My Thoughts: Music Downloading and Related Matters (7-31-03)

So what does the RIAA do? They get lawyers to sue the people who share the MP3's of songs.

Well, well, well. What do we think of this? Remember back then when back in the 70's, the recordable cassette tape recorder came out and the record industry, when it was once vinyl records and 8-tracks were just coming out, cried foul when people could tape songs off the radio and not bother to pay for records in the stores? Guess what? The record industry thrived. Why? The stores sold singles of songs on 45s for cheap, like a buck or so, and LPs were advertised for around $5, sometimes less, on the radio. Did the music industry go down under? No.

In the 1980's, VCRs that can tape movies and other stuff became part of our culture, and the movie studios cried foul when they thought it would lead to piracy of movies and TV shows. Guess what? The movie rentals and VHS movie sales thrived. People taped shows they couldn't watch immediately and watched them later. Sharing of shows were basically limited to two or three people at the most. Some people after watching a pirated copy of a movie liked it so much they bought a legal copy of it and got a much better picture than what was dubbed from another tape.

In the 90's, CD audio took over the cassettes, which took over the LPs earlier, as the primary means of distribution of music. In the late 90's, DVDs replaced the VHS tapes for movie rentals and sales of videos. Also in the 90's, a cheaper way to distribute audio and movies came about, via file-sharing services over the Internet, as well as the rise of broadband Internet.

Unlike the past where people were limited to using postal carriers to send illegal copies of music and videos to others, which cost money to send, using the Internet to send compressed copies of songs as MP3s and videos as another compression scheme, it costs them nothing to share the music and videos to literally thousands of people a day, which, in turn, shares them with thousands, and so on.

So now, you can see what the fuss is about, yet, since radio stations, and even satellite radio and Internet stations, are choosy on what to air on their stations, are not giving many bands their deserved publicity via the broadcasts, the file-sharing services have taken over as a way for bands to distribute their own music for others to download, evaluate, and buy at their websites.

The Internet has given rise to literally thousands of bands that would have never seen the light of day in other distribution methods. How many bands have you been introduced to on the Internet, but not on local radio? I could literally name hundreds, most of which were heard on downloaded copies of Dr. Demento shows since the late 90's.

The file-sharing services are great for getting exposure to un-heard of bands, but the same services are also doing the same thing for so-called big music acts like Eminem and the gawd-awful Evanessance (which mercifully gets flushed down the toilet on DFSX's sweepers), which listeners are already hearing too many times on local radio and satellite. I think the issure is more of who has the right to distribute the songs, rather than the downloading of the songs itself, that's causing the RIAA to get steamed over the free publicity the songs are getting.

Instead of people taping one or two songs off the album off the radio, they're downloading whole albums off the Internet, keeping the one or two songs they like, and trashing the rest. The problem with audio CDs is that they're priced too high for so little quality they're offering. If a $20 CD has only two songs they like, then the value is $10 a song for them, which is ridiculous. Most songs should cost $1 when put out on a CD single. The cost to produce a single CD has dropped dramatically, and in Frys' Electronics, you can get 100 CD-Rs for $28! That's 28 cents a CD-R! The jewel case can cost 20 cents. The two songs on the CD single can be priced so that it costs $2 per disc! Why doesn't the dinosaur record albums give the buyers that option?

Thanks to the illegal file-swapping services, listeners can download whole albums, and evalute whether the high cost of the CDs justifys the number of quality songs on it. Smarter people are avoiding the CDs not just because the cost is high, but there's so much filler material that it makes the CD a poor value.

Movies on DVD that cost $20, on the other hand, are a great value, because people have already known they like the movie, and will buy them, knowing they're getting two hours of solid material worth their time.

Sharing movies on the Internet, however, is a big threat to the livelyhood of the movie industry, because the movies have basically no filler waste in them. People that offer or download the movies on the Internet are causing the cost of broadband Internet to rise for those who pay for the Intenet, but don't bother to download movies. It is also against the TOS to make your computer literally a server for files on the Internet.

The sales of music and movies people download surely do cut into the livelyhoods of people down the line trying to make a living. Singers, producers, engineers, directors, publishers, lyricists, actors, salesmen, everybody involved in making the discs for purchase deserve to get paid for their hard work. The pirated movie DVDs on the Internet are as big a threat as illegal music on the Internet if, and I do mean if, people don't think about rewarding the makers of the disc by purchasing a legal copy for them to enjoy. But how to do get people who download music to purchase what they have downloaded outside of those other ripoff websites I won't name here that charge $1 a song you never heard before you downloaded yet? Since a lot of the music is no longer in production, how do you convince a person to pay for what they downloaded if they can't get a legal copy of a long out-of-print song?

