soundtracks, classical, metal and R&B) suffering double-digit drops. Latin was the sole exception, rising 12.6%.
BUT, in contrast...
* Digital track downloads, rising from 150% to 352.7 million.
* Digital album downloads, climbing 194% to 16.2 million from 5.5 million.
* Internet album sales, up 11%, accounting for nearly 25 million sales.
* Overall music purchases (encompassing albums, singles, music video and digital downloads), which were up 22.7% over 2004 and passed 1 billion units for the first time.
The part in the article about the CD format not being as attractive as vinyl reminded me of something. A while back there was a segment on the TV news here about how some labels had begun releasing CDs in LP-sized packages with LP-sized artwork because they said the smaller artwork of the CD format had less soul than that of LPs.
indeed - just about anything other than the ubiquitous bloody jewel case is a good idea. Has such a fragile container mechanism ever been invented for a medium that was supposed to last a lifetime? I can't believe the industry just didn't dump the jewel case in favour of the digipak years ago.
The packaging for Thom Yorke's The Eraser is interesting. Made completely of cardboard, it's sort of a concertina arrangement to fit in all those pages of linter notes. It gets a bit battered if you leave it lying around, tho.
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
Google
Technorati
well, ok with the artists, ...
well, ok with the artists, maybe.
now someone just needs to tell their record companies:
RIAA urged, 'Stop the lawsuits!'
[ external link ]
from the above link... The major ...
from the above link...
The major music companies should drop their "litigation-driven antipiracy efforts" and, "embrace a world of micropayments and alternative revenue streams that target the new music-consumption habits of digital music fans, says Terry McBride, ceo of Canada's Nettwerk Music.
The company's line-up includes Avril Lavigne, Dido, Sum 41 and Sarah McLachlan and Nettwerk decided to pick up the legal bill for Elisa Greubel, a 15-year-old Texas girl who's being sued by the Big Four Organized Music family's RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) for allegedly downloading music without permission.
The multi-billion-dollar Big Four, Warner Music (US), Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany) and EMI (Great Britain) disingenuously claim they're being "devastated" by people who use the p2p networks instead of buying over-priced, cookie-cutter Big Four 'product,' as they call their releases.
Coincidentally, p2pnet which, like Nettwerk is basd in British Columbia, Canada, is also trying to help an American family that's being victimized by the RIAA.
p2pnet readers have so far contributed more than $14,000 to help Patti Santangelo, a New York mother. She'll be the first of the RIAA's 19,000 US victims to take the so-called 'trade' association on in an open court before a jury.
Ironically p2pnet, too, is being sued, but not by the music industry. Rather, it's being targetted by Nikki Hemming, the ceo of the seriously discredited p2p application Kazaa, whose owner, Sharman Networks, recently achieved its long-time goal of linking up with the corporate music industry.
Meanwhile, "[The major labels] are using fear as a tactic [to] push these kids away from these P2P systems," McBride told a crowd of 200 music and technology industry insiders, says MP3.com.
"You can't use fear to change these behaviors," the story has him saying. "It just isn't effective. These lawsuits have hurt my artists. We need to stop these lawsuits."
Some of the songs Greubel was alleged to have illegally downloaded were from Lavigne.
"Avril or any of my artists would never sue a fan," McBride said. "I want those fans to share that music. When [the original] Napster hit, we had the same knee-jerk reaction that everyone else did: 'Who are these kids, let's get them and sue them.' But after a while we realized that they were no different than I was when I was as a teenager, just looking to consume as much music as possible."
I know stats (i.e. official sales ...
I know stats (i.e. official sales figures from the likes of RIAA etc) up to a year or two back suggested that album sales are still increasing every year. Does anyone know if this is still the case?
apparently not... * Total album ...
apparently not...
* Total album sales, falling from 666.7 million in 2004 to 618.9 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan, a drop of 7.2% after a 1.5% gain over 2003's sales total.
*CD sales (95% of total album sales), off even more dramatically, from 651.1 million to 598.9 million (down 8.0%).
* Most musical genres, many (soundtracks, classical, metal and R&B) suffering double-digit drops. Latin was the sole exception, rising 12.6%.
BUT, in contrast...
* Digital track downloads, rising from 150% to 352.7 million.
* Digital album downloads, climbing 194% to 16.2 million from 5.5 million.
* Internet album sales, up 11%, accounting for nearly 25 million sales.
* Overall music purchases (encompassing albums, singles, music video and digital downloads), which were up 22.7% over 2004 and passed 1 billion units for the first time.
[ external link ]
The part in the article about the CD ...
The part in the article about the CD format not being as attractive as vinyl reminded me of something. A while back there was a segment on the TV news here about how some labels had begun releasing CDs in LP-sized packages with LP-sized artwork because they said the smaller artwork of the CD format had less soul than that of LPs.
that's a good idea. indeed - just ...
that's a good idea.
indeed - just about anything other than the ubiquitous bloody jewel case is a good idea. Has such a fragile container mechanism ever been invented for a medium that was supposed to last a lifetime? I can't believe the industry just didn't dump the jewel case in favour of the digipak years ago.
The packaging for Thom Yorke's <i>The ...
The packaging for Thom Yorke's The Eraser is interesting. Made completely of cardboard, it's sort of a concertina arrangement to fit in all those pages of linter notes. It gets a bit battered if you leave it lying around, tho.
yeah, there's 'nice' packaging, ...
yeah, there's 'nice' packaging, which needn't always make 'good' packaging.
jewel cases, unfortunately, fall into neither camp.
I always liked PIL's Metal Box packaging. Now there's a case that'll stand the test of time...
[ external link ]
These sydney guys released an EP in ...
These sydney guys released an EP in some cinematic film tin. That was pretty classy. Slightly impractical, however.
[ external link ]