Judge Kills Napster Sale Over Conflict of Interest 181
MaxVlast writes "The New York Times is reporting that 'A bankruptcy judge blocked the sale of Napster Inc. to Bertelsmann AG on Tuesday, killing a deal that might have revived the idled Internet music pioneer.' The Napster CEO used to work for Berteslsmann, and the judge suspects a conflict of interest. The CEO says that Napster will probably go from Chapter 11 to a Chapter 7 liquidation." Reader VinceK adds a link to the same AP story (with no login needed) carried at Biz Report, and more reports at the SJ Mercury News, CBS Marketwatch and InfoWorld.
RIP Napster! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:RIP Napster! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:RIP Napster! (Score:2)
Re:RIP Napster! (Score:1)
Re:RIP Napster! (Score:4, Funny)
And if you cross the street ouside of the crosswalk, you are SETTING FIRE TO CARS. However, few people know that if you drive with an open alcohol container in your vehicle, you are SELLING CRACK TO KIDS! If you smoke marajuana, you are enacting THEERMONUCLEAR TERRORISM! Perople must be warned! Yes, we all know that one kind of illegal act is often identically equal to a more severe and destructive illegal act. We must get the word out on the lesser known examples.
Thank Jebus for Hillary Rosen and her public service announcements that copyright infringement == theft! Praise Gud that the public is now understanding the moral ight of crime elevation! We must now follow Saimt Rosen's lead and warn the public about the lesser known elevated crimes! Praise Arrah!
I appologize to anyone offended by the names of the pseudo-dieties ued to mock the stupid sheep that believe the inustry line. Religion is a beautiful thing, blind sheephood is not and I did not want anyone to get confused as to whom I was mocking.
Re:RIP Napster! (Score:1)
http://www.esecurityplanet.com/trends/article/0,,
http://wintermute.student.umd.edu/
--jW-
Re:RIP Napster! (Score:2)
Re:RIP Napster! (Score:2)
OT quote question: (Score:1)
Re:OT quote question: (Score:2)
Re:PLURAL (Score:1)
-JC
Re:PLURAL (Score:1)
Or do you?
It was to be expected... (Score:4, Interesting)
Still however, the Greek took Troy nontheless, it just took 'em a couple of years...
Re:It was to be expected... (Score:2, Funny)
See you in 2012, then...
Re:It was to be expected... (Score:1)
Re:It was to be expected... (Score:2)
Re:It was to be expected... (Score:2)
Just like the first big MP3 sharing service was bound to be taken down by the RIAA, the (overly) big RIAA is bound to be taken down by, among other things, the other big MP3 sharing services. Still however, it will take a few years.
Oh? (Score:2)
Re:It was to be expected... (Score:2, Insightful)
As much as I disagree with the way the MPAA and the RIAA have handled this brave new world of technology, they are fundamentally right. You have apparently never had something that you put serious effort into creating taken without your consent. Intellectual property is a way of quantifying that a song, or video, or picture, or peice of software exists through the expenditure of someones resources (time, money, etc..) and that expenditure should be justly compensated.
Who are you to claim that a song should belong to you by right. What the hell did you do to help Eminem write the lyrics? How much money did you give Metallica to help them by their instruments? How much recording equipment did you donate to Sony? How many hours in the factory did you volunteer to help press the albums? Who did you hire to teach Dave Matthews to play the Guitar?
Again, I'm not saying that the current actions of the RIAA are morally sound. But having had a peice of software stolen from me in College and billed as somebody elses work woke me up to the fact that people pour a bit of their soul into the things they create and they at the very least deserve to be recognized and if they so desire, compensated for their effort. Recognize that the RIAA and MPAA are products of the industry itself. They are trying to work in an arena they had no hand in building and really don't have the option to just sit back and say, "fuck it, nobody get's paid anymore." Artists and studios make a ton of money because we the people are willing to pay it for the enjoyment of their product. No matter how "Robin Hood" altruistic the intent may have been, stealing the music as a response to the high prices is not the answer. Unless someone can come up with a way to restructure these industries to where the artists are compensated for their work and the consumers are granted that work at reasonable prices to make it accesible to everyone, the RIAA will continue to raid houses of 'innocent' teenagers who were just downloading their favorite NSYNC song.
FYI, I used Napster. The difference is, when I found something I liked, I went out and bought the album. Many thanks to the hard working people who spend years perfecting a talent so that I can sit lazily on my couch and enjoy their work.
Really? (Score:1)
Eminem needs help writing his lyrics? Is he some sort of mental midget or something.
Alright so a miner comes onto my land digs around and finds valuable ore... following your logic, the ore belongs to him, free and clear. This is exactly what the record companies and artists have done.
Re:It was to be expected... (Score:2)
Consider great artists, like Mozart, or Leonardo. How did they get rewarded for their creative efforts? They had sponsors -- patrons -- who gave them a living allowance. (This tradition continues today. Richard Stallman and Tim Berners-Lee are two of the receipients of the MacArthur Foundation's "genius" grants [google.ca].)
Isaac Asimov wrote a great book entitled "Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science". It consists of brief biographies of the 1,000 scientist Asimov considered the most important. One of the interesting things I learned from this book was that during the middle ages, when Greek and Roman thinkers from classical times were very highly respected, some mediavel scholars would attribute their work to classical thinkers. Some of these classical thinkers were hacks. And their reverse plagiarism was an annoying source of confusion for modern scholars. But sometimes their work was unique and valuable. One of these guys made Asimov's list of the 1,000 most important scientists. IIRC he is known only as "the False Jeder".
