Pirates Steal Negative $1,400,000,000 from Music Industry

In exciting news this week, the RIAA announced that due to the massive piracy of digital music "ripped" from CD's and made available over the Internet, the music industry lost negative $1,400,000,000 in CD sales in 1999. In fact, the damage was so extreme that the industry shipped negative 90 million fewer CD's than the year before.

Oh, I can't keep up the fake news any more... In fact, the RIAA reports that the music industry - especially non-copy-protected CD's - is booming. Not only did the record industry sell 10.8% more CD's than last year, they raised their income on those disks by 12.3% - so not only are you buying more music, but you're paying more for each disk you buy. Income from CD's alone increased by 1.4 billion dollars last year. So where's the crippling damage from evil music pirates? If they're suffering so badly, why does their profit chart look like Microsoft's?

Clearly, we're not pirating fast enough. :)

Let's pick up the pace - despite all of our efforts, the RIAA is still firmly in the black.

They're probably right to some extent

... students on campus don't really buy CDs anymore, which I know many of you can confirm. That we don't like the actions of the RIAA doesn't mean we can't see objectively on the matter.

We need music over the web, micropayable - I'm all for commercial solutions as long as they're not closed standards. If I could buy music for a reasonable amount of money I would - instead of downloading crap quality mp3s (yes, crap quality - people who don't know how to grab without getting click sounds, or mp3-compress with the wrong programs etc)

In fact, I've _stopped_ listening to mp3s - I'm just waiting for the commercial music-over-the-net solutions .. please? Anyone?

Greed

I think that to be a record company executive you have to never grow out of that "No it's mine and you can't have it stage" of childhood developement. My parents taught me to share so I guess I'll never make the cut. I refuse to support the record industry, I'll never pay for their music and I hope that everyone else wakes up and gets tired of being spoon fed the mediocre overpriced crap that they are trying to push on us.

Re:figures....

Yep, that's the only way to stop copying.
Why should I pay Fl 44,95 (that's around $ 22 ) for a CD when I can buy it over the net for $ 11,95..
The problem is, that nobody in the EC follows the law and do something against price fixing.
The prices in all the shops are almost the same because the record industry don't allow competition (price fixing is against the law).

So, my questions would be:

1. How much more could this have been if there were no piracy?

2. How much less could this have been if people hadn't bought CD's based on hearing pirated music that they liked?

Just think...

Just think what kind of income they would have made if the music industry produced more stuff worth listening to, instead of the usual crap they're cranking out.
I'm convinced that the music industry watches the music pirates for valuable info on what kind of music people want. I've noticed several times that old out-of-print vinyl albums I've ripped to mp3 and posted to usenet are suddenly rereleased on CDs. The music pirates are providing free market research on what the studios should resurrect out of the old vaults.

Re:They're probably right to some extent

... students on campus don't really buy CDs anymore, which I know many of you can confirm. That we don't like the actions of the RIAA doesn't mean we can't see objectively on the matter.

As a student on campus, I can confirm that this is absolutely false! Students around here (Va Tech, where we have ethernet connected to the internet via five T1s and three T3s... it's fast) are buying more CD's than ever. They then rip the CD's for convenience's sake. They do not return them. They keep them. So, I don't know where you get that above statement from... at least at this major university, it simply isn't true.

Supreme Lord High Commander of the Interstellar Task Force for the Eradication of Stupidity

Slashdot == Midvale School for the Gifted

And the sheer number of people completely missing the point of the double negative only proves it.

Reality is irrelevant - Pay to Play is end goal.

All the whining about MP3's is primarily an attempt to prepare the legal grounds for supression of the format later, when they can force hardware manufacturers to suspend MP3 playback capability in favor of SDMI and/or its latest flavor.

The industry needs to make sure that when digital music is deployed (i.e. when _they_ deploy it), it goes out with the ability to be rented (which they prefer), instead of just bought. They also want the full suite of digital copy protections, such as tying it to the device its stored on so you can't share it. To do this they have to supress MP3.

