Music Industry Attacks Free Prince CD 667
Mike writes "You might not like Prince, but he's planning on giving away a free CD in a national British newspaper. Harmless publicity, right? The music industry disagrees. Executives are practically going insane over the idea and are threatening to 'retaliate'. 'The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behavior like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores. And I say that to all the other artists who may be tempted to dally with the Mail on Sunday,' said Entertainment Retailers Association spokesman Paul Quirk, who also said it would be 'an insult' to record stores. Shouldn't an artist be able to give away his own music if he wants to without fear of industry retaliation?"
music's not his to give away. (Score:2, Informative)
Formerly known as? (Score:2, Informative)
He *is* known as Prince. For a time, he wasn't, because his label owned the name. However, he is now, and has been for some time, known as prince.
Fear and loathing in RIAA land (Score:3, Informative)
Legally I don't think Prince can do this if his records are licensed. His distributor may seek to sue. On the flip side, he can always re-do a re-mix like release of said songs and release those worry free. I do believe though that if he went the ASCAP way though, he is legally bound to his distributor...
With ASCAP and BMI control somewhere in the neighborhood of 98% crap, it all depends on copyrights at this point... Two copyrights associated with a song, one that covers the song itself another that covers a particular of the song. E.g. author of a song might hold the copyright on the words and music - person who performed the song might hold a copyright on the actual recording... To perform said song - the performer would need the permission of the holder of the copyright on the song itself. In order to distribute a recording of that song - distributor would need the permission of the holder of the copyright on that recording.
So it all depends on how Prince laid this out (copyrights). Judging by who he is, he likely is the copyright holder of both which means he pulls weight... However, he is to some degree imposing on the distributor's TERRORTORY so its likely they'd want to fight him and tie some money up knowing damn well they'd lose. In this case, if they took say a 10mill hit from his antics, tying him up in court cases in which the amount of legal fees amount to what they perceived to lose... They'll likely like that anyway. They're nothing more than rich, selfish crybaby bastards anyway
Re:No (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Fear and loathing in RIAA land (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Please retaliate. (Score:1, Informative)
Music is worthless (Score:4, Informative)
The day music started becoming easily traded online was the day music became monetarily worthless. The cat is out of the bag and will never go back in. Whether this is immoral is irrelevant because the morals have been rewritten for the 21st century. The music industry's only hope is to embrace this fact and make their money from "NOT music" - albums with nice art, books, t-shirts, concerts, and other services and widgets that are related to music and cannot be duplicated.
I highly respect artists like Prince who give their music away for free and allow people to purchase it after the fact. I also highly respect artists like Nine Inch Nails who release their songs and samples under a Creative Commons license to allow fans to remix their works. It's going to happen whether the industry likes it or not, so why not embrace it today and show the world you're a pioneer full of good will?
If anyone is interested I blogged on this topic [demodulated.com] last week. I spoke primarily about DJ Amber [iamthedj.com] from San Francisco who sells CDs for cheap but also gives the same music away for free in MP3 format. For $10 she sent me a beautiful CD, autographed, within a week of sending her the money via PayPal. I had the pleasure of dealing with the artist personally and all my money went directly to her.
The internet empowers everyone but those who fight it. RIP music industry.
Re:Formerly known as? (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_(musician)#Na
Re:Please retaliate. (Score:5, Informative)
FTFA: The singer had signed a global deal for the promotion and distribution of Planet Earth in partnership with Columbia Records, a division of music company Sony BMG. A spokesman for the group said last night that the UK arm of Sony BMG had withdrawn from Prince's global deal and would not distribute the album to UK stores [wikipedia.org].
Re:Don't think so (Score:3, Informative)
Having employees work for a month for free before totally screwing them? Aren't record stores great! It's time more artists started disrespecting them.
Buy music secondhand or direct from the artist -- never buy it any other way.
Re:Is it his music? (Score:1, Informative)
But that's not what's happening here. Music *retailers* are complaining that he's undermining their business model, and noting that that business model is what supported his rise to fame in the first place.
From Prince's point of view, they aren't making a compelling argument. It's a business model which allowed the music industry to become wealthy off his work. Prince was locked into a contract which prevented him from using his name, and even creating or performing work without that work becoming owned by the record industry.
In protest, he changed his name, and refused to create any output until his contract ran out, even though it meant losing years of what could have been a terribly productive time for him.
So I don't think there's any love lost here. From his point of view, he's probably happy to screw them all.
Any you can bet that, once he got control over his name and music, he made sure that he didn't hand over those rights again.
