Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2003 11:18:08 +0200
Subject: Re: pho: Billboard OpEd on File-Sharing
well said fred
if the money misspent on trying to make sure we buy what is mostly a
clone of we've already bought before, were spent on developing artists
that the public decides it likes without hype, (revealed in p2p
starts), then already you'd have a healthier situation.


> Taking Issue: Abandon The 'Shock And Awe' Tactics
> An Eight-Step Recovery Program For A Healthier Music Industry
> By FRED GOLDRING
> October 25, 2003
>
> Now that the public is in the crosshairs of the Recording Industry
> Assn. of America lawsuits, I'm concerned that this will be remembered
> as the day our industry went too far.
>
> As someone who earns a living working with musicians, record companies
> and publishing companies (and as a musician myself), it is not in my
> interest to see any of them fail or continue to lose money.
>
> Of course, I want to help. But what do you do for a good friend or
> family member who is not thinking clearly, hell-bent on a collision
> course of self-destruction and taking you along for the ride?
>
> You do what any caring person would do: stage an intervention.
>
> So, it's time for some tough love for the music business. In this
> spirit, here are some things our industry may not want to hear but
> need to be said.
>
> The file-sharing age should be a golden age for artists, because more
> people are listening to more (and a wider variety of) music than ever
> before. But every day, the artists are missing out, held hostage by an
> obstinate industry, paralyzed by fear of impending obsolescence.
>
> A lot of money is being left on the table that could be theirs (and,
> by the way, the industry's).
>
> Let's start with the obvious (at least to people not in our business).
>
> Nothing we've done so far has worked. In fact, we've made the problem
> much worse.
>
> In suing Napster, we not only made it a household name, we introduced
> file sharing to a previously unaware general public-in the end, 60
> million people using the Internet to consume music.
>
> This should have been the industry's dream-a massive aggregation of
> music fans in one place. But instead of figuring out how to use this
> to our advantage and marketing to all of these fans, we sued the
> original Napster into extinction.
>
> Now we're pursuing the desperate measure of suing our own customers
> for doing what we want them to do-accumulate, listen to and recommend
> music-but just not in the way we want them to do it. Opportunities
> squandered; problems compounded.
>
> Downloading copyrighted songs without permission is illegal. That is
> irrefutable. But 60 million scofflaws in this country (and tens of
> millions more around the world) want to swap MP3 music.
>
> They are going to continue to swap music with or without the music
> industry's (or the government's) blessing or authorization, despite
> all the lawsuits and digital mousetraps we put in their way.
>
> The toothpaste has been out of the tube for three years, but, sadly,
> our industry can't or won't admit it.
>
> There is a point when the public at large embraces a new idea and
> there is no turning back. For the music industry, that point has
> passed. What we need to acknowledge now is that as attitudes, values,
> behavior and societal mores evolve and change, the rules change.
> Today's taboo becomes tomorrow's normal, acceptable, legal behavior.
>
> However, when the rules don't change and lose step with the times,
> ordinary, otherwise law-abiding people "flaunt" the rules. Anyone
> remember Prohibition?
>
> So, borrowing a page from some time-tested intervention programs, I
> suggest to our industry the following eight-step recovery program:
>
> 1) Admit you're powerless; accept the reality of your situation. File
> sharing is not going away. Downloading is already more popular than
> the CD.
>
> It will continue to grow more popular every day, and nothing is going
> to change that-not litigation, not the Apple iTunes store, not amnesty
> programs and certainly not better parenting or after-school programs.
>
> 2) Give up on anti-piracy technologies. They don't work. They won't
> stop copying and distribution. They'll only make your products less
> appealing to your prospective paying customers.
>
> 3) Stop attacking your own customers. Besides being bad P.R., it's bad
> business. Remember, you're hoping to sell music to the same "thieves"
> that you're now suing.
>
> Look at this "problem" as an opportunity to turn the majority of music
> fans who never bought records into paying customers.
>
> 4) Get out of the way, and make yourselves invisible. The music
> business works best when the focus is on the music and not on the
> business.
>
> 5) Re-order your priorities. You certainly have a right to complain
> about double-digit declines in sales. But you're spending way too much
> time pointing the finger, and you're not focused on immediate,
> practical, fair solutions.
>
> 6) Give the people what they want, even if it requires the laws to be
> changed. You aren't working to give them what they want, and that's
> why they're turning to services like Kazaa-not just because they're
> free.
>
> 7) Support initiatives that will allow unlimited access to every piece
> of music in the MP3 format whenever and wherever someone wants it,
> with no conditions or restrictions in an easy-to-use interface. People
> will pay for this.
>
> 8) Stop your futile efforts to change the behavior of millions of
> music fans. Spend all your efforts on designing a system that gets
> everyone paid around the overwhelming behavior that exists-and
> creating better records.
>
> It's time to put down the guns and stop celebrating pyrrhic victories.
> We're still a long way from solving the problems surrounding music
> file sharing, and sharing movies is next. Wide-ranging solutions, from
> digital tip jars to compulsory licenses, have been suggested but not
> thoroughly (or critically) explored.
>
> Because the devil is in the details, working out all of the complex
> issues facing artists, consumers and the business will be difficult.
> But any solution must start with immediately abandoning our
> heavy-handed strategy of "shock and awe."
>
> We're just going to drive our consumers further underground-maybe out
> of reach forever-and make ourselves extinct in the process. People
> will continue to listen to music, whether we're part of the process or
> not. The time to start a real dialogue is now. The window is rapidly
> closing.
>
>
>
> Fred Goldring is a partner at Goldring, Hertz & Lichtenstein, a
> Beverly Hills-based entertainment law firm.
>