As for people who distribute and download bandwidth-hogging movies on the Internet, how do the broadband providers deal with them? Should they charge them a bandwidth surcharge or cut them off after 200 megabytes a day? Something needs to be done about the high cost of bandwidth, and raising the cost of the Internet for the rest of us to help pay for those who use high amounts of bandwidth is not fair to me and to you. I'm paying for people to download illegal copies of bad movies through higher monthly subscription fees.

The war on online piracy could have even worse implications on the movie and music industries if it is done wrong. Suing people who share copies of movies and music on the Internet may backfire with even more rampant piracy going amok, as people go deeper underground to distribute illegal copies of movies in China to pay for legal costs, causing even more damage to the industry.

Suing people who share copies of music is a grey area. Why do they want to sue people who share music that is NOT represented by the RIAA? Is this the big labels' way of protecting their share of music sales by eliminating the non-RIAA competetion by getting the owners of the music sued out of existance?

The RIAA announced in late June that it would begin trying to identify individuals with large numbers of songs available for others to download, and sue them under federal copyright law.

And what about people who download music? What if the RIAA sues them? It's just like suing people for taping songs off a pirated radio station that does not pay the copyright royalities. It won't fly. Lawyers should take note!

While I witness the effects of downloading music without buying the CDs are having on the record selling industries, the statements the laywers represented by the RIAA that "offering copyrighted music online hurs artists, songwriters, and everyone else who brings music to the public" partly validate the disappearance of Music Trader and Wherehouse music outlets, legal online record stores on the Internet that offer 12 CDs for the price of one are also causing these brick and mortar stores to disappear. For those like me who want to buy what's not on the radio and not in stores, I use amazon.com, picklehead.com, cdbaby.com, and others to make my purchases of music (without paying sales tax, which is another issue) to buy CDs.

I swear to God that I have purchased over 200 CDs in the past three years, most of which are from artists not played on commercial radio, and most of which I heard on the Internet via downloads or online streaming. Some of the artists I purchased CDs of include Sean Morey, Carla Ulbrich, Throwing Toasters, Larry Weaver, Billy Jonas, Cletus T. Judd, and Richard Cheese (who states on his Tuxicity CD that "Please do not copy, burn, rip, upload, dub, or in any other way, duplicate or re-distribute the songs on this CD. Stealing music is really wrong, and if you do it, don't be surprised if our evil attorneys send you a registered certified ass-kicking!"

Also purchased CDs from (not heard on the radio) Henry Phillips, Cali Rose, Raymond and Scum, They Might Be Giants (94.9 only plays four or five of their songs), Tim Cavanaugh, Faust & Lewis, John Forster, Whimsical Will, Tom Tuerff, and of course, Weird Al Yankovic. Do I think they should NOT get paid for their hard work in bringing great music to my ears? Hell no! I bought them!

On the other hand, I keep hearing on the radio, piece of s--t acts being paid by the indies paid by the record labels to get their songs played on many radio stations across the country. Does all that exposure make me want to buy their albums? No. They're so bad, I don't bother to even download them or tape them off the radio.

Most radio stations don't bother to play the kind of music I like to hear, instead, playing songs for women and teenagers. How the hell can the record industry get me to buy the music I like if the radio stations don't play any good songs I can relate to? These pinhead music directors think all I want to hear are songs I liked in my teenage years. How stupid! Where did they get their music education from?

But getting back to the online sharing of music, we're seeing people downloading the music but doing either: A) not buying the albums; B) buying them from the declining number of brick and mortar stores; C) sharing them with others; D) buying them from the Internet such as amazon or ebay. Music downloaders are either the music industry's best customers, or the most savvy, waiting until the songs they like are on the next compilation of hits called "Now That's What I Call Music Volume xx." But for those who don't bother to consider buying the best songs, they need better offers for them to purchase, not being forced to buy a $20 CD with one song they like on it!