My point? Smart people, creative people, from different cultures, had no idea of "intellectual property".
Um. I'd say that "justice" is a human invention too. Proof? Look how differently other cultures interpret justice. Are there cultures that have never heard of justice? It wouldn't surprise me. I know some assholes who seem to have never heard of justice. Ah rightsTell me, where do rights come from? Do you believe that rights come from God? That is what the US constitution says. Well, I don't believe in God.
So far as I am concerned, what people call rights are merely conventions. If you can convince everyone else that the conventions you believe in have value to them, then you get to live in a society that respects your "rights".
If not, you have some very difficult decisions to make.
Now, I am sorry you had your ideas ripped off. I want to live in a society where people's contributions are appreciated. But it seems to me your arguments are circular. If I were to paraphrase your argument it seems to be you are entitled to own your ideas because you have a right to them. Circular.
Patents, copyright. They are inventions. There is a rationale for granting patents and copyrights to creators. Doing so is supposed to benefit society in general.
The idea behind a patent is that granting the patent holder a limited period of time when no one else can use their idea, without a liscense or other permission, ultimately benefits the public. The idea is that the patent holder grants some liscenses, or gets a limited period of time when they have a monopoly, and they make some money. The idea is that without that money they wouldn't have come up with the idea. Or they wouldn't have the cash to develop it. What does the public get out of it? Well, we get to use the mature creation for free, when the patent expires. If it is a good idea this should be good for us. And if it is a good enough idea it is worth it to us to pay the liscense fee prior to the patent running out.
Question: If the US Patent Office was keeping this idea in mind would they be granting patents to corporations with deep pockets who were cashing in on ideas that already existed. Did it really benefit the public when the compression algorithm used in the original GIF format was patented out from under us?
Morals? Another human invention, so far as I am concerned. Actually, most artists don't make a ton of money. Even famous artists have been known to get famous, and still go bankrupt. I believe both Toni Braxton [rockonthenet.com] and those young gals in TLC went bankrupt. I suggest you go back and read the articles Janis Ian wrote that were cited here on slashdot -- or the article that Courtney Love published about the economics of being an artist in today's music industry.And then there are the not famous artists. If I had a young protege who wanted to be an artist, I would encourage them to do it because it gave them pleasure. I would encourage them to consider whether they loved creating enough that they were willing to go into debt to create, and if so, how deeply in debt. Most artists you or I are ever likely to make friends with are going to be lucky if they can manage to break even.
Can't buy it? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Can't buy it? (Score:1)
Only if you're downloading it to "preview" it or because none of the stores un your area carry it.
Only in America..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Only in America..... (Score:1)
Out of business (Score:2)
I hear tell that's important.
Take a look on their website (Score:4, Informative)
Have a look on their website
www.napster.com [napster.com]
Yuioup
Re:Take a look on their website (Score:1)
Re:Take a look on their website (Score:2)
Re:Take a look on their website (Score:2)
LOL (Score:1)
Re:Take a look on their website (Score:1)
That's one thing we should learn from him.
Missing image (Score:2)
how can a judge interfere ? (Score:1)
Isnt that fair ? How can the court come in and talk about conflict of interest ?
P2P (Score:1)
This is what big business has been dreaming about for ever... an acronym that encompasses thier entire philosophy of consumerism and economics
Stupidity should be as painful as Windows.
Death to fruitflys!
Re:how can a judge interfere ? (Score:1)
Napster was getting closed anyway... (Score:1)
Re:Napster was getting closed anyway... (Score:2)
If I were a Napster creditor (the only financial stakeholders left), I'd try to sue whomever is responsible for this colossal blunder.
Re:Napster was getting closed anyway... (Score:1)
"I didn't get my way... GRR LETS SUE!!!!!!!"
Guess what, their probably isn't any money left to sue for. And on top of that, GOOD FSCKING LUCK! You need a class action to sue almost any company these days. And if the company is big enough, they'll just shrug that off too.
I had a business once, it failed, I didn't sue, I cut my losses and said 'Well, time to get a real job.'
Re:Napster was getting closed anyway... (Score:2)
Bertelsmann actually offered good hard cash for the Napster assets. This cash - at least - would have been "the money left" and could have been used to pay a part of Napster's debt.
Due to the decision of that bankruntcy court now the creditors will not see that money. The question is now: will the court be able to get a better - or at least comparable - offer for the napster assets. If it doesn't, it has harmed the creditors and should duly compensate them. The court, after all, is the trustee of the creditor's interest and should act according to these duties.
Somebody else has suggested - and I share that sentiment - that some of the creditors might rather see Napster go down in flames but see its assets in Bertelsmann hands. The only legitimate way to acchieve that of course would be presenting a better offer. But that costs money. So the court has indirectly done, say, Disneys bidding here - by killing of the Bertelsmann offer the court has made it cheaper for them to get the whole Napster destroyed forever, to the strategic advantage of a few companies and to the detriment of the other Napster creditors.
Now add to that that the nasty suspicion that the benificaries are probably US companies (Disney, Time/Warner etc), while one of the victims is a Euroopean Company (Bertelsmann is with ~ US$ 100 Mill. one of Napster's larger creditors as well) you come to conclude that a judge may have bent the law and acted against his duties to give an advantage to some US companies over their European competitor.