Since Goebbels was right about telling a big enough lie often enough will eventually make it believable, that is what is happening. The media in this country is pretty much controlled by the same corporations that own the music, so you'll hear numbers like this alot, no matter how absurd they are when you apply basic arithmetic to them.

Essentially, the end of "fair use" as it's been known in copyright law for the last century or so is approaching - UCITA and DMCO are other aspects of this erosion of rights.

The RIAA could help itself

I believe the RIAA should stop whining and fix the problem itself. I for one would pay a small fee for each MP3 that I have a copy of, if that were possible. I hate CD's (a hassle to play compared to MP3's), so I rarely buy them except to support groups I really like. I immediately rip CD's I own so I can play them on my Rio. If the RIAA would institute a fair and reasonably priced system of music vending, I would respect it. Is anyone else with me on this?

Maybe the RIAA should

reduce the price of CD's.. why would anyone want to pay $18.99 for a new CD at Sam Goody's, when they know they can get the same quality for free or even if I pay $3.99 or whatever some of those new mp3 selling sites charge you. Most of the CD's I've bought over the past 5 years, I only like 4 out of 12 songs.. paying $18.99 or even $15.99 is a rip-off. These people need to realize that MP3 is their competition, and their enemy...fight it on it's merits or lack there of, not because it's costing you money.. thats like AT&T saying everyone who uses Sprint or MCI is a pirate because when the customers switched from AT&T to MCI AT&T lost money, so obviously they're bad.

The RIAA could use all the money they spent on calculating how much they lost to MP3s on finding a format better than MP3 or in making the price of CD's a lot cheaper.. CD's still have their advantages right now.. but if I can find a song for free and download it and burn it on to my own CD, why should I even bother to go to a overpriced store ? This old mentality by the MPAA and the RIAA sickens me.. they are like little chidlren refusing to put on a sweater or wear warm clothes when it's -25 celsius outside, just because they liked the summer and hope they winter will go away because they don't like Winter, and because they want it that way.

PS: Sorry for the run-ons..

That's interesting.

I know my rate of cd purchase has almost gone to 0.00. CD's are just to expensive these days, and most of the stuff pushed on us by the record industry is crap.

My school put these strange TV's everywhere that play nothing but the crappy music videos the industry thinks appeals to college students. As a result I've gotten so tired of hearing the same old crap that you couldn't *pay* me to buy a cd. I guess they had the reverse effect intended.

The ultimate piracy -- radio

Good grief! How are they supposed to be making money on CDs when people are playing this music for free on the radio!?
I mean, this technology could ruin the recording industry, even if it does help the music industry!
--
I noticed

Re:Reality is irrelevant - Pay to Play is end goal

I think also that it has something to do with the MPAA's lawsuit over DeCSS.

The RIAA is screaming bloody hell over CD pirating. Then the MPAA comes in and says "hey, look at all the problems we've had over people ripping CD's. This is why we need to protect DVD's: So that we don't get the same problem". This is especially true since many of the companies have a vested intrest in both the RIAA and the MPAA (Like Sony).

kwsNI

Re:The ultimate piracy -- radio

I realize you were being sarcastic to make a point, but nevertheless keep in mind that radio is not free (except for pirate radio). When you listen to the radio, you listen to advertisements. Advertisers pay radio stations to play their advertisements. And radio stations pay artists and record companies and organisations like ASCAP and BMI for the songs they play. With MP3, on the other hand, nobody gets paid.

mp3 a blessing in disguise for RIAA?

For quite some time the RIAA has been telling us that mp3 is destroying its revenue base due to illegal pirating... this data could possibly throw a kink into that argument, but I'm not going to be so compulsive as to say that for sure (though I would like to).

Now we must admit that this really does bring up some of the philosophical debates of .mp3's and piracy. I mean, if in an age where piracy is rampant and no user who has access to use an mp3 would ever go out and buy a CD (at least according to the worst rhetoric of the RIAA), then this data is apparently an anomoly and we should just ignore it.

