The recording industry has always tried to control innovation of technology to meet their interests, and make maximum profits. This has worked in the past, with traditional distribution, such as radio, record stores, and the like. The industry has always wanted you to buy what they are promoting. They have done this by limiting the selection in stores, and using “payola” to indie promoters to get the radio to include their promotions in your radio station play list.

Along came the internet, file sharing, music download sites, web radio, streaming media, and CD burning. This threatened the recording industry’s control system. First there was MP3.com, then web radio, then Napster, then Scour, then Gnutella, and now KaZaa. With the rise of these services, it did two things: Allowed consumers access to catalog that the labels are not promoting, and allowed the consumer to have more access to music than ever before. This created a demand for independent label music, as well as bringing back old music to new generations.

The labels responded with lawsuits against these new technologies, trying to put “the genie back into the bottle”, but this has not been successful. Instead, the tech wizards got further and further ahead, with networks that are much harder to shut down. Tech experts report that the genie may never come back to the bottle.

So, what needs to be done is for the industry to adapt to the times, and consider alternative licensing techniques that are adaptive to the technologies of today, and be quick to respond to future technologies that evolve, instead of trying to shut them down.

The hardest part for the labels is to make money and for artists and songwriters to make a living, while adapting to new technologies. The labels claim their biggest problem is that the catalog and distribution are in the consumers’ hands, rather than the labels hands. However, consumers are rejecting the control the labels want to have over their music preference, and they do not want to accept the encryption and extra fees to burn CDs, or have their music be portable. What the music industry considers a biggest threat are decentralized P2P networks that use open source code, and are developed by individuals on their own time. As such, there is no way to turn these networks off with a lawsuit, and in many cases can recover during or after threats of legal action against the developers.

The big problem is the complexity of the music licensing system. There are two copyrights for each song, one for the lyrics and notes, the other for the recording. The lyrics and notes belong to the publisher, in most cases. The recording copyright usually belongs to the label. In some cases, the artist and songwriters own the rights to their work, as this is often the case with some indie labels, and with unsigned bands. In addition, to broadcast or stream music, you need licenses with ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC depending on the song.

I think that there is a balance that can be achieved, that would allow freedom to innovate technology, while at the same time the artists are paid for their work. Several people have suggested proposals that could achieve the balance we need. Here are some such proposals:

Labels and Publishers put their entire catalog on the web at a reasonable price:

Rep. Rick Boucher, musician Janis Ian, and others have suggested that if the labels put their catalogs on the web at a reasonable price, it could help the situation because it would give people a legitimate alternative for people who currently use KaZaa, Gnutella, or other P2P programs for catalog purposes. For this to work, the labels would have to allow that the song downloads to be permanent, portable, CD burnable, and in a consumer friendly format (such as MP3 or OGG), to really lure people away. The only drawbacks, for the labels would be a lack of control, and they would lose the able to “force feed” people want they want them to buy.

Pass on a fee to Internet Users for Music Access:

Some people have proposed charging a “content fee” for accessing music and other types of downloads. This proposal is a worthwhile idea, but it is not without pitfalls. This would make people pay for music, but the hard part is divvying up the pool. The next part is it is circumventable, and not all music is identifiable through blocking systems. Hackers could theoretically find ways to tunnel music through unblocked ports, wrapped, and encrypted with algorithms of their own. Divvying up the pool, would need some sort of estimated tally system, and a complicated formula.

Adopt a per-song compulsory license:

This kind of arrangement, would allow literally any individual or company to license music downloads or streams at a set rate, of a certain price per song impression. StreamCast Networks suggested such a system. The advantages would allow new music services to sprout up rapidly. The drawbacks, is that the labels could not choose their catalog they want online, nor be able to have full control over the pricing. Also, big name artists would get a lot more in royalties than smaller ones. Many online music companies support this idea, while many labels and publishers oppose it.

Flat Fee for unlimited downloads:

This kind of arrangement, would also allow literally any individual or company to license music downloads or streams at a set rate, of a certain price for unlimited song impressions over a period of time. The original Napster once offered this kind of a proposal, but the labels rejected it. The advantages to this proposal are that music licensing is easy for the online service. The drawback is that the labels would get less revenue that with a per-song system, in many cases.