As a funny sidenote, some of the articles suggest that Bertelsmann's Napster credits are 'secured' - if I understand that correctly Bertelsmann will get a better share or even the lions share of any payout from Napster. So this takeover bid might even have been a close-to-zero-sum-game - Betelsmann pays the money for the assets and gets most of it back as debt repayment. This means they were more or less entitled to Napster's assets as result of their credit contracts anyway. So we have a judge tricking a foreign company out of leagl entitlements to the advantage of an ameriacn competitor.
If this were in fact the case, they indeed should take a hard look at the judge and initiate legal action against him.
Re:Napster was getting closed anyway... (Score:2)
No cause of action against the other creditors since they have no duty of care towards you. The court has immunity.
When a company goes into Chapter 11 with huge debts creditors will often prefer a total loss to allowing the company to be sold to an original investor for a few cents on the dollar. This is a prisoner dillema type paradox, the optimal strategy is paradoxical if you only consider one case.
The reason why I will force a company into chapter 7 rather than allow a buyout is that I would prefer to get 0 cents on the dollar than allow the company insiders to get control of $100 million worth of assets for $5 million and pay me 5 cents on the dollar. I would rather lose $5K or so than encourage VCs to start doing this type of thing deliberately.
In this case Bertelseman jetissoned the idiot CEO who entered the deal in the first place only after the original objections were made.
In the excite at home case however, the creditors were complete idiots. AT&T bid way over the value of the assets they were acquiring and the creditors were essentially trying to blackmail AT&T into paying for continuity of service. Then despite having rejected the bid the creditors went to the court after AT&T had suffered the disruption and tried to get the original deal!!!
Another reason for forcing a company into Chapter 7 is that rather than get paid 5cents on the dollar on the debt I might prefer to buy certain assets of the company at firesale prices.
Heh. (Score:1)
Re:Heh. (Score:1)
Better use of resources... (Score:1)
"Things involving the computer fill me with a childlike terror. Now, if it were a nice ogre or some such, I'd be more in my element." -- Giles
7/11 (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
In even more basic terms. . . (Score:1)
Chapter 7 means Ded Kitty [napster.com]. No more business. No more Napster. (Yes, that Napster link appears several more times in these comments. I saved it and the main page to disk; not sure why; maybe a bit of history.)
I wonder who drew the "Ded Kitty" jpg? Did they get hacked or does the webmaster have a cool sense of humor? Is there a webmaster? Can't be getting paid much.
Re:In even more basic terms. . . (Score:1)
Yes, ofcourse it would take him several hours of unpaid labour to whip up that website.
Can't imagine why anyone would do that.
Re:In even more basic terms. . . (Score:1)
Re:7/11 (Score:2, Funny)
Sadly, the only thing that's possible to liquidate in Napster "Headquarters" are few 2U servers and a copy of MS Visual Studio 6.0 where Shawn actually wrote the damn thing.
Sucks to be him. One day you're the most popular pseudo-celebrity, next day you're just an MS Paint artist. [napster.com]
"Conflict of Interest" (Score:1)
Whoa, man. I haven't been paying much attention to this whole case, but...
Bertelsmann was trying to pull off the Coen Brother's "The Hudsucker Proxy" with Napster???
Napster. You know, for kids!
Alright! Dotcom Fire Sale! (Score:1)
Re:Alright! Dotcom Fire Sale! (Score:1)
Hey, there's a liquidation revenue increase idea: sell their dotcom toys on eBay as nostalgia/history. Several Slashdot commenters seem to think Napster is the martyr before a digital/resonable-price revolution in the music industry. Heck, even I felt compelled to save the "Napster was Here" page and "Ded Kitty" jpg to disk and I think the RIAA will crush all opposition.
What I really want, though, is that Pets.com sock puppet. That cracked me up the first couple of times I saw it. I loved it when he knocked on the door or you could see the big hairy arm. Just the first few times, though; it got old after the n-hundredth time.
Re:Alright! Dotcom Fire Sale! (Score:1)
Nerfster (Score:2, Funny)
On a related note, Nerf has declared that it will be installing chips in its toys that allow only the registered user to use them... all copyright violaters will be assimilated, er, prosecuted.
Stupidity should be as painful as Windows...
Re:Nerfster (Score:2)
o/~ We're back from the dead... o/~
Better This Than The Alternative (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Better This Than The Alternative (Score:1)
Freeware and shareware hurt... BFD!! Really... Pay that $0.75 for your download... Its less then a cup of coffee!
I take my hat off to Napster (Score:5, Insightful)
Napster really did pave the way for P2P File Sharing, and they deserve some respect. I mean, who here didn't use Napster?
Re:I take my hat off to Napster (Score:1)
Re:I take my hat off to Napster (Score:1)
Re:I take my hat off to Napster (Score:2)
Me.
Sorry, had to say it. I'm no angel, but it took me a while to get over it and start peering.
Re:I take my hat off to Napster (Score:1)
Its time to move on!
woohoo, can anyone say YARDSALE!!! (Score:1)
Hah! See Yesterday's News Was Wrong (Score:2)
Still I do like the way that the laid off staff all posed for a group photo for the photographers who turned up to cover teh story - Rock on!
Great Bunch of ppl
Now - has anyone got a job for an ex-napster employee?
Re:On jobless Napster employees... (Score:2)
Just out of curiosity, what would one tell their next employer? Something like, "I worked for, and actively supported a company that specialized in the trafficking of intellectual property belonging primarily to (but certainly not limited to) the music and movie industries."
That should make someone a real hot prospect.
Next....
This Just In! (Score:2)
Re:This Just In! (Score:1)
He'll be stone dead in a minute! (Score:2)
:)
Ummm.... (Score:1)
Re:He'll be stone dead in a minute! (Score:2)
Humm... (Score:1)
P2P music swapping and the labels opposition to it is starting to become a migrane that doesn't seem to go away for both sides.