Personally, I think this is a great way to point out that mp3's do not actually stop the purchasing of CD's, but rather promote them in the sample-before-you-buy theory. Technically we could sit around in music shops, listening to each and every CD we can get our hands on (if you happen to have one of those nice CD shops around) to see what we like, or perhaps we can just go online in the comfort of our own home and check out some stuff that other people have recommended to us, or that we have found by happenstance (the same thing that we would do in the record shop, except we can do this at 2:00am, when insomnia rears its ugly head). While the record company will obviously lose some money from people having nothing but pirated music, the overall purchasing of the music could be stimulated by the existance of mp3s.

There is, however, the other point to bring up. Music sales have increased because the economy is booming and people are just out there spending more money, most of whom have no idea what an mp3 actually is and wouldn't know how to operate a computer in order to use them in the first place.

Then again, there is the thought that they are using Britany Spears to spread subliminal messages hidden in her artificial bustline to get more adolescent kids to buy stuff... ;-)

But, back to the subject, I don't know what the numbers were from last year, at least I don't remember them being mentioned in the article), so I can't completely compare these ideas (and then again, how can someone truly proove an idea such as this.... but I digress). However, the data leads me to beleive that mp3 isn't the evil that the RIAA makes it out to be (NB - I didn't beleive them in the first place), or so the numbers would have us beleive...

come on people

so i'm sitting here, at work, relolading slashdot, when i see one of the best headlines in a long while. yeah, i laughed out loud in my office. then i read the article, then i read the comments.

i might have guessed that maybe one id10t would post...... "um... i dont get the obvious joke embedded in this headline", but come on people, there are too many comments destroying my illusion that slashdot readers are a bit smater than the average person.

how about we think before we get that first post. slashdot is about sharing knowledge and fun... not about having the most karma, or complaining over bad posts, or repeat posts, or pretending that were more important than posters, linus, or god.

lets try to respect slashdot... and congrats michael for a great post.

//end rant

lexicon

I, as part of the minority, agree.

Double negatives were neither necessary for impact, nor added to the readability of the story.

The story should have read: "Pirates cause $1.4 billion gain in CD Sales. Also, 90 million more CDs are shipped.".

Or, better yet, (but without the intended effect, yet more accurate):

"Despite pirates, the RIAA sees a $1.4 billion gain in CD Sales with 90 million more CDs shipped".

I wouldn't have posted this, but there are _way_ too many people bitching on slashdot, supporting the use of double negatives in english language for "impact" in this story. Readability adds impact, double negatives detract from it. That is why "Yo English teecha neva told ya's to use da sentence 'I ain't never gonna come back'". :-)

Flame me on the fact that double negatives are wrong, and I'll /prove/ I'm right.

Flame me for bad grammar, and you will be ignored.

Re:What about the artists?

This is exactly why we need to support mp3 and other easy to produce formats, to eliminate the RI execs, A and R men, managers, and shiest lawyers from taking loads of profits.
The recording companies take a tremendous cut of the profits, the artists are the ones being shafted. In addition record execs. seem to only want to produce crap Nsync and Britny Spears type shit.
If artists could produce and distribute their work directly, more of them would be heard, and could reach their niche audiances. It would increase artistic diversity. Assuming the cost for this new media would be much cheaper then a current CS, if a system was in place so that the artists could earn the money directly, they would earn even more money then they do now, because no shiesty middle men would take a big cut.
Internet music is a way to increase diversity, and to ensure that quality voices are not lost amongst the crap pop music. This is the real reason the RIAA is opposed to mp3 and the like, and the real reason we have to fight them.

Frightening, isn't it?

You know, I always ignored those "I'm leaving Slashdot, I'm sick of all the stupid people / the trolls / etc." posts... but damn, it looks like almost all the intelligent, insightful people really have ditched Slashdot.

I need my geek fix too frequently to give up on slashdot, but you miss so much reading at Score=2, and you see so much garbage reading any lower. And now that the trolls have figured out that they can get accounts just like anyone else for the +1 bonus, and they can post often enough to waste moderator points on marking them down rather than marking insightful stuff, so the Score=3 posts get scarcer and scarcer.

Fuck, I probably need to post this anonymously, too, since the decay of Slashdot (and Western-fucking-Civilization) is "off topic", and will be marked down just like the dozens of legitimate "put software release 2.3.48ac4 in it's own section" complaints in other threads.

