The RIAA Armageddon has begun

nah. the scale is completely different, and is the key thing.

Well, yeah, the scale is a big difference. I'm not saying the two situations are exactly the same, but I still think it would make for an interesting study.

well the film industry just took a page from the music industry and reacted by upping the product "quality" (ie, DVDs are better than VHS! "the quality is AMAZING!"). So as people replaced their tapes and records with CDs in the 90s, so people replaced their VHS copies with DVDs in the 00s. Except now DVD sales are tanking, and everyone's streaming/downloading TV and movies - and as filesharing of those media get easier, the film/TV industry will face the same problem the music industry has. I think the only real difference that they have to console them is their advertising revenues, which are deeply entwined with the media in a way that they never were with the music industry.

eventually everyone in these industries is going to have to accept that turning all their property into ones and zeroes was probably the stupidest, most short-sighted policy imaginable.

I'm not sure there was another option. LPs aren't a good long-term solution either.

CDs were a totally pointless product. I don't accept their "inevitability", especially given how shitty 80s CDs sound.

how long term is long term? LPs will reportedly survive a century

I think his point is that with the rise of the internet, demand for cultural content would have gotten everything converted to a digital format eventually. Of course, CDs helped to actually furiously accelerate this conversion process.

so at best, even if there were no CDs, this would have just delayed the inevitable.

(said hypothetical delay might have worked in the industry's favor though, because it might have bought them time to develop and nurture alternative revenue streams)

eventually everyone in these industries is going to have to accept that turning all their property into ones and zeroes was probably the stupidest, most short-sighted policy imaginable.

― I won't vote for you unless you acknowledge my magic pony (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, April 15, 2010 5:04 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

the hell? more music is available more easily to enjoy in more different ways than ever. it's great! if it drives "the industry" into the ground, boo hoo

"CDs were a totally pointless product. I don't accept their "inevitability", especially given how shitty 80s CDs sound."

Man LP purist sure are focused on CD sound from three decades ago.

"I think his point is that with the rise of the internet, demand for cultural content would have gotten everything converted to a digital format eventually."

Yes, music was going to be packaged digitally and the size/convenience of that product was inevitably going to supercede early formats was my point. I was also thinking of the cost/eventual scarcity of petroleum for vinyl production as well.

Didn't realize how shitty iTunes rates were for the artist. Bought a local singer-songwriter's album today, I should have just pirated it and handed her a fiver at her next show.

I'm not really complaining (altho there are a lot of side effects of these industries' collapse which are unfortunate). I meant it was a stupid, short-sighted policy FOR THEIR INDUSTRIES.

xp

if you want to increase the value of something, choke off supply. make a living via live performances and commercial/product placement recordings

fwiw Courtney Love (!!!!!) basically said this a few years ago.

Man LP purist sure are focused on CD sound from three decades ago.

nah I think MP3s sound like shit too

fwiw Courtney Love (!!!!!) basically said this a few years ago.

and then she... made another album?

shut up Courtney

"nah I think MP3s sound like shit too"

Man LP purists sure are focused on 128k mp3s from 10 years ago, etc.

the gist is that she makes her money through the gate @ live shows. The album is the catalyst for a tour

That Courtney rant was basically just to get her label to renegotiate her deal. IIRC, Beck made similarly confrontational noises around that time, and then happily re-upped with his label.

Man LP purists sure are focused on 128k mp3s from 10 years ago, etc.

lol

I hate some new stuff too fwiw

I'm an equal opportunity hater

why don't you increase the value of your posting

nyuk nyuk

http://sistasmiff.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/don_rickles.jpg

I'm not sure there was another option. LPs aren't a good long-term solution either.

Almost every CD I bought in the last 20 years is utterly unplayable, whether through scratches or CD-rot. Yet I can buy a record from the 1940s at a thrift store and expect to be able to listen to at least 90% of the music.

what the hell dude, you must not take very good care of your CDs. 98% of what I have from the early 90's still plays fine.

Didn't realize how shitty iTunes rates were for the artist. Bought a local singer-songwriter's album today, I should have just pirated it and handed her a fiver at her next show.

Indeed, it would have resulted in a better profit for the artist than buying 55 copies on iTunes!

"Almost every CD I bought in the last 20 years is utterly unplayable, whether through scratches or CD-rot."

Hilarious.

I have CDs going back to 1987 that are still playable!

My big fault was putting them all in big thick 100-count CD cases because they were getting too unmanageable. Then the original cases kept getting busted so I took out the inserts and tossed the damaged plastic cases. Then eventually some of my 100-count cases were stolen and I ended up keeping what i had left in used CDr spindles. I actually haven't listened to a store-bought CD in at least 5 years. So yeah that post is kinda BS.

i bought my first "nice" cd player last year (marantz one) and damn cds can sound fucking amazing actually...bought a bunch of jazz reissues and stuff like that, really gorgeous

my 2 yo is royally fucking up what remains of my CD collection - doubt I'll hold onto them for more than a year or more.

vinyl she doesn't bother with (too unwieldy!)

Didn't realize how shitty iTunes rates were for the artist. Bought a local singer-songwriter's album today, I should have just pirated it and handed her a fiver at her next show.