wow, a lawyer in the entertainment industry making sense!!! Cary Sue are you listening? Still can't help but wonder if it is too late. I know my view of the industry is forever changed

I second compmore's comments.
And, as an aside, I actually wrote an e-mail to Mr. Cary Sherman at the RIAA to ask him a question about their legal position on something. Here's the bounceback message :

Reporting-MTA: dns;hotmail.com
Received-From-MTA: dns;mail.hotmail.com
Arrival-Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2003 12:17:37 -0700

Final-Recipient: rfc822;cary.sherman@riia.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.7.1
Diagnostic-Code: smtp;550 5.7.1 ... Relaying denied

perhaps you made a mistake with the email address. riaa.com, not riia.com.

Amazingly well put... brightened up my day Point 7 is good... If they make a site consisting of everything the industry has ever released (including the 80% we can no longer purchase in stores)... charge $20/mo. to 100 million file-sharers, there's a revenue of $2 billion per month. And people would pay for it if they could make it better than the current filesharing networks.

Now, if they do that, reform copyright laws and compensate the artists, we'll be set : )

Uhm... 20$ a month? O_O No... You charge about $2 a month and I'm onboard. I already pay 30 bucks for internet. And that's regulated. I don't need a lot of bills coming with no money flow at all...

It is about time some onefrom the "music industry" finaly said something that made sense. But I feel that it is to late for the RIAA they had a chance and blew it so now we move on and do things our way.

I don't think it's too late for them. I think the old way of doing business is dissappearing and the record companyt executives are waking up to the reality that they no longer will have direct control over the musicians. Many musicians are now seeing Kazaa and other file-sharing software as direct marketing of thier music and record companies are no longer needed. You won't hear Cary Sherman's ugly mug speakig about this becuase just like Clive Davis and Antonio Ried, he's not gonna admit that he's wrong. They never do until itt's too late. I just hope that that when they realize that no one is buying cds anymore and the public is fully aware of what they are doing, it will mean the end of them. I hate big business and monopolies.

I like this article. But I still don't have much hope. The RIAA has never done anything to make both the consumer AND the artist happy. I don't foresee the RIAA changing their business model soon. The RIAA will be like the musicians on the Titanic, still trying to play as the ship sinks into the icy depths.

Code...nice tou see you again

"Now that the public is in the crosshairs of the Recording Industry Assn. of America lawsuits,"

I'de put that the other way around....

this is probably the most sense ANY lawyer has ever made. $20 a month for filesharing is too high (especially considering the $45 a month for broadband). $5 a month is a great price. 60 million Americans x $5 = $300 million in GRAVY money per month ($3.6 BILLION per year is pure profit) & in exchange, users can fileshare all they want for personal use (i.e. no money changes hands.)

The most I would pay is 5 bucks a month. My parents would pay nothing more for me to get music. I would only pay that 5 bucks a month if in that service, I could get any song I wanted, not like now, where I've been searching for this one song that no one in the world has. I'm sorry. but i think getting 5 bucks a month for a great service from 60 million people would be a great income for anyone. At least it's more than the 3,000 they're getting from around 240 people every like 5 months or so. At least they'd know that they're getting steady income every month.