Of course, we're stuck with clueless moderators, since the 33% of people who visit slashdot most often make themselves ineligible to become moderators; that way we get "the average reader". Yay, average people.

Re:Clearly, we're not pirating fast enough. :)

Let's pick up the pace - despite all of our efforts, the RIAA is still firmly in the black.

Seriously, It would be really nice to think that we could hurt the RIAA by pirating lots of music, but the issue is a lot more complex. Piracy might have the potential to do a little harm to sales, but for the most part piracy is promotion and will only increase sales. We really do not know that piracy will hurt them in the long run. It will definitly change their buisness model and will remove the monopoly on promotion, but we would really like to hurt these companies which have abused their artists and consumers for so long.

I feal that music pirates should feal morally obligated to try and hurt the music industry by (a) improving promotion for internet only bands and (b) helping people who really do not have the money to pirate get the songs for free.

We can achive (a) by giving internet only bands who let us distribut their music space on our sites (and maybe even telling people to check them out). It would als be a good idea for people to run sites specilising in promotion, i.e. pirate sites submit upload instrustions, internet bands upload their own music, and the site uploads the song (maybe with advertising attached) to lots of pirate sites. Generally it would be a relly good idea to help these bands promot themselves.

I do not really know much about (b) but I think that we should make an effort to recrute people in poor countries and high school kids into the pirate scene. People who learn to pirate because they lack the money to buy CDs *may* be less likely to switch to mindlss CD consumers in the future.

We have a moral obligation as consumers to try and fix abusive industry.

CD prices are artifically inflated..

When CDs first came out, they were a little more pricy then most people had hoped. The recording industry stated that the price jump was because the media format was so new, and they needed to up production before they could drop the price without losing money.

Rather then drop the price like they had promised, they saw that people were willing to pay the inflated prices (due to the monopoly by the RIAA.) Hence, they never dropped the prices like they had said they would.

If you look at the prices on mp3.com, thats the price a CD truly should be, $8.99 or so. I dont know about you, but if Music CDs only cost 8 bucks a peice, I would be buying them all the freaking time.

As it is, I am a poor college student, and I pirate most all of my music. That combined with my bitterness towards the Media industry as a whole, I can justify myself.

On a similar note, does anyone know how much the artist gets from a CD sale through the RIAA? I bet its under 1$ per CD. I truly belive that a real artist would prefer my appreciation of their music over my money. And with my complete lack of funds, mp3s have allowed me to appreciate a wide variety of different music.

If i could send squarepusher a cheque for 15$, I would. That would probably be more money then he would get if i bought all of his CDs...

I still dont understand why the RIAA is fighting mp3. They are going to lose.. thats all there is to it. Their best bet is to embrace the mp3 format and figure out a way to make money off of it.. I dont know about you guys, but I would gladly pay a monthly fee for access to an RIAA mp3 ftp with every peice of music ever released on it.

Re:They're probably right to some extent

wow. I guess that big huge pile of CD's in my CAMPUS DORM drawer doesn't exist, as well as that Les Mis original cast recording set that's coming in the mail... (just like the large pile of DVD's that I'd like to play under linux doesn't exist either :) ). people buy CDs around here. people buy a LOT of CDs. you should take a look at the dorm mailrooms. or at the two very large music stores (Rasputin and Ameoba) that are a block away from each other, in the heart of student-land.

number 2 -- you SHOULD NOT be downloading those crap quality MP3s. it's illegal, in general. complaining that your pirated MS software is crap is going to get you about the same amount of sympathy from me, or from anyone else. for some odd reason my MP3s sound fine, and I'm sure the ones you rip do too -- and since those are the only ones (besides some that you can buy at mp3.com, etc) you can legally listen to, you really don't have anything to complain about. ripping MP3s for yourself is fair use (anything to not have to crawl under my bed to change the CD!). taking advantage of it is only going to encourage things like SDMI-enabled players, which won't play my HHGTTG original-radio-show MP3s, or anything else I've ripped that the RIAA won't be offering.

now, I do agree with you about micropayable music. these are likely to be high quality as well, even high quality MP3s, so that would take care of your other complaint.
:)

Lea

(oh, and if people know good rippers/encoders for linux... I haven't ripped anything since I switched over a year and some ago, and I've got a lot more stuff to throw on that extra hard drive that used to have windows on it...)