Non-Commercial Use Levy:

This proposal is to include “taxes” in the prices of blank CD media, computer hardware, MP3 Players, internet service, and other services. Neil Nathaniel suggested this proposal, and Canada has a similar system already. The advantages to this proposal are that it would be able to license decentralized P2P networks, in their current form. In addition, it would mean that most consumers would not be prosecuted for sharing files over P2P networks. It would allow an open catalog, and for consumers to determine what should be “hot”. The drawbacks of this proposal are that the labels have no control of anything. Also, divvying up the pool of funds, and knowing how much to pay to who is also a problem, because what is being shared and copied is not monitored in any way. Even with “tally bot” systems, or track tag IDs, there is no way to verify what is being traded. Also, some people may people who do not download music, and ma y think that the levies are unfair because of this.

Ultimately, I feel that a combination of these and other proposals can be used to provide legitimate access to technologies, and it not be a crime to innovate new technologies, that are not in the labels best interests.

Excellent article Stephen!

I don't like the fee to internet users. Not everyone who uses the internet uses P2P. There was an article about this not to long ago either. Quite frankly, I believe the backlash would be big enough for ISP's to lose a significant amount of customers if they enacted this.

Taxes in the prices of blank media, etc... has already been adopted here, and it's crap. Not everyone who uses those things use them for burning songs. In fact, a lot of people use them for data back up.

I don't like the pay for each download idea either. If it's a song you've never heard before, you don't know what you're getting. You could be paying for a piece of crap. This could be even worse if the prices were too high for songs. If it was $.25 per song, not a big deal. A lot of people don't care about losing a quarter.

Take these things out and the combination of all the other things might work together.

Bill,
The RIAA has a new article on there website, posted on Feb. 28th.
Can u respond to it for us here.

I have an open question regarding these billing models and ideas. Aren't there too many ways AROUND paying your money? Granted the surcharge on computers is one thing, and something only old machine rebuilders and Linuxheads can dodge, but the others have trapdoors where people used to using free services and collecting free music will flock to. Imagine if you could go online, register and pay for one album, then fire up the new version of some p2p app, upload your new album to the server list, and have access to two OTHER albums. The potential for abuse is too great. What we need is an ironclad system for business to feel safe, yet one that doesn't cripple the technology so much. There has to be a happy medium, where we can be free to listen however we wish, and they can get paid.

Svensta,

Yes, there are ways around paying. I will have to admit that many decentralized P2Ps are like that. But in my opinion, the way to reduce the amount of piracy, is to find ways to make innovations legit, but not force the tech designers to build everything to the copyright owner specs, and limit innovation.

Svensta, there are many people with ideas to do just that. Think about this whole thing from a historical (read: long-term) basis.. The market is simply working itself out according to the changes in the supply and demand, and it takes time... Even in the fast-forwarded pace of life, there are some parts that move slower (government agencies, court decisions, etc.), so since things can't really move forward until those sort of things are taken care of, things seem to drag, taking much longer in the process...

As a general rule, businesses, especially this one, will NEVER be safe or insulated from change... For some reason the RIAA and Big Content thinks they are insulated or safe from everything happening outside their reach, which they are terribly mistaken. If music is in a listenable format, one must simply have a microphone and a sound card to record it. CD burners aren't going to disappear anytime soon, so I can burn that recording, let a friend borrow it, they can copy it, and so on...

The system to replace P2P and restrictive sites such as Pressplay are coming. The trick is that the RIAA and Big Content are gradually lowering their prices to see where consumers will start buying.. It's sort of like at a common tactic at a horse race, where you go to the collection booth to collect your winnings... If you've won $100, they'll slap down 3 $20's real quickly and hope you walk away thinking you've got all your money.. If you hold a second longer you'll get another $20 and $10. A second later you'll get your last $10. They do that because if you walk away early, you've lost your obligation to get the rest of your winnings.

Here's my proposal: Take the money out of current ISP rates and have the labels put the entire catalog of music online. On the website where you'd download the music, there'd be scripts to determine the number of downloads and the files would be tagged so if they're shared between friends, then those instances would be tallied as well.