All you hear is: "p2p music sharing should be legal!" and "we need to curtail theft of copyrighted works online!" Why the hell is this not being resolved in some fashion that makes both sides relitively happy? Is it that HARD?
One thing that comes to mind when i read articles like this is that there seems to be no effort put into compromising.
Say for example, Company A sells laptops. Company A wants to make money selling laptops. But Company A doesn't want to go out of business.
Logically, Company A should sell laptops at an affordable price to consumers and compete with other vendors to make sure that happens. This way Company A will generate revenue and NOT go out of business. The company makes money, and consumers are happy they got a good deal on a laptop.
How does this relate to the labels? P2P music sharing is undercutting the whole music industry.
"If you can get it for free, why pay for it?" is a often used statement I hear alot. But if you rephrase it to: "if you can get a product of near equal value from somewhere else for free, why pay for it?" you start to get the realization that the music labels should be adding more value to their products. Weither it'd be in Compact Disc form or online music downloads.
To me, the RIAA's view on this is: "If we give an inch, they'll take a mile, we can't let this happen!" and to them I say, HEY! they're ALREADY taking that mile, because your too tight to go the distance and offer more REASONS to purchase music!
What goes around comes around, treat all your consumers as thieves, and they'll act like thieves. It may be wrong legally/morally to download a song without paying for it, but it is also unmoral/sometimes illegal to treat your customers like villans.
So now we have an ugly stand-off between the consumers and the providers. Is this really what they want?
We (as in honest consumers) don't ask for that much really. Affordable, competitive prices on products that offer us value. Most companies do this, why isn't the RIAA looking into it too?
The whole topic makes my head hurt
Re:Humm... (Score:1)
actually i have tried to reason with them... well in hindsight it was a stupid effort but a couple years ago when cd prices had once again gone up i stopped buying music for 6 months. all this time i did not download anything either. i basically tried to do without music in my life.
when during that 6 month period cd prices went up TWICE... yeah thats right i gave up my protest in the sense that i got into mp3's big time.
I still vowed to never buy a cd again (although the body is weak sometimes when i just had to buy the occasional masterpiece that wasn't to be found online) and i started giving out copies to friend and family, making sure they would ask me first before buying a cd.
All this time i still had hopes for the music industry. But slowly my thoughts on the subject began maturing. realising how much music means to me and how little the music actually means to the music industry i began looking for other options and points of views.
I ended up where i am now, as i sought for a attitude in which art is free again and not controlled by money. I realised that intellectual property in itself is a shortcoming of modern society. capitalism should control many things but arts should be free of its claws as arts are the only means of selfreflection modern society has.
compromising with the RIAA is no longer an option... they made sure of that.
No compromise is possible (Score:2)
If a musician can promote to the general public online and sell CDs online, just what does an RIAA label have to sell a musician other than the chance to get really expensive outside investment that if things don't work out, may put him out of business, i.e. the record doesn't sell, the label stops promoting, and he's bound not to make new records for anybody until the contract expires?
Under current circumstances, a musician who has a sound that even a small niche market likes who's willing to work has a very good chance of making a decent living. A musician who sells 5K records via major label makes nothing and will be dropped by the label. A musician who sells 5K CDs off his own Website and at gigs in a year makes $50K or more, i.e. what 1M records would make him with a major label.
The only other thing the RIAA labels can do for an artist is get him into the record stores, which only matters if the musician reasonably believes he's the next multi-platinum superstar.
A musician has same chances of making money off a conventional label contract as he does of winning the lottery, especially since multiplatinum artists are going out of style.
Unless RIAA labels can make it impossible to effectively promote a band without FM radio access, there is no reason for a musician to sign with one.
Where's the room for compromise? They either stop P2P (remember Internet Radio?) or die.
Rubbish (Score:2)
Oh yeah, and why do you assume that RIAA can only do FM radio and multi-platinum artists? MTV? Product placement in movies? Sports? Major websites? Streaming servers? They have a lot of cash, experience, and they specialize in this stuff. They can and will adapt...even if it's not RIAA as we know them, there will always be a need for some major backing of this kind. The reason is simple: it is impossible for everyone to have everyones ear. Unless our media fractures into such small niche groups (which it has not and we have no reason to believe it will) there will be a market for the finite mindshare of consumers. That market is necessarily expensive because the demand is so great and the supply is so little.
About your "Rubbish" (Score:2)
For the RIAA labels, P2P is a way that independent musicians can get around the FM radio monopoly to reach the general public....Where's the room for compromise? They either stop P2P (remember Internet Radio?) or die
All of this rests, a priori, on your presumption that P2P is such an effective alternative to RIAA's marketing and financial backing that it fundamentally threatens RIAA.
No, P2P alone isn't, but P2P and Internet Radio and other Net enabled methods of communication with a low cost of entry *are*.
Merely putting your wares out on a file server is not equivalent to marketing.
I'm glad you've learned something from my posts.
How many albums have been sold by artists using P2P and non-RIAA means exclusively to market? It exists, but it is still very much of a fringe thing.
You state as fact things that can't be any more than opinions from a dubious source which you seem to be going to a good deal of trouble to render more so.