I used to buy cassette tapes of albums, dub 1-2 songs I like, and resell the tapes to a used music store. Many people do the same thing with CDs, dubbing whole albums, reselling them to Music Trader, and getting back some of the money they paid for. The RIAA might be cracking down on those who no longer have a legal copy of the songs they still have on a CD-R they burned. Now that's getting ridiculous. It's no wonder the music industry is in a tailspin! CDs are priced too high! Used CD shops are also paying the customers too much for used CDs. The cost of CD-R's are too low. Something needs to be fixed. How about adding a $10 royalty fee per CD-R purchased? Would that make the cost of legal CDs lower than illegally copied CD-Rs with the same material on them? Imagine selling a pack of 100 CD-R's for $1000, which is half of the price of the same amount of audio CDs put out by the record labels! Make it more expensive for people to copy the music on CD-R's. Sure, but what about for those who don't do such a thing. Should we pay for the rest of us to enjoy music they got for almost free?

Meanwhile, new file-sharing services that mask one's identity are taking off. There's now filetopia.com that mask's the IP addresses of all computers using its protocol. Filetopia would have no way of knowing who shared what files and who copied the files.

Whatever the case, file-sharing is here to stay, but it's who's distributing it that remains in question. Should the record labels give the file-sharers a legal license to distrubute copies of their music and for them to be responsible for collecting the download fees from their downloaders? This downloading model is what's keeping the music industry alive, but the shift has gone from acts who get played on the radio to acts who never get played on the radio, and are now seeing people purchasing CDs of their music that radio never aired.

The Internet has changed the landscape of the music industry, with the newer players offering their own music for others to download, evaluate, and buy, while the dinosaurs of the record industry are seeing sales of their own records go down and their outlets shuttered, and the rise of online CD distributors selling legal copies of their own offerings not offered by the big five record labels.

The big labels, Sony, Capitol, Virgin-EMI, and BMG, need to come up with a new business model that competes on the same level as the unknowns on the Internet in order for them to succeed. MP3s of their music is either making people buy their records or making them decide not to buy them, even after downloading entire albums. The record industry needs to put the quality of their acts under scrutiny, weeding out bad material nobody wants to buy, and putting put material people do want to buy. CDs costing $20 need to have at least 70 minutes of good solid musical material from a variety of acts instead of just one. One act can produce two good songs. Very few can carry an entire album and maintain quality like the artists three decades ago could. So, the music labels need to test out the songs via downloads, ask the listeners if the song rules or sucks, and whatever songs get a 66 percent rules to sucks ration get approved for distribution. Sometimes, there may be 12 acts on a CD with only one song the listeners liked. So, put them out as a sampler, and let the listeners buy them.

As for MP3 distribution, a new model needs to be implemented, one that has accurate ID tracking on each MP3 instead of offering MP3's with nothing on the ID except maybe the wrong song title, or the wrong artist credited. How can you buy an album of what you downloaded if you don't know who the artist or what the song is? Make the MP3s play for 10 seconds, then prompt the listener to purchase the MP3 if they want to hear the rest of it, or delete the MP3 from their hard drive. You can come up with protection schemes here and there, but they just won't work. People can crack these and the illegal distribution will continue.

Some say that online sharers are the music industry's biggest and best customers, but some of those are those who downloaded from other places, and most of the music they're sharing are those they do not own legal copies of in the first place.

This is 2003, the music industry is at a crossroads. File-sharing is part of today's music culture. People can buy music online instead of in stores. The big five labels are losing sales to independents that don't have RIAA representation. Meanwhile, the video game and DVD movie industries are competeting with the music for the fan's attention. If the RIAA turns people off of music, where do you think they'll go to?

Time to get a solution that benefits music fans and makers alike with a fair pricing scheme that readily rewards the makers for their labor. What should it be?

Backwaves: The Readers Strike Back 7-31-03!

as always, outstanding job at the site. Just a little something I found while surfing:

http://www.fujichia.com/billboards/6a.html
A Clear Channel Billboard in Worchester, Mass that got vandalized (good for a chuckle)
Enjoy!

From Jeff Hutchison: (on downloading)

Radio stations are obviously losing listeners because people can find what they want by downloading MP3's of songs they like for free and then making their own playlists with them, rather than to listen to the radio stations play crap they don't like in order to hear the songs they like to hear. Clear Channel should be worried about illegal Mp3 downloaders, which is why they ran those silly "respect the music" spots earlier this year. What does radio give the listeners in return for loyalty? Endless commercials, songs they're sick of hearing, not playing songs they like to hear, adding songs based on how good the singer looks rather than how good they sound, focus on only the younger demos for introducing new music.