But I don't think that will happen. If the RIAA is that stupid to fcuk with their customers in the first place and sue them, I don't think they'll ever smarten up and take advantage or a steady monthly income. I think the best they'll do is iTunes. I don't have faith in them in the first place, why should I have faith that they'll turn around and be sensible for once?

I am glad they have dug their own grave. Remember, we do not want the RIAA, period.

I will never pay for music again. It is sounds in the air; it should be free.

I will pay consistently to see the performers I enjoy live for the rest of my life. I will buy posters, shirts, etc. I will send artists $ directly, BUT I WILL NEVER PAY FOR SOUNDWAVES IN THE AIR AGAIN.

They will never stop free music. It will either become well encrypted, someone will make a p2p with a disclaimer before every download saying "I am not responsible for you downloading copyrighted material" (or something to that effect), or it will just go underground again.

I have to glib over this a moment,

My favorite thing about the entire article is the author's use of words.

The name, "Recording Industry Assn. of America", is interpreted in the readers mind, (appropriately), "Recording Industry Assasin of America".

That said, I can make several other appendages to the eight points the author makes. But I don't have to.

I am sending this article as is to my addressbook bank of reporters, and pray some will find the wisdom to investigate the story, and hope that some will find a place in that story, and see how important it is.

In less flowery terms, I want to either inform or remind everyone, that an MP3, is a photocopy of the original, and in no way should be convinced that it is as good as the "actual goods". Compare any MP3 to an actual HI-FI copy of the same and call me a liar.

DO NOT EXCEPT LESS FOR MORE!!!!

There needs to be at least a little compromise (in my opinion) for anything to happen at all... When a CD is $20 already (I'm Canadian, so when I say $20, it's somewhat less in US$), suggesting that $2/mo. for unlimited downloads is fair doesn't seem right. If the artists are already under-compensated, $2/mo. for all-you-can-eat music will just make it worse... If I were to download 20 albums, that's 10 cents per album... so the artist would literally end up with nothing, or a fraction of a cent. In an ideal world, we wouldn't have the RIAA as the middleman for such a large portion of the music released... but for now (for now), they are... I feel some sort of compromise in the meantime might at least pave the way for future changes (though, admittedly, it's not very likely based on their past actions.) Just my thoughts... I'd love to have unlimited downloads for $2/mo though, don't get me wrong, I just can't see it being a practical alternative. Change happens gradually, the RIAA won't disappear overnight, so we need to take things one step at a time.

.. this was in BILLBOARD? I thought that was a major industry rag..

darn it, you're right about that. I need to resend that, I just copied and pasted from another site with that e-mail.
Will do,,,thanks undeath!

PS thanks Celtic

I went back and checked it , because I cc:ed Mitch Bainwol and Amy Weiss, and I got the riaa.com right on theirs. Still no answer...boo hooo

I will ask J-bone to consider the remote fact that some music listeners are not buying certain flavors of breakfast cereal because the box carries the endorsement of bands sponsored by the Recording Industry Assn. of America.

Perhaps I should explain those concerns to the breakfast cereal companies.

along with every reporter/congressman I know.

a "print" of a painting is NOT as good as having the original painting.

Andrea and Shmoo of Electric Gypsy

Not that I care because I won't do it, but I don't see how any unlimited download service would be feasible. Would every artist with copyrighted material be compensated the exact same amount? This is not fair, as some people suck.

Someone please tell me how they think this could realistically be implemented.

/
DEATH TO YOU RIAA!!! ?D>-----8----

remember "JOE CAMEL"?

that didn't come out right.....

?D>----/8 ----<

That is for you big-lipped Sherman.

(Not scaled to actual size)

to Anti-RIAA,

This is a reasonalble question, a song might usually only have 4 members, and in other cases an entire symphony.

How is the Recording Industry Assn. of America even dealing with this problem?!? My hat is off to them, they deserve some recognition here!

good questions!!

theHERMIT - true enough... I have no plans to purchase any major label music anytime in the forseeable future (until they've greatly changed their ways)... I'm just suggesting small changes, one at a time, is probably the only way to accomplish this... just as they've gradually increased copyright lengths and eliminated the public domain over the past 95 years.

