Investors, "Beware" of Record Companies

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The Motley Fool investment Web site warns investors to beware of 'Sony, BMG, Warner Music Group, Vivendi Universal, and EMI.' In an article entitled 'We're All Thieves to the RIAA,' a Motley Fool columnist, referring to the RIAA's pronouncement in early December in Atlantic v. Howell, that the copies which Mr. Howell had ripped from his CDs to MP3s in a shared files folder on his computer were 'unauthorized,' writer Alyce Lomax said 'a good sign of a dying industry that investors might want to avoid is when it would rather litigate than innovate, signaling a potential destroyer of value.'"

The vicious last bites of a wounded animal

The traditional music industry is like a wounded animal at this point. They're hurt and desperately striking out at anything, in hopes of somehow surviving. They missed their opportunity to innovate a long time ago and now they're just the walking dead, stubbornly digging in their heals and refusing to just lay down and die.

They may get to the point where lawsuits are the only real income they have left. When that day comes, and all their Congressional bribe money has dried up, I think we'll see the courts and politicians finally start to hit back hard and finish them off. And they'll die still clutching their outmoded CD's, like pathetic John Henry's fighting innovation to the bitter end.

Re:The vicious last bites of a wounded animal

Oh, they'll be dead before that. Artists are leaving record companies in droves. They'll start producing their own music and hiring niche marketing agencies to create demand instead. Even now, the smart ones are already moving in the marketing/concert promoter direction.

Re:The vicious last bites of a wounded animal

Oh, they'll be dead before that. Artists are leaving record companies in droves. They'll start producing their own music and hiring niche marketing agencies to create demand instead. Even now, the smart ones are already moving in the marketing/concert promoter direction.

While I agree with the sentiment, are artists really leaving in "droves?" Other than indie artists maybe never pursuing a label to start with, how many already-signed artists are leaving the labels? Can you list more than 10? More than 20? Even if you listed 1000, I'm sure it would be something like a tiny single digit percentage (or less) of the total artists on labels, hardly qualifying as droves.

I think it *will* happen, and hopefully at an exponentially increasing rate. But for now, they still have the stranglehold on the artists.

Re:The vicious last bites of a wounded animal

While I agree with the sentiment, are artists really leaving in "droves?" Other than indie artists maybe never pursuing a label to start with, how many already-signed artists are leaving the labels?

How many have the legal right to do so? Aren't most artists working for the big labels locked into Draconian contracts that restrict them to either selling their work to the labels, or not selling their work at all?

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Contracts expire. When they do, if you're a musician who has the prospect of distributing his work online and taking the lion's share of the revenues, or cutting a deal with a venture capitalist who'll pay you under 10% of the proceeds, what option would

Re:The vicious last bites of a wounded animal

Sure, the artists you hear on the radio won't immediately leave the RIAA but after a while some groups and artists notice that they are not getting what they deserve and can get much better income elsewhere. Then they'll start switching. Another problem is that once you signed up with the RIAA, you can't really go back. Everything released from then on is their property and if you leave then you can't take your own work with you.

RIAA-safe albums as found on riaaradar.com (the top100) include some well known names though. Some artists that have actually dumped the RIAA include Madonna, Nine Inch Nails, Oasis, Jamiroquai, Radiohead, Courtney Love and Canadian labels Anthem, Acquarius, The Children's Group, Linus Entertainment, Nettwerk and True North Records and there has been some commotion between EMI and the RIAA too so they might pull out completely pretty soon too.

Re:The vicious last bites of a wounded animal

After dropping them from the label, virgin records put out a "greatest hits" album for Cracker without bothering to even consult with the band on song selection. The band responded by making new recordings of all their classics and releasing their own greatest hits album on the exact same day as the label. Theirs sold much better.

Also included is david lowry's retelling of how they got dropped, it ain't gonna suck itself [youtube.com].

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Madonna recently [usatoday.com] left Warner for Live Nation apparently for the cash. Interestingly, Live Nation does not appear in the members list [riaa.com] of the RIAA. Coincidence?

Re:The vicious last bites of a wounded animal

In the past year, we've had McCartney jump to a new label, Radiohead release their own album, NIN doing their thing, and Prince bucking the trends, signing a deal that is unheard of from a record label, and distributing his cd in a way that pissed all the industry folks off. I agree that leaving in droves might be an overstatement, but it was the first year where labels started losing out in a high profile way because artists weren't playing along.

Re:The vicious last bites of a wounded animal

Also...

Madonna signed with LiveNation concert promotion group (I don't know if they are embedded or not).

Harvey Danger (90's one hit wonder) released a free CD

Barenaked Ladies have interesting views on releasing music (I can't remember the details, but they distribute through a non-traditional site)

Beastie Boys have put out at like one Creative Commons song and I think their latest album was somehow independent

But my favorite is any musician with decent music posted on Jamendo [jamendo.com], where provides BitTorrent downloadable Ogg-Vorbis albums under Copyleft licenses. The site is a virtual treasure trove of exciting artists waiting to be discovered.