Re:Hypocricy?

Which is more amazing.. that you people bitch and whine about the "corporate" music and the "spoon-fed" attitude, or the fact that you steal said music. Whether or not they're ethical is a personal decision. If they're really the bad bad people you say they are, why don't you 1) not BUY the music, and 2) not DOWNLOAD the music. Its pretty amazing you blasphemize these companies then justify stealing their goods because they're evil.. indeed...

Well, y'all mostly missing the point.

Go back to the beginning. The music industry IS evil - musicians basically sell thier souls (and all rights to thier works) for distribution. The industry is the largest legal pimping operation ever created. The whole thing is an upside down pyramid scheme with the creators of what drives it on the bottom rung.

It could ONLY exist for as long as it has because distribution was expensive. All that vinyl to stamp, all that cardboard for jackets (age giveaway!), all those CD's to burn, all that plastic for cases, advertising, shipping, etc etc etc.

Why do people keep claiming that the internet will change the world? Because the internet changes the fundamental paradigms underlying countless industries. Anybody can distribute anything digitally. Musicians (and all other creators of art) will find a way to self-distribute, or cooperatively distribute, thier works at a reasonable profit. Like water flowing downhill, the free market will see to it. Count on it.

Remember, it's still early times. Once the internet is as ubiquitous as television, it is inevitable. It cannot be controlled.

It is also inevitable that as this occurs, the entrenched and very rich interests in the current paradigm will literally flood the world with fear, propoganda, lobbying money, and outright lies. We've only just begun to see the types of inane laws and regulations that this will bring about. But in the end, it's just noise.

The old paradigms are already dead. They aren't going to die quietly, but dead they are. Digital distribution isn't going away.

======
"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16

not just control over their content

In addition, I think it's not just control over their own content that comes with SDMI or other proprietary formats. By controlling the format, the industry consortium also controls access to the market by other companies and not-for-profit efforts.

And they control upgrade paths: every ten or so years, you will get a new, "enhanced" format that requires you to repurchase your entire collection of media.

Contrast that with MP3. Because MP3 is open and media independent, it's archival: if you have paid for some piece of music once, you and your heirs can access it in perpetuity.

Furthermore, with an open format like MP3, you'd get more and more free content, from people who perform music and theater for fun. Much of that isn't going to be very good, but some can be excellent. With the kind of format the RIAA is pushing for, they'd get their cut even from such productions, through license fees and inflated production costs.

Technology promises to bring us, finally, the ability to share artistic content freely, and the established media companies are trying to thwart this. I think, ultimately, the RIAA and MPAA efforts are doomed to failure. But if we don't watch out, we may be in for a very unpleasant few decades where content remains unnecessarily expensive and limited.

No matter how evil they are...

the music still belongs to them. No matter how justified you are in doing whatever the hell you want in your mind, it still belongs to them.

No matter how self-righteously indignant you can make yourself, its still belongs to them.

How you justify the idea that pirating music really isn't pirating music, and that you somehow have a "right" to download it without ever making any pretense of purchasing it, is really amusing.


Andrew Gardner

Re:No matter how evil they are...

How silly, so you think that the ARTIST that MADE the music should get compensated? well me too! guess what, every CD you buy, a MINIMAL amount goes to them, sometimes they get screwed in their contract and they get BILLED money instead of getting paid for each CD sold. the music companies don't give a care about protecting the artists rights, they want to protect their cash cow.

The artists are getting peanuts compared to what the record companies get, sometimes they get screwed too.

Is pirating the lesser of two evils?

From the business mind ...

You know, just parading this fact about the growths of sales and profits doesn't strike me as the most thoughtful use of statistics I've ever seen.

What's really important from the business mind of RIAA is, how does that growth compare to last year's growth? How did we compare to Wall Street's estimates? In fact, their rate of growth could be slowing, due to the expanding use of mp3's.