The central US record-keeping organization of the industry that certifies "gold" and "platinum" is the RIAA. Soundscan primarily tracks brick and mortar retail channel (every record sold via POS in the US is tracked on the Soundscan central databass) and is just beginning to track Internet sales including CD-on-demand. The sales charts for records in Billboard and in mass media and RIAA's numbers all are based on SoundScan. Look it up at Google. If this is news to you, you should become informed before expecting anyone to take your opinions seriously.
You cannot even show that these independent artists are any more numerous
Never said that they were. Perhaps in the America you'd like to see, no garage band could exist without registering with the Department of Homeland Security or getting permission from the RIAA to exist. We don't live there yet.
or more successful than they were pre-P2P or internet.
Define success!.
For a record label, an artist who only sold 200K records in a year is a mid-list artist, they'll probably keep her and hope she makes real money someday.
An individual who sold 200K records without the industry has made $1-2M on $3-4M gross saled. Tell that new millionaire that she isn't a success.
For a label, an artist who sold 10K records in a year is getting dropped, and she won't be seeing a dime in royalties, and the A&R man who signed her is getting yelled at by his boss.
That artist selling 10K records on her own has made $50-100K... which is a very decent living.
Here are examples of two bands that have done very well out of MP3 file swapping.
Wilco defies experts as `Foxtrot' gallops
By Greg Kot
Tribune rock critic
Published May 2, 2002
article here [thenewrepublic.com]
Fair usage quotes:
Though the album was rejected by one major label as uncommercial, Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" defied record-industry expectations by selling 55,573 copies in its first week and debuting at No. 13 on the Billboard album chart--by far exceeding the band's past sales achievements.
The numbers released Wednesday by Soundscan, which monitors retail sales, flew in the face of mainstream record-industry thinking, which held that Wilco could not significantly expand its audience without commercial radio airplay and that it would hurt its sales by making its music widely available on the Internet.
[snip]
A similar strategy worked for Radiohead in 2000 and 2001, when experimental records such as "Kid A" and "Amnesiac" circulated on MP3 files months before the albums' release, yet the albums debuted listeners time to live with the music for a while and appreciate at No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, when released. "It gave our what we were up to," said Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien.
Tower Records on Clark Street reported first-week "Foxtrot" sales of 299, double the best first-week sales of any album this year. "People have the record because they downloaded it, but that didn't affect sales whatsoever," said product manager Von Medler. "It's been a couple of years since we've had a first week of sales like this."
*end quote*
This is the cutting edge of band marketing, and by definition, only a few are going to be on the cutting edge.
The musician I am personally working with will be releasing some of her songs as MP3s for the same reason. She knows what the product is. Just like Wilco does and Radiohead does.
Sad that YOU don't quite get it yet, isn't it? Don't worry. Hilary Rosen of RIAA also does. You may assume like everyone else that any public statements she makes at variance with this are fabrications.
Where is the evidence that RIAA's services are any less in demand? Why isn't there any real decline in the # of artists to signing with RIAA?
Strike one. RIAA is a record label industry association. Artists are neither invited nor welcome to join, though if they own their own record labels qualifying according to RIAA criteria, their labels might be welcome to join. They don't provide services to individual artists any more than the BSA provides end-user support. If you don't know this, why should anything else you say be taken seriously?
Why should anyone believe that RIAA's real agenda for attacking P2P is killing alternative distribution/marketing (given how irrelevant it is today)
Care to tell Radiohead and Wilco how irrelevant it is?
Perhaps the RIAA/MPAA, like your pets, look ahead a bit further than you do. Movie piracy in the US via download isn't especially significant. It can't be, the last mile bandwidth to the home isn't in place yet, even broadband DSL/cablemodem isn't really fast enough. MPAA is also helping leading the effort to lock down the Net and personal computers. Perhaps you should tell Jack Valenti that the Internet is irrelevant to movie piracy.
and not for the fact that 99% of the services' traffic is their goods being pirated,
I won't blame you for getting this one wrong, most name musicians believe the same disinformation, and they got it where you did. CDs are the product. 128K MP3s are promotional items used to sell CDs. They are not the same thing. The ones who figure this out, like Wilco and Radiohead have a much better chance of making money in the modern music environment. Any stupid enough to listen to you will be whining about PIRATES.
The reason for this is that as is known to everyone in and out of the industry except you, free MP3 distribution boosts record sales. Record sales dropped immediately after Napster was shut down.
Major labels pay to get their product onto FM radio. The quality is comparable. Why? While you might buy an album you've never heard based on the idea that if an RIAA label makes it, it must be good, nobody else will. The quality of a 128K MP3 is sufficiently different from that of an album that if someone grabs a 128K MP3 for something that the person really likes, he'll buy the actual uncompressed CD. Maybe not on the 1st or the 4th or the 100th listening, but sooner or later, he's going to want to hear every nuance through his multichannel sound system which is telling him there are things on it he wants to hear and can't.
especially when services that do NOT serve piracy so effectively are left alone by and large (e.g., mp3.com et. al)?
Strike two. Which world do you live in? Try googling mp3.com and lawsuit and see how many hits you get. I got 11,600 .
Do you know who owns MP3.com now?
MP3.com isn't an adequate promotional channel for new musicians, and with rare exceptions, anyone who thinks this will find out differently the hard way. In my plans to promote an actual artist I'm working with, MP3.com is fairly low on the list of priorities. I'm going P2P and non-US Internet Radio first.
Why? Too crowded for one, and most important, it doesn't fit the way most people look for new music. Unless one is a self-defined member of a musical subculture, in which case one knows who the bands are and goes directly to their sites and knows where to go to hear the latest buzz about cool new bands, one finds new music by finding music that one likes that's familiar and waiting for similar music from new bands. On a place like mp3.com , for the new user, all the new content is unfamiliar.