Face it: that Clear Channel building hosting 12 stations serving San Diego is doing me no good if they're not giving us some diverse formats the downloaders can really use. Get rid of all the g--damn all-oldies formats; we already bought all the songs them on CD. Instead, reformat five of the FMs to playing new music covering five basic genres (not period pieces): adult rock, teen, soft, urban, and electronica dance. Don't program any song older than three months old. Put the oldies on the Internet radio stations. Give all the Mexican stations to Lynch and his mob and others.

That's my solution for the downloaders. Give them music they never heard of before, and just when they thought they downloaded all the new music they heard, CC can play more new music.

in a related subject, by rronline.com:

Analyst: Clear Channel Radio Revenue Decline Can't Be Ignored
While he credits the company's management for keeping its focus on profitability, Credit Suisse First Boston's Paul Sweeney says the decline in Clear Channel's Q2 results is cause for some concern. "We still think the perception of revenue underperformance vs. the peer group — echoed by the company's competitors — should remain a mild distraction," he writes in a report issued yesterday. However, Sweeney adds that the concern should last only until local ad trends, which he believes are showing "sequential signs of improvement," begin to accelerate. Sweeney sets a $48 price target on the company's stock with a rating of "outperform."

This is D.T. Jeff must have answered the question of why Clear Channel's Q2 results are lower. Want more profits? Bring on the best of the new music constantly and repeatedly!

From Matt Carson:

Downloading without paying is stealing, no butts about it. If these people who just download music and never think of paying the struggling singers and songwriters for their works, then they are in effect the scum of the earth, who think the music is free when they pay for the Internet. Make them pay for the downloads by adding a bandwidth surcharge of $1 to each song downloaded payable to the copyrighters and collected by their ISP. They'll think twice about using up the bandwidth for a free ride on the Internet.

From James

I have never set foot in a record store since 1995 and never will again. Sure, I could go to the Wherehorse and pay $42 for two CDs including sales taxes, plus another $2 in wear and tear in my car, and waste my time searching for a great CD that they probably don't carry, but I prefer to go to amazon.com and purchase the same two CDs priced the same as that in the store for $38, get free shipping for sales over $25, not pay a sales tax, and not pay for wear and tear in my car. Guess who wins by a landslide? Guess who's the loser?

From Anonymous by request:

Dear Dave,

I enjoyed reading your thoughts on the whole music downloading fiasco and I have to agree with you on some points. Some of it I don't agree with but that's ok. This is still America and well, you know the rest. (If you decide to print any of this on your website, no problem, just protect my anonymity.)

I'll make no bones about it: I download music off the internet. In the last four and a half years, I haven't purchased a CD from Wherehouse or Music Trader. Both places I used to frequent but the reasons are quite simple. Why should I drive 20 minutes to stand in line for 10 minutes to buy a CD that is $20 that has one song that I like? Filetopia WinMX, Blubster, KazAA, Morpheus and a plethora of others are making this possible because the RIAA and the Big Five are greedy, gluttonous mega corporations that continue to rape both the artists and the fans alike in the name of Capitalism.

They had a chance to embrace this and make it work to everyone's advantage. What did they do instead of making a compromise? A Witch Hunt ala Napster. The facts speak for themselves. Teenagers spend more time online then watch TV according to statistics from Polls done just in the last week. Not only that, if you're a teenager with a computer, then you have a file sharing program on your computer. It's that widespread. They unleashed Pandora's Box and they damn well know it.

It's no wonder that CD sales are down 25% and blank CD's are selling faster than they can produce them. I would buy music online if it were A) Reasonably priced (buymusic.com is getting close w/ 79 cents a song) and B) they have a large selection from which to choose. I'm a older guy and like a lot of different kinds of music, from Techno, Rock, Metal, Disco and even a little classical from time to time. However, it's sometimes hard to find Diesel's "Sausalito Summer Nights" or other obscure songs that I enjoy.

Besides, why should I pay $1 for a song that I can get for free? If they make it cheaper and as easy as one of the Napster Clones, I'll do it. But until then, it's going to be an alternative, albeit illegal, method of getting the music I want to listen to. There's no point in listening to radio because they have so little to offer. There are those of us who want something different and enjoyable that's not dictated to us by a bunch of good old boys in Texas.

So there you have it. From both our standpoints, it seems that a fix is sorely needed, but I guess we'll wait and see what happens. Keep up the good work on the website.