So, this isolated fact really tells me nothing, and in the larger scheme of things, this fact could be used to boost the RIAA's case in court.

Re: Price of CD's

I took a music production/business course from Sept 1994 to April 1996, so hopefully my info is not too out of date.

The cost of a producing a CD is cheap. This includes CD, jewel case, ink, paper, etc. Probably $1.50 US max. Unless the artist is a multi-million album seller, the artist makes very little in royalties from CD's (more on this later). My figures were about $1.00 US a sale. Maybe $1.50. We'll be generous - $2.00. If the artist is big, this can vary wildly, because the artist has real negotiating power when making up a recording contract.

As for the rest (~$15.00 US), that's due to the record company and middlemen. Maybe you should ask record stores how much they pay for CD's from the manufacturer. From my music course days, the record company makes at least $5.00 a sale (more on this in a sec).

Sounds pretty crappy huh? Well, get this...

Say I'm a "starving artist" and a major record company wishes to sign me to their label. Cool. I'm in the big time. Let's even say you have your own studio. Now, what will the record company offer in a standard contract?

• creation of masters (what all the CDs/tapes/albums) are stamped from
• distribution of material

You know what the best part is? They own your copyright. Thus, if you become successful, to have control of your songs, you have to buy them back from the record company. That basically sucks and is the same as the software industry. The difference is you are writing the music for yourself and others, whereas you write software for other people. It's similar, but much more personal with music...

Anyway, sparing some gory contract details that I don't recall exactly, it breaks down to this: you pay back the record company out of your royalties. This is the part that really blows.

Let's say I got a loan from the record company for $200,000 US to create and distribute my album that I recorded. I hand over the master recordings to them so they can make the CDs. I now no longer own copyright on them but I get $2 from each sale. After 100,000 CD sales I still have nothing in royalties because that $200,000 in royalty money goes back to pay the record company. I only get money after the 100,000th sale. I don't think it's hard to image that 100,000 sales is tough for a nobody artist and $200,000 is a low estimate on the creation/distribution of records. Note that the record company makes $7 a CD for the first 100,000 sales.

It gets worse: standard contracts have you signed for a few albums - not one. So you can get really in debt if you aren't successful. Add in the cost of a producer, engineer, studio, incremental royalties and it just goes to shit.

There are ways around this, but it's not real easy (hint: proven self-distribution). This is probably not all that far from reality now-a-days. Btw, the artists can make good money via live performances, I believe.

Just a little FYI. (if this is way different now, please fill me/us in)

Woz
[e-mail]

Free to air, or free to market

This is my first post in ages, but this is an issue most people fell pretty strongly about.

Pirating CD's is not the answer.

The villans of the music world are, as stated, the record giants. They have more money than any artist, and have the marketing budgets similar to the GDP of a small nation. They have the power to buy their way up the chart for a "number one" single.

And where do they advertise their wares? On free to air radio. Let's face it, without FTA radio, no artist would ever get anywhere. You have to want the music to go and buy it. To promote the MP3, or net only, scene, we need - MP3 radio.

Australia's youth network, Triple J [http] has an MP3 of the week section where artists can send their tracks and hopefully score some free airplay.

If we had a radio station that operated soley on this, there would be a number of pros and cons.

+ There would be no licensing issues
+ There would be no CD library, just a data vault
+ Songs are able to be called from the library without leaving the chair
+ The songs (or samples of) could me made available to the listeners

- You would haave to pay for some real bandwidth
- Someone would have to go through the deluge of crap to find the gems.
- You have to get people to listen...
- ...and to do that you need $

So when someone starts a MP3 broadcast radio station, that'll be the day the RIAA will actually take out more than a piracy legal suit, and the masses will rejoice.

Re:They're probably right to some extent

i still want that physical representation of the music with the little booklet and the lyrics and all that stuff

Regardless of where the industry goes, the physical booklet with lyrics will eventually make way for artist's web sites, which can hold infinitely more information than the little booklet. A good example of this is Moxy Fruvous [fruvous.com]

They have the lyrics to all the songs they ever recorded at their web site, as well as tour dates, fan info, and tons of other stuff. If we are still buying physical media (CDs or their descendents) in 10 years, the enclosed booklet will simply contain a URL, with all the info, including lyrics, at the web site.