Re:The vicious last bites of a wounded animal

The parallels with SCO are amazing, especially given the sizes of the companies we are talking about. That they could fail to see the future coming at them and more importantly read the trends (i.e. Napster) and react to them in a positive, money-making fashion, is an indictment of the corporate system, where over-priced CEOs sit in their glass-lined offices looking like suit-wearing fish and providing just about as much value to their company. When you start treating your customers as criminals, you have slipped over the edge and down the slippery slope toward oblivion.

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That they could fail to see the future coming at them and more importantly read the trends (i.e. Napster) and react to them in a positive, money-making fashion, is an indictment of the corporate system

I'm not convinced there's any way to die gracefully w

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"I'm not convinced there's any way to die gracefully when your business becomes outmoded..."

A long time ago, the tobacco companies saw that eventually, their product would be regulated, lawsuits would ensue, and their profit margins would eventually shrink

Mod Parent Up...

Seriously - he's right. The Tobacco Industry saw it coming a long time ago. Because of the diversification, they are able to sell a pack of smokes at a loss (the vast majority of the $4.00 or so you pay for a pack of smokes goes to taxes, followed by retai

failing to adapt

They have a 20 year old notion of how much a "unit" they need to make. This notion is ludicrous given the tech advances we have. They failed to keep dropping prices for their disks when they could. Instead of using the volume sales concept, they stubbornly

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I'm not convinced there's any way to die gracefully when your business becomes outmoded (SCO, too).

Of course there is. It's known as "voluntary liquidation"... If it's timed right the business owners might even still have made a profit.

Not like John Henry

Bad comparison! John Henry was a champion for the dignity of human work. He illustrated the very real danger of big business treating individuals as disposable ever since the industrial revolution. John Henry as the RIAA? Ridiculous.

Re:Not like John Henry

No, he was a damned fool. Stubbornly digging your heals in, refusing to change, and fighting innovation to the bitter death isn't dignified and heroic. It's pathetic and stupid. It's like the old man who's afraid of computers, and who, instead of conquering his fears and adapting to the changing world, simply refuses to use them and becomes a goddamned living relic.

If America were full of John Henry's, we'd have become a third-world backwater a long time ago.

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Damned fool for fighting to keep the jobs of himself and his coworkers?

No, he was a damned fool for not realizing that the era of hand-mining was coming to an end and looking for a new line of work. My great-grandfather was a coal miner back when it was

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"Damned fool for fighting to keep the jobs of himself and his coworkers? I would argue that you are a damned fool if you lay over and no longer put food on the plate for your family. This isn't something where he had the choice to switch from a typewriter

Sounds familiar

[...] rather litigate than innovate [...]

Now where have I heard that before... Oh, that's right. SCO. And look where they're at...

Re:Sounds familiar

Now where have I heard that before... Oh, that's right. SCO. And look where they're at...

Yeah, but they didn't have much to market and a very small group that they could actually market their products (invented or real) to. SCO had to invent the "Pay us for Linux or we'll sue later" shit in order to have something that some companies would actually be willing to pay them for.

Those involved with the RIAA still have a product that is mass marketable and that plenty of people will continue to purchase. Just because the Slashbotters (me included on this one) refuse to support RIAA music doesn't mean that anyone else really gives a shit. Yes, artists are starting to come around and going around the RIAA by distributing their music online, and it's working, but it's still not to the point where it's a 100% viable method to get your music out.

It will be at least 5 years and more like 15 to 20 before we really see the fuckers die off -- as unfortunate as that is.

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Oh and I forgot to add:

Because they own copyrights on already recorded music that people like and will continue to buy for the foreseeable future, they will continue to have viable income for at least another 125 years. So while they might start faltering

Trade Associations Gone Wild!

I guess the sue your customer business model isn't working out for them. Who knew?

Re:Trade Associations Gone Wild!

Or rather the columnist believes that's the business model they're now in and predicts it won't work well for them.

The inference people here seem to be drawing (that the labels are in trouble because of the lawsuits) resonates well -- we want to believe that kind of justice works in the market -- but really it has the cause and effect reversed. Sales dropped first, then the law suits started.

Now, the thesis is correct in so far as "sue the customer" is not a productive response to an adverse market. They continue to spiral not because they file the lawsuits, but because meanwhile they do nothing to address the orignal failure of their position in the market.

The "ripping mp3s is unauthorized" angle is FUD all around, though. FUD on the RIAA for using that wording in the first place (yes it's unauthorized, in the same sense that I'm not authorizing you to disagree with my post), and FUD on everyone who cites this as the moment where the RIAA calls all users thieves.