Anti-RIAA, good point... perhaps if they calculated the percentage of files downloaded from a certain band... for example, if there were 100 million people signed up (at $20/mo., that's $2 billion), and each downloaded 150 songs per month on average.. that's 15 billion songs, which works out to 13 cents collected per song... so if one band had 100,000 songs downloaded (1 of every 150,000 songs downloaded in total) that's $13000 revenue as a result of that band... how it would be distributed from there would obviously still be an issue, but if unlimited downloads led to a higher consumption of music and greater awareness of the industry, perhaps the labels could be convinced to compensate the artists better.

Or perhaps not, just a thought

It can happen... They already monitor how much people dl on Kazaa with a program called Comcast in an area.

What's downloaded in Boston isn't necessarily what's dl'ed in Houston so Comcast reflects that.

This is a good article. At last, someone sees the light. A direct guide for the RIAA to listen. Are you listening, Mr. Sherman? Probably not. He's just obsessed with lawsuits now.

Glad to see that CodeWarrior is back.

:-:~ PhantomGhost ~:-:

this makes sense, however once a turd, allways a turd. i want to see the riaa extinct

Based on their recently-adopted strategy and tactics, it appears that the RIAA has become like the proverbial modern-day version of Egypt's Pharaoh whose heart had been purposely hardened by G-d at the time of the Exodus led by Moses, because G-d WANTED the Pharaoh to suffer the most extreme fates for what he'd imposed on the Hebrew slaves in the past. Could it be that G-d is signaling the eventual downfall of the RIAA because of the harm they've done, and are STILL doing, to our quality of life, our freedoms, our standard of living, and our society in general?

wait a minute is that really code or some1 else

Anti-RIAA -- "Would every artist with copyrighted material be compensated the exact same amount?"

One would think it would be based on plays. The Internet is infinitely more accountable than radio. I can look at my logs and see how many times each song was downloaded or streamed. There is no making up numbers.

W-B -- You think God actually gives a hoot about rock and roll or rap?

Oh yeah, the article. I liked number 4 best.

This is how it used to be BN (Before Napster).

In #6 of the 8-steps: Looks familiar.

Typical of the close-minded arrogance of an organization that has a monopoly-based attitude. We saw the same thing happen to General Motors in the auto industry back in the 1970's. At the time, GM sold 1 of every 2 cars in the USA, 50-percent of the US market. One GM executive was even quoted as saying that "people will buy what GM tells them to buy" when questioned about the falling quality and rising prices of their cars.

Then the Japanese came in, listened to what customers wanted, and delivered at a reasonable price. The result: Japanese cars are considered among today's best. by not listening to their customers GM has lost market share year after year, falling from 50-percent to only 18-percent of new car sales. Add to that the billions of dollars lost over the years.

It took years of hemoraging cash and a major purging of the executive ranks at GM to institute a turn-around, and nearly 30 years later, GM is still stuggling in the marketplace.

Looks like the RIAA is failing to learn from history.

You know it may take a Japanese or Chinese company to do the one price all the downloads you can get concept.

I hate to say it (as much as I despise Jack Valenti and his failed leadership of the MPAA all the way back to his failed position in the "you haven't done nothing" LBJ administration) but the movie folks are moving in the right direction. I was just at Wal-Mart and most of the DVDs are cheaper ($5-$10) than CDs ($15 and up). It may be almost too much of a hassle to download a movie and burn it to a disk. It is certainly cheaper that going to the movie theatre. With the downward pressure in the price of DVDs they may want to scrap the DRM stuff, I would be happy if I didn't have to watch the FBI symbol at the beginning of each movie.

Why can't the RIAA get a clue, even their partner in crime the MPAA is beginning to show signs of getting it!

Even I agree 10 dollar dvd's are a good value, now the MPAA just has to not wait months after a theatre release to release a DVD, perhaps a month or so?

Say, this article is dated October 25th -- Is this a pre-release?

Code LTNS, well the paper would not print my letter, guess they are in the corporate censorship mode too. Everbody should write the Editor, David Giuliani at dgiuliani@currentargus.com and ask him why he is afraid to print the truth about the RIAA, MPAA and their campaign of terror against music lovers.

Excellent article!

When the RIAA and the major labels finally die, the musicians are going to flourish big time. It will obviously take some time and brain power, but they will have the freedom to create and sell their music without having to worry about a greedy label sucking the vast majority of profits and power from them.

RythmMethod LTNS back ~

OldSchoolHipHop- its really me.
~Code