(BTW, any other Fruvous fans out there? Former Fruvous fans?)

The 1860's version of this argument

No matter how evil the slaveowners are, the slaves still belong to them. No matter how justified you are in trying to free them, they still belong to the slaveowners.

No matter how self-righteously indignant you can make yourself, the slaves still belong to them.

How you justify the idea that freeing slaves isn't really stealing, and that they somehow have "rights" without purchasing their freedom from their owners, is really amusing.

The laws on the books aren't the definitave guide as to what is right and wrong. There are many people who believe that the music industry is using laws to corrupt, rather than noble, ends, and that by encouraging things like MP3 is a fight to break their monopoly on distributed music.

Re:Reality is irrelevant - Pay to Play is end goal

just make sure all your friends do the same and we'll have nothing to worry about. Every time I wear my anti-dvd shirt I talk to another person. Markets follow a certain pattern (and the adoption of new technology follows this curve) with the first people to use something being the "early adopters", that's us for MP3, and a bunch of other stuff. This crowd then helps refine the product which eventually moves on to the mass market. I'm sure many of you have taken some marketing classes (unless you avoided them for religious reasons) and know most of this so I'll skip the details.

My point is that as early adopters, we get to define, or at least help guide, what products come out for the mass market (and get mass marketing budgets). Knowing this, make your opinion known, especially to those that make these decisions. Vote with your wallet, express your fears to your peers, write poems about it, whatever. Bitching' about it is fun on /., but when talking about it "at large" try and keep the sarcasm and cynicism to a low level and the facts (your version of them will do fine) as the main points.

--

Re:We need -5 karma or lower account filters

You could still see all posts, just drop the filter...

But I agree, a different solution is needed. More mod points, for example. There aren't enough to go around right now.

And I don't see how this would be any different than USENET abuse, in terms of ISPs' AUPs. Most ISPs prohibit spamming, and trolling == spamming. That way, at least the logged in users will be held accountable for their actions. And the AC's can stay at 0, where they don't bother anyone. Good AC posts will be modded up, as always, and bad AC posts can be safely ignored or modded down. I really don't see why the /. crew shouldn't report abuse of /....
--

The real problem

The fundamental problem here is that now that Slashdot is owned by a major corporation, its purpose is to generate advertising impressions. To do that, you must dumb down the content. Slashdot used to (like 2 years ago or so) be aimed at somewhere near the 95th percentile. Now, however it's around 75 or 80. People who like to see more thought provoking material, and more informative material are a smaller audience than those who want to see a Linux version of News.com, which is what Slashdot has essentally become. Slashdot (and Linux) has degenerated into mindless dogma and herd mentality, each person desparately wanting to belong to this movement that all logic and temperance disappears in favor of spouting idiotic platitudes.

Listen to people like John Katz talk about how geek culture is defined by pop culture, and Eric Raymond say that all geeks are libertarians, and you see the kernel of truth. Although many geeks think that they're rebels and free-thinkers, most of them are really just subscribers to a set of dogma that is already laid out before them ready for them to hitch a ride onto.

You are no better than anyone else for subscribing to this ideology. You still can't think for yourself any more than "mainstream" people do. You are just parroting what a different segment of society thinks. Just because you read Slashdot or use Linux doesn't mean that you are smarter than anyone else.

This will be my last transmission.

Re:The 1860's version of this argument

Slaves: basic human rights violation
CD's: you don't want to pay a corporation who has every right to charge what they see fit.

Are you not capable of seeing the difference here? I am so sick of whiners who justify their actions by some higher moral crusade. You may not like they way they do business, but that does not mean you can do something illegal. Rather than pirate the music, start lobbying for labels to sell individual mp3's. Do something useful other than just bitch about how you're the victim. I mean hey, if I don't like the way car dealers operate, does that make it ok to go steal a car? Of course not. If I don't like the way record companies operate, does that make it ok to pirate their music. Of course not.