Of course not everyone downloads music, but if you give people the option to opt out, well, it's obvious everyone would opt out. But, my plan doesn't change current charges. Instead, it takes the money out of existing charges. Now, granted, this may cause some ISPs to jack their prices up, but I think it'll actually do the opposite and cause more competition between ISPs. To do this, the labels and artists would receive money from ISPs based on the price they charge for monthly service. Currently, the highest priced service that I know of is $59.99, which is for high speed service. Thus, it's only fair that the labels and artists get maybe $25 per user to be able to download an unlimited number of songs. An ISP that charges only $8.95 a month would only have to pay out maybe $1.50 per user a month. This plan could even force ISPs and phone companies to upgrade everything to high speed and even lower the price of high speed service.

Charging everyone allows everyone to download, even people just starting their MP3 collections. And since their's no extra charge, there would be no need to obtain the music by hacking the site everything will be on. It'll be a service provided by the ISP at no extra charge!

Of course, I'm sure someone will find a fault in my plan or they just won't hear of it. But I feel it's the best way to let people listen to whatever they want to, whenever they want to and the artists get paid.

All of these ideas have one thing in common -- they won't work.

People should not have to pay to listen to music. They should have to pay to buy high-quality recordings (less than $10), but I absolutely refuse to pay merely to hear another artist's work unless they are playing it live. Certainly not for a crappy 128k streaming mp3.

There used to be a thing called the radio, where the music industry let people listen to a lot of different songs. If people liked them, they bought the album.

If someone could come up with something like that, maybe there's a chance.

If you don't want people to listen to your music, stop making it. If you do, put it out there for them and stop being greedy bastards by trying to charge for low quality mp3s.

Why is it that when the word "money" enters a sentence, it always outweighs "music" or "art" or "creative work"? If money is the only reason you play music (as opposed to it being a welcome by-product), you are wasting not only your own time, but that of the listeners.

True art is borne of vision, not greed.

radio?? hmm let's think about that!

Haydenswall, so by that logic the big media corps current music is crap.

I agree with that logic.

Vat ess dees radio? Ver can I find it?

Great article!!

I love this idea that people "should" not have to pay for music. it's hilarious.

and don't get me wrong. I'm completely against the riaa, record labels, music retail and stupid, draconian copyright laws.

but seriously, this whole idea that thigns "should be free" is junvenile.

now, I completely agree that at some level, music marketing needs to expose the consumer to it's product (music) for little or no cost. and then, they should offer a quality product in a lasting media for a reasonable cost.

for instance, if for a couple of bucks (and I mean about two) a month you could sample and hear music and then you could buy either high quality downloads (let's say for fifty cents a song) or a production run of a non-copy protected full length cd (let's say for under ten), I think that's a sustainable business model.

but keep in mind who you are fighting against in this battle. you're fighting music retail. you're fighting sam goody, musicland, camelot, f.y.e, tower records, virgin and all their ilk. you're fighting the plucky little indie guy down the street who retails unsed cd under ten bucks as well. if you're willing, as I am, to put all these people out of business, and that's what it will take and that it implies, then you can have the other business model I described. or some version of it.

but don't think for a second that some form of the old and new models can co-exist. they can't.

until ALL (or at the very least a significant portion) of the music buying public is willing to not purchase music through these venues, nothing will change.

Last time I checked, I didn't need to pay someone money to listen, and use my ears? I have used them since I was born free of charge. Air is free too.

Lets get to the point here: With new technology all around us, (Satellites, Cable...ect) it is easier than ever to get high quality audio streamed into your home. Any computer user can plug that Audio, and Video into their computer and get CD quality Music and and Music Videos.

In these cases, haven't we already paid for the computer it's on, and the Radio, Cable TV or DishTV connection?

Through the long process of this information making it into your house, how many times does the Music industry feel we should pay for it? The TV companies have, then the advertisers for the commercial, of course us, the Consumers...

Internet file sharing is far more than just MP3s. The Internet is primairly owned and operated by Many companies large and small World Wide. I know that is burning RIAA up. They can "Buy" them out, or control them.

The Music industry would love to get paid AGAIN on music that has already been paid for. Does it matter who paid for it? NO, because file sharing is free to all. There is no money being made here, no gaining anything besides a loss of our own bandwidth. All they are doing by file sharing is saving you the time of recording it yourself from your own home.

The RIAA and friends ruined this gold mine opportunity by destroying Napster and perSUEing anything and everything in their path. They gave us the time to stand back and look, before signing the dotted line accepting their greed.

Thank You RIAA for opening my eyes, Time for you to open yours!

can i burn free music any time without paying any fees?
angel