I like Internet Radio for this because it offers defined genres. But to some extent, so does the search feature on an MP3 file sharing site.
Internet Radio wasn't serving pirates at all and the RIAA got it closed down, too. They were paying radio-type royalties to ASCAP and BMI (do you know who ASCAP and BMI are? If you don't, just what are you doing in this discussion?) and were trying to make a deal with RIAA labels to allow them to pay reasonable (i.e. ones that would allow them to stay in business) royalties to them. RIAA wouldn't allow them to stay in business even if they paid royalties to labels.
In fact, one of the people who was involved in negotiating the Yahoo music contract that the CARP copyright deal that got Internet Radio closed down was based on explicitly stated that the yahoo intent was to make sure that only major label music got played on Yahoo, and that the industry wanted to make sure that Yahoo wouldn't let "just anybody" have a chance to get music played there.
If legitimate promotion and distribution of independent artists is really the goal of P2P,
The goal of P2P is file distribution. The content of the files is the business of the users. Why should a file sharing network have any other goals?
then Napster and all of its followers could have served that end, and simultaneously avoid RIAA's harrasment, by only allowing enumerated artists on its network after they sign an agreement stating that they are willing to have their goods traded in such a fashion. That could have been done very easily,
Explain how. Not that it matters, but I want to see you make a fool of yourself in public.
yet it was not and has not yet been done.
If the primary 128K MP3 value is to provide an advance sample of the CD listening experience, just why is this important? People are NOT trading almost CD-quality 256K MP3s to any significant extent. Just let the "Jolly Roger" flag recede into your hallucinations now.
Oh yeah, and why do you assume that RIAA can only do FM radio and multi-platinum artists?
You conflate two entirely different questions. You don't know why RIAA labels can only effectively service artists capable of selling 1M records and above? AND YOU ARE EXPLAINING THE MUSIC INDUSTRY TO US?
Strike 3. You're out!
But for my amusement, I'm going to kick the props out from under the rest of this part of your world view anyway. More to the point, refuting your mistakes are giving me a very few useful and potentially profitable ideas, the most important of which I won't discuss here.
You obviously haven't read Janis Ian's articles, have you? She demonstrated based on her experience that they don't serve their mid-list. As to why they can't, you yourself are providing part of the explanation right here. Don't you read your own posts before hitting "Send"? Why should anybody else read them?
MTV? Product placement in movies? Sports? Major websites? Streaming servers?
Yes, and all of these channels have a limited number of useful slots and the majority are targeted towards certain kinds of music. Pushing Metallica on urban black FM radio stations is a waste of money.
The only artists who can be marketed cost-effectively through those channels are either the ones who are multi-platinum or in the judgement of the label, can become multi-platinum. There really isn't any good economic reason to do otherwise. The other major expense with respect to a marketing model based on brick-and-mortar sales is manufacturing and shipping the physical product to tens of thousands of record stores. If you've shipped a dozen CDs to each of 10K record stores and only 10K CDs sell total, the record label is deep in the hole.
They have a lot of cash, experience, and they specialize in this stuff. They can and will adapt...
All it is going to take is one artist breaking 1M unit CD sales without the aid of a major record label (who cares if the RIAA blesses it via "platinum"? All who know anything about the industry know the numbers come from SoundScan) through the use of Internet promotion and in-person + Internet sales and the word getting around that he made $5-10M off those 1M sales instead of $50K and artists start bailing from their record labels. You obviously haven't read Courtney Love's explanation of a major label record contract and you certainly have never seen one yourself... meaning you've got no business discussing the music business in a public forum. But you may already have figured this out.
ALL the big 5 RIAA labels are in trouble. Due to "piracy"? Only in the imaginations of RIAA publicists and those naive enough to believe them. Care to look in a mirror before you continue to read this?Music sales as a whole dropped right after Napster closed. The difference appears to be lack of promotion via a mass-market P2P channel... say, the equivalent of several Clear Channel FM radio stations in major markets getting blown up.
There are two reasons for the decline in record sales after the impact of Napster's shutdown finally rippled out. "It's the economy, stupid!" is one.
By and large, the labels are owned by very large multinationals. If the label artists start bailing, the stock value of the parent companies suddenly takes a hit grossly disproportionate to the actual impact on asset value. Watch most of the big 5 go on the block at fire sale prices, i.e. for far less than the values of their catalogues and physical assets. Remember the dot.bomb? Many good companies went down with the bad. This will happen sooner than even most of RIAA's worst enemies will believe possible. Most labels won't have time to adapt before they go on the block.
Not to say that all labels will go down, and I'm certain that in the post-RIAA landscape, the competent music specialists currently employed by the labels will make more money than ever before. I think most will work directly for musicians as contractors, but some will work for surviving labels and new ones. The new labels that start out with and the old ones who adapt to to a "everybody has access to Net promotion - WE know what we're doing" based business by drastically cutting expenses, concentrating on artist support, creating fair contracts, publishing them on the Web, and boasting about how good they are in every venue they can buy ads in, spending far less money per new artist by using Internet channels only for promo and distribution unless an artist proves real mass market potential will make more money than anyone believes possible.
The surviving and new labels will be able to make money with an artist that sells 5-10K records... as will the artist. The new successful label model will be hundreds or thousands of 10K-50K selling artists, and a few breakout artists who it'll be worth the trouble to go to traditional brick and mortar distribution for.