Unless, of course, you have some special reason why you get to choose which laws to obey.

Re:Frightening, isn't it?

Personally, I don't think there's a lot of bias in pointing out that, on the one hand, Ms. Rosen, is claiming the record industry loses billions of dollars per year to "piracy", and, on the other hand, that they have posted record profits and sales for the last several years running. That's not bias - it's called opening your eyes. Most news sources will not present those two facts side by side, because they don't see them side by side - one journalist writes a story about music piracy, a story where 90% of the wording came from the RIAA's press department, and then a week later another journalist from the same organization gets a press release from the RIAA about their record profits, and that gets published nearly verbatim, and no connection is ever made. That sort of "journalism" is a kind of doublethink, holding two contradictory ideas in one's head simultaneously. I'm trying to pierce that. If you don't like it, by all means enjoy your diet of press releases.
--
Michael Sims-michael at slashdot.org

oh, bullshit.

I highly resent... the fact that I'm forced to buy a CD that has songs I don't even like on it.
Why do people keep saying that, as if this argument holds water? Just get the damn single and screw the whole album then. I like getting all the songs that aren't singles, there are many hidden gems to be found. And how do you know you don't like all the songs unless you buy the whole album?
Oh, right, you get the whole thing on MP3 then go buy a CD full of songs you don't like, which you then throw away because you can't take care of them. You are an idiot then.

Pope

Re: Price of CD's

From the brief description of the contracts, it seems that an artist would have to be a moron to actually sign with a major record company.

Yes and no. (love those kinda answers, huh? :)

It is pretty crazy to agree to such terms as we outlined (they are really awful if you read the whole contract). However, the Catch-22 here is that it is almost impossible to effectively distribute an album without a major label. The only semi-effective way to do it is to sell CDs at your live shows yourself (after printing them yourself). If you can sell something like 10,000 CDs from playing relatively small venues, you might be able to bring some bargining power to the table with a record company.

Again, I could go on forever here. I think you can see where this is headed (hint: monopoly...).

This is why I think mp3's kick ass. All out distribution without a record company (or even a record company website). Why do you think record companies are mad when their artists release mp3's? It's no wonder they want to stop/control mp3's - loss of distribution stranglehold.

Woz
[e-mail]

Re: Price of CD's

Think about what you just said before you pass so much judgement. In your example the record company spent $200,000. What did you spend? As far as they are concerned you spent $0. That is why you sign over the rights and it is also why you have to pay them back. You had to risk nothing. If your CD doesn't sell you haven't lost a penny. They on the otherhand they are out $200,000.

The truth is that MOST CD's LOSE MONEY! From the publisher's point of view, until you have a hit (most CD's don't) you are a huge risk. They are risking $200,000 on you. Turn it around, if you had $200,000 in the bank would you be willing to risk it all on the next band that asked you for it?

Sure, the industry as a whole posted record profits and I'm NOT arguing that CD's aren't too expensive. They are. The point is those profits were generated by a few big hit CDs. Garth Brooks, Backstreet Boys, etc.

The same is true in the PC game industry. Everybody sees companies like Id with John Carmack in his Ferrari from which people belive there's lots of money to be made and they assume that all publishers are evil and stealing from the developers since developers tell the same stories as above (repaying advances against royalies, signing over rights etc.) The truth is that most developers are stealing from the publishers. The publisher risks $500,000 to $2 million on development and the developer either fails to actually make a product or the product doesn't sell. In this case it's even worse for the publisher. Devleoper loses nothing. In fact they got a $500,000 to $2 million advances. The publisher lost all the money.

The problem is, is that every music artist assumes their CD is going to be a huge hit just as every game developer assumes they are going to write the next Quake or next Half Life or next C&C. From that point of view, it appears that you are getting ripped off. The problem is more likely than not your product/CD is not going to be a hit in which case only the publisher lost money. Only about 10 development groups manage to make huge hits a year. Another 20 make games that just barely make their money back and the other 4000 lose the publisher's money.

Note: 4000 is not an exaggeration. Entertainment titles shipped in 97 were around 5000. I'm going to guess that they are the same or more this year.

-gregg