This is essentially where I'm at, philosophically. If I had direct contact info for artists whose work I admire, I'd gladly send them the purchase price of every work of theirs I steal. The RIAA and MPAA clearly have nothing but contempt for their customer base, so fuck them and fuck them hard.

i don't really get why an artist wouldn't make the same from an itunes download that they would from the sale of a cd single (divided by 4 or however many tracks)

Because Apple has about as much contempt for artists as the RIAA has for us?

i don't really get why an artist wouldn't make the same from an itunes download that they would from the sale of a cd single (divided by 4 or however many tracks)

― mdskltr (blueski), Thursday, April 15, 2010 11:57 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

works like this:

old system:

sell a CD
record store takes a little
record company takes a lot
you get a little

new system:

sell an MP3 on itunes
Apple takes a lot
record company takes a lot
you get even less

apple takes a big cut

well sure, but how has this been allowed etc.

yeah you'd think musicians would, like, rise up en masse to stop the labels from screwing them over

Yeah, if only there was a free way to distribute your music to the masses and an easy system to set up whereby anyone in the world could send you money with the click of a button ;-)

musicians are really well known for being ultra organized and disciplined folk

hahaha @ this

i'm learnding

An opportunity was missed by not calling this thread RIAArmageddon

RIAPOLLmageddon

the hell? more music is available more easily to enjoy in more different ways than ever. it's great! if it drives "the industry" into the ground, boo hoo

― goole, Thursday, April 15, 2010 6:22 PM (3 hours ago)

That visual chart was pretty shocking, subscriptions/streaming is pretty much pointless at those rates. I thought at least the iTunes/Amazon mp3 rates would be a little better than physical CDs, since the overhead should be MUCH less? I wonder how Tunecore releases stack up vs. iTunes and CDBaby, as well as Amazon, Lala, Amie and eMusic as mp3 prices slowly go downward.

As some of you said above, at $1 or less per album - whether it's a label CD or mp3 download - it does feel more sound to just pirate it and PayPal a few bucks directly to the artist.

vinyl purists talking shit about CDs is such a 2000s thing. you're all going to be embarrassed by this rhetoric in a few years. i say this as someone with a big vinyl collection.

i kind of sympathize with the record industry but the RIAA is seriously ridiculous--they're acting like fred phelps or something, just way off the charts.

buying on itunes is infamously horrible for artists--i thought everybody knew that.

it does feel more sound to just pirate it and PayPal a few bucks directly to the artist.

radiohead tried to do this, more or less, and everyone made fun of them!

no, everyone sent them money iirc

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/comment/4/2010/04/e06e2928ad49f9e92485d18a2335d9cc/340x.gif

this stuff is actually somewhat complex, and discussions of it tend not to reflect that complexity - for example, the cut Apple takes doesn't pay a guy named "Apple": it pays a bunch of people who run the iTunes store, etc. it's still a large cut, don't get me wrong, a triumph for Apple (since the labels used to keep most of that cut themselves; Apple gave the labels a "this is our cut, if you don't like it, you don't have to have your stuff on our store" deal at the outset, which if I remember was met by the labels with much kicking & screaming). but I think conversations around this tend toward this "the only person who deserves a dime for the music is THE ARTIST!" which is an attitude with which I strongly disagree; few artists are completely DIY, and many don't want to be. just on behalf of myself, I don't like it when somebody hands me money and says "I downloaded your stuff, I don't support [the labels, iTunes, the RIAA, whoever]" - I'd rather people bought the stuff through the existing channels; the label who releases the album deserves to get paid, they're the ones who put up the money for it in the first place, and worked to publicize it, etc (and, in many cases -- most, I think -- don't even end up breaking even after costs; some of this is because of a culture of foolish spending, for sure, but that's a little beside the point). artists enter into a contract with the people who distribute their music, and they do so with their eyes open; the agreement is, you take care of getting the stuff out there & keeping it available, and I'll benefit in a couple of ways: the exposure of availability in highly visible, well-maintained hubs (formerly, record stores; for the purposes of this discussion, the iTunes store); the small amount of money I'll get if the project recoups; and the continuation of a marketplace in which I as an artist can sell my goods. like, imagine if your job is, I don't know, cook. but suddenly, there's no restaurants. do you really want to run around cooking for whoever looks hungry and hoping they kick you down some money, maybe a lot if they really like your chow, after you've already put in the work? for sure, a new marketplace has emerged, and how it's going to work is what's messily forming at the moment. but download-from-wherever, maybe-pay-the-artist (nb I'm guessing it's actually one person in 5000 who actually follows through on this model; my own sample group = in ten years since this conversation became a thing, the four people who've handed me cash + the one who wrote to offer to send, whose money I asked he send to charity, since at the one-person-at-a-time level it's basically a symbolic gesture until & unless it becomes a generally-adopted model) (which isn't ever going to happen; when people can get stuff for free, most of them who do so feel less obligated to pay for it once they've gotten it, that's just kinda natural) doesn't strike me as a great deal for artists - maybe with a very, very optimistic view of human behavior it's rad, but for me, if I can get ten reliable cents from a guy who signed a contract saying "you get ten cents for every dollar I make" I'll take that over "you maybe get money if people feel like giving it to you" every time.