From an artist viewpoint, the point behind having a label is to make more money with less non-music hassle than one can without one. If one's worldwide sales potential is 10K records a year with what an individual can do about promo, one has the chance to make a decent living without a label. To make a label contract worthwhile, an artist needs to be convinced that the record label can make life easier for him and increase his income. In the new world, the record labels will have to make that case to a musician inclined to believe otherwise.
even if it's not RIAA as we know them,
Again. YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO THE MUSIC INDUSTRY PLAYERS ARE AND YOU ARE LECTURING US ABOUT THE INDUSTRY?
there will always be a need for some major backing of this kind. The
reason is simple: it is impossible for everyone to have everyones ear.
Anybody who's selling music and bought access to "everyone's ear" paid way the hell too much.
Your "simple" reason is simply wrong. You really don't know what a record label does for musicians, do you?
Most simply put, it's an interface; a broker between the musician and the part of the public most likely to buy that musician's music. It's gatekeeper function is imposed by economics, if an organization is going to use the mass media as the primary tool to promote a record and brick and mortar distribution as the primary sales channel, very substantial resources must be devoted per musician. Add this to the legendary drastically inflated overhead, and this means extremely substantial resources. With the full knowledge that on the average, most of these investments will be lost. Other label resources are used to help the musician make the record, i.e. studio time, experienced in-house or external music and video producers and directors, etc. Labels constrained this way must make what appear to be the "safest" choices, not the best or most artistically appealing ones.
People are getting bored by the safe choices. That's the other big reason why the major labels and Clear Channel is in big trouble. While you presumably are content with Clear Channel, and I'd guess you to be a 60s-80s "album-oriented-rock" type, listenership is dropping. Are you going to tell us that P2P "piracy" is hitting FM radio as well? Same price and one doesn't have to tie up one's BW downloading, similar quality, and if your assumptions are true (they aren't), same music.
Unless our media fractures into such small niche groups (which it has not and we have no reason to believe it will) there will be a market for the finite mindshare of consumers. That market is necessarily expensive because the demand is so great and the supply is so little.
With respect to the media shattering into small niche groups, the media hasn't. the AUDIENCE has. This ain't "The Summer of Love" anymore. Times have changed since "The San Francisco Sound" or "The English Beat" was what everybody was listening to. There isn't one big sound everyone is listening to anymore, even within music categories like metal or hiphop or "alternative music".
Let's take metal as an example. It has shattered into at least a dozen different niches, some as different as chalk and cheeze. You know the difference between "heavy" metal and "doom" metal? The audience for the less important niches isn't big enough to support a million-selling audience even if EVERYBODY who listened to it bought a particular album. This is happening across the big music categories. I don't know if this will ever get to the point where 1M album sales are simply impossible, but I wouldn't be surprised to see this happen.
I'm probably going to let you have the last word on this, there's a limit on the amount of pro bono time I can spend educating one blockhead, though I hope and believe others have benefited. Not that I expect the last word to do you any good, unless you count further exposure of your ignorance as a good.
I find it hard to believe that you are really as ignorant as your public post indicates. Are you grassroots or astroturf?
Re:About your "Rubbish" (Score:2)
I'm not asking for industry certified numbers. However, when it is certain that the industry sells billions of dollars worth of music every year, you should at least be able to come up with concrete proof of, say, 10m USD in P2P-based success if you wish to be taken seriously.
Again with the ad hominem attacks. I'm not asking for every last one of them. Certainly if these independents had even 10% of RIAA's market, then we would expect to see reasonably concrete evidence of at least a couple million dollars worth of revenues. That you can only name of handful of bands with anything even close to substantial revenues means you have a weak position. This is especially true when we would expect the top few of them to contain the bulk of the sales and that many of these same bands can be said to have enjoyed a significant amount of fame due to their prior relationship with RIAA.
Please. You know full well what I meant. If you don't, then I invite you to search for my previous posts referencing this.
The world where mp3.com only was attacked for using RIAA's music. The world where mp3.com still exists, distributing independent artists just the same. The world where there are a thousand different kinds of services that can be setup. I have no beef with Internet Radio, in fact, that's basically what I meant when I was referring to mp3.com and other solutions, nor is there any evidence of RIAA attacking either, except when their own content is under the gun. No one has done it though because the demand for independent artists is NOT that great.
So that they can actually offer value to this world and potentially profit? If RIAA kills them for failing to do it, then they only have themselves to blame. If they can't merely share any file (whether or not you believe that is fair) and the real market for their service is the legitimate sharing of independent music (in actuality), then this simply makes sense. No one has done this though, because there simply isn't much demand for independent artists on P2P. They'd far rather take their chances riding the wave of 99% of their traffic which is blatant piracy.
Two Words: Asymetrical cryptography. Look it up.
Well for one it is RIAA's intellectual property and their decision to make. For another, for most kinds of music most people cannot tell the difference between the original CD and 128K mp3. There was plenty of higher quality mp3s thuogh and the capability always existed, but most people do not regard themselves as audiophiles, so they were not nearly as popular as the default levels (around 128k). As for your Jolly Roger crap, I happen to know about this because I adopted mp3s long before most geeks even. I actually founded #mp3 on undernet and efnet (IRC) and I knew Napster (Fanning) long before his fame. I actually have considered writing my own P2P app (for the challenge and the desire to improve my pool) before Napster (I may have even mentioned mine to him)...but after Napster created Napster and the mass popularity that ensued I could not countenance faciliting that kind of outright piracy on such a scale.