Re:Please retaliate. (Score:2, Informative)
Here's the basic story on Prince. He signed a six album deal with (iirc) Capitol Records. He started selling very well, but was making very little. Standard record deal type of stuff. He really wanted to get out of the contract, but Capitol was not interested. They threatened to sue if Prince released an album using the Prince trademark on another label. So he comes up with an unpronouncable symbol to use as his name, and starts calling himself "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince". IIRC, he started his own label at this point too. He slowly fullfills is contractual obligation to Capitol, and now releases music under the Prince trademark under his own label.
Re:No correction needed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Prince should say screw you (Score:4, Informative)
Let's play - respond to the corporate shill! (Score:5, Informative)
It's easy, and fun! Here we go:
It ain't SoundExchange that's deciding they should collect those royalties, it's the *government* deciding they should, and it's actually not a bad idea.
Of course it's not a bad idea - if you're the one collecting the checks. And just because the government says it should, that doesn't mean it represents what the people want. Let me introduce you to a concept called a Lobbying Group. [somafm.com] Just because you can lay down big bucks and effect a change in the legal system does NOT mean it's what the people want. It's what the industry wants, and they are radically different things.
They can simply sign some forms and demand their cheque.
It's as simple as that! No...actually it's more like this. [soundexchange.com] You must join to collect your money. Resistance...is useless.
It is, as it happens, *particularly* good for the small and independant artists, as radio stations would have a hell of a time tracking down and dealing with every random garage band they decided to play.It is, as it happens, *particularly* good for the small and independant artists, as radio stations would have a hell of a time tracking down and dealing with every random garage band they decided to play.
Provided of course that the band in question actually wanted to get paid. Some of us make music just because we like it, you know. It was art before it was a business. Some folks think of it still as art. Not everything amounts to a "cash flow opportunity".
Without compulsory licensing, I'd bet the vast bulk of college, independant, and web-based radio stations would shut down completely, thanks to the overhead of negotiating licensing deals.
And yet, these are the exact same groups compulsory licensing are shutting down. Wow, what a surprise! The people who promote indie music are the ones being nailed, all the while the shill says that these are the people he's trying to help.
Sure, pal. Sure.
Re:Please retaliate. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Let's play - respond to the corporate shill! (Score:2, Informative)
Wow, you really don't know what the fuck you're talking about, do you? It's a good idea because otherwise artists wouldn't get played. No one but the big stations would be able to afford the legal costs of sorting out all the licensing deals, and big business would probably get preferential treatment because there's only a handful of large, mainstream labels to deal with, as opposed to the hundreds of small and indie labels out there.
Hell, even the EFF supports compulsory licensing schemes for some forms of media. It is by far the easiest, cheapest way to handle these sorts of large-scale licensing issues.
It's as simple as that! No...actually it's more like this. You must join to collect your money. Resistance...is useless.
Umm... so? It's free, for god sake. What's the big deal? All you're doing is saying "hello, I'm an artist, so if anyone plays my stuff, send me money". How *else* would this work?
Provided of course that the band in question actually wanted to get paid.
Then put a blanket disclaimer on your music (which must be distributed in some form) saying "free for broadcast, do what you want with it". Did you really not think of this yourself?
And yet, these are the exact same groups compulsory licensing are shutting down. Wow, what a surprise!
I see you didn't read my last paragraph. Why don't you go back and do that, then get back to me.
My point is that compulsory licensing, as a concept, is a good idea. Hell, how many people around here love allofmp3.com? You know why that's legal in Russia? Compulsory licensing. Now, it goes without saying that the CRB and SoundExchange are colluding to support the big labels, but that doesn't mean compulsory licensing is a bad idea. It just means that the US government has, yet again, been bought and paid for by corporations.
Re:where to start? (Score:4, Informative)
I really hope you don't work in the financial industy. The valuation of a company [wikipedia.org] is actually a fairly stnadardized concrete thing. It is based on the analysis of a rational outsider, not the "projections" of an insider.
As for people being upset and looking for scpegoats when they don't meet budgets or forecasts, well, that's been happening for hundreds of years. Brunswick, the bowling company, was in the 1950s valued very highly by some stock speculators because "bowling was exploding in popularity". Then things collapsed on them as the true, limited market for bowling equipment was saturated. Executives were fired, stock price tanked, etc. There really is nothing new or different about what's happening in some areas of business today.
Re:Not enough stores because no money in it (Score:3, Informative)
Brick and Mortar. In other words a store with physical presence, as opposed to an online store.