Buster, you say multi-platinum, which technically means more than 2M (and much more than this in your implication), since platinum is 1. It is a fact that the industry profits on artists that sell less than 2M. Now I don't debate that their survival depends on HITS, but not quite on the scale. What's more, RIAA uses these mega-expensive marketing methods because that was, and still largely is, where almost ALL the money is, i.e., consumers are not responsive to anything less. It stands to reason that if consumers behavior starts to change, to be more responsive to relatively smaller artists, that promotional costs won't be quite as great and nor will RIAA's. But just because they might become substantially smaller does not mean that the costs and the necessary skills to successfully promote yourself will demand anything less than a major player.
Clearly you need to learn the difference between cause and correlation. The same kinds of arguments that you (or those like you) assault RIAA for you, yourself, use against RIAA.
Re:Humm... (Score:2)
If they could cobble together a site where pretty much any and all material people were interested in was available, on a legitimate basis, with lyrics, CD covers, previews, and a reasonable (50c-$1) price per track, easy payment and encoding available in ogg/mp3 in various bitrates, I'd buy it in a second.
Who cares if you can copy it? If I can get what I want faster and easier off a pay-per (permanent, reasonably priced) download site, I'd love to use it.
Either the RIAA corps will eventually figure that out, or some artists whose contracts expire will get together and do it for themselves, cutting the RIAA out of the loop.
Re:Humm... (Score:2)
Translation: If you can steal it without getting caught, why pay for it?
A slashdot poster recently (and rather artfully) pointed out what a farce this whole thing is by mentioning the options open to someone in the U.S. when they disagree with something (of course, this only applies to people with a shred of integrity):
- Withhold money: don't buy the product, and refuse to procure it in any way.
- Do something constructive- write letters, promote boycotts, etc.
- Civil disobedience (a key point of which involves getting caught and subsequently arrested).
This whole "steal it until they submit" mentality is for wusses. Save for the short-term high (much like a hit of crack), it does nothing to solve the problem.
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So that means... (Score:1)
WOW, WHO CARES!!! (Score:1)
Does ANYBODY use Napster anymore? Hell, I never used Napster as I didn't manage to get faster than a BLAZING, FLAMING, SCORCHING 19.1kb/s connection over our sixty-year-old, never-maintained phone lines (hell, I didn't get faster until I got the cablemodem plugged in), so I didn't start with this whole whiz-bang file-sharing doodad with mp3s and shit until about a year ago, well after Napster's official "demise."
God I'm drunker than fuck right now, boyoes. I don't know exactly what I'm getting at, other than SAN DIMAS HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL RULES!!!1 (as does vodka, tequila, pissy "lite beer")
WOOOOO!
Very short poem (Score:1)
The bandwidth not so great
Napster will be missed
I got my cable modem too late
Re:Very short poem (Score:1)
Napster, file sharing alternative (Score:1)
I have PHP and ASP versions for Windows, Unix/Linux, and Mac OS X. (you will need a web server)
A lot like my software MP3Mystic (Score:1)
-Jason
Goodbye Nappy (Score:3, Funny)
Napster is like some poor 4-legged woodland creature that's been hit by a truck - it's crippled, howling in pain, and just a shell of what it used to be. There's blood all over the ground. Someone please put it out of its misery.
How Come..... (Score:1)
Napster is dead! (Score:1)
Now stay in there!
Napster was RIAA's savior (Score:1)
Had they bought out Napster early on, controlled it with great care, and generate some revenues in the process while capitalizing on the massive audience, maybe the millions of people might not have flocked to Morpheus, Overnet, Kazaa, etc later on. Napster was their savior. It was the lesser of two evils.
This is a major screwup that's going to cost them millions upon millions in potential sales as well as a big black eye with their reputation.
Home Page (Score:1)
So what is Shawn Fanning doing now? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So what is Shawn Fanning doing now? (Score:1)
I hear he's working at Manpower filing documents for some law firm.
What was the judge thinking? (Score:2)
1. Bertelsmann said they would buy the company for $9 million plus forgiveness of debt (of some $83 million)
2. Bertelsmann claimed their bid was worth the sum of the two (clearly not true since Bertelsmann would never have received 100 cents on the dollar for the debt - the bid was worth closer to $9.2 - $9.3 million by my reckoning)
3. The RIAA claimed that Bertelsmann's mischaracterization of the bid dissuaded other bidders and thus made the process unfair
4. The judge agreed and threw out the only existing bid (!)
5. Napster had to shut down - the RIAA got exactly what it wanted.
It seems that the judge didn't understand the purpose of the bankruptcy code: to save businesses that could be saved by allowing them to restructure their obligations. Instead he had the company forsake their only bid and shut down; this outcome was so predictable that I have to wonder what the judge was thinking. It would be easy to believe he deliberately misinterpreted the law to favor of the RIAA, but that can't be it because he is a Delaware judge, not a California one.
Of course, the point is moot because Bertelsmann post-Middlehoff probably would have abandoned the assets once purchased anyway.
sorry napster.. (Score:1)
FTP, irc, usenet, they have been around for a long time now, and i believe will continue to thrive.
just my 2,
sideone
www.ITBitch.com [itbitch.com]
So long and thanks for all the fish! (Score:1)
and for bringing p2p to the unwashed masses.. sometimes the first to come on the scene is the first to get burnt at the stake..
Avoid Conflict of Interest (Score:1)
Martyr (sp?) (Score:1)
I won't miss it (Score:1)
There's still a market. (Score:2)
Perhaps Napster will become a martyr for the file sharing community?
Re:Bertelsmann != Berteslsmann (Score:1)