Now, sure, the bad press from the lawsuits doesn't help the RIAA... among the small part of the market that sees what's going on and cares. Don't get me wrong, I'm among that small part of the market (not anti-copyright, not convinced that everything the RIAA says is wrong, but on the whole opposed to their actions over the past few years); but don't be fooled into thinking that slashdot is the world.

As to the investment point of view... yeah, to a point, I wouldn't want to be putting money behind the major labels right now. But Sony? What would be the total impact on Sony if their record label arm spun off or died out completely?

Shared Folder?

I wonder how they define a shared folder? I'd imagine an shared folder to them is any folder on a computer that is connected to the internet, WAN or LAN, has a CD or DVD burner in it, has any kind of magnetic removable drive, or any computer in which the hard drive can be removed.

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I wonder how they define a shared folder?

Any letter drive under Windows. [google.com]

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I wonder how they define a shared folder?

I'll take a wild guess and say that they define a shared folder as the shared files folder used by your P2P client.

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And Atlantic V. Howell is the context of this story. See how neatly that works out?

It's also been the definition they used in other cases. I don't know whether they think the term explains itself, or whether they're deliberately using vague wording for s

Heh

I've personally never thought - during all this suggestion from various websites - that the Music industry will ever die. In fact, I just think that the current status is a precursor to it revamping itself and embracing the digital era.

The more I read things like this though, the more it seems the downfall of such companies could actually happen. I kinda like it, too. It rumbles in my belly...

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The more I read things like this though, the more it seems the downfall of such companies could actually happen. I kinda like it, too. It rumbles in my belly...

No, the industry isn't going anywhere. There are some large companies that will likely be shaken up, broken up or re-build as a result of change, but the fundamentals of the music industry are sound. People do want to buy music, it's just that a) the pric

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I don't think the song is the problem. Prior to the emergence of the long-play record, it was all about the song. 78s and 45s could only fit a limited number of songs on them, and so was born the idea of the "single". Some guys, like Phil Spector and Br

This is probably the best thing to happen to them

Seriously, I'm no fan of the **AA. But if more investment companies warn folks not to buy their stock, and since these guys seem to be motivated primarily by the almighty dollar, maybe if they see their stock shrivel up into nothingness and their retirement blasted into oblivion,. . . maybe they'll finally, "get the memo," that their 19th century strategy isn't exactly working out in the 21st century. All we need is for one of the big fish to declare bankrupcy, the and rest will see that and stop their litigous ways and actual get back to giving consumers what they want,... And if they don't, then f*ck 'em!

Talking out both sides

A lot of discussion centers around the apparent change in the RIAA's position on ripping for personal use. With the recent change in their website removing language that suggests they're OK with it and the statements from the Washington Post article about 'steals one copy' it sounds like they're taking a harder stance on it. Meanwhile there is this article http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0103music0103.html [azcentral.com] which quotes a representative who says that it's not an issue.

I suppose they want it both ways - keep people on the edge and they're easier to control or something.

Magnatune.com

Might be a good time to listen to a [magnatune.com] few [magnatune.com] tunes [magnatune.com] from a label that's not evil.

[Caveat: I don't work for them, own any part of the company, or know anyone personally who's released a CD through them. I just buy their stuff and dig Shannon Coulter's sultry voice.]

Stock shares?

Actually, I wonder how their stock shares fare.

Many companies have been proclaimed dead or dying while their shares kept going up, and they keep going up still. Some portals were proclaimed to be dead because their percentage market share vaned comparing to Google, but they actually gain users as the net grows, and they actually grow and note profits each year.

So how's it for the record industry?

Still curious

I know it's fun to burn the school down but then you're left wondering what will replace it? I know the current preference is a pay if you want/download for free if you don't business model but it isn't exactly sustainable. The problem is always people will eventually get tired of paying and stop since they don't have to pay. Look at what happened when the 55 mph speed limit was lifted. I was living in LA at the time. For the first month people drove 55 out of habit but after that they slowly increased speeds to the new 65 limit and within three months they were already back to speeding. If you made the speed limit 100 mph some people would still speed. If the groups released their albums for free but asked people to not post them for download and to please only download them from the official site there'd be a copy on a file sharing web site with in the first hour. They can try to make money off ads on their web sites but like I say the majority will probably download from file sharing sites. Eventually the professionals will give up on releasing albums and songs entirely and just go back to playing live. Odd that things might go full circle to the pre technology days. Technology created the music industry we know and it's likely to kill it in the end.

Look to wedding photography

Before cheap scanners and color inkjet printers, most wedding photographers would shoot the wedding for free or at-cost. They would charge up the wazoo for the prints and reprints. When scanners and color printers became cheap, people just started scanning the prints (or sometimes the proofs) and running off all the copies they wanted. In response, wedding photographers have mostly moved to a model where they charge all the money for shooting the wedding, then give the prints away for free or at-cost.

I suspect musicians will go the same route. Songs will be given away as free advertising, and they'll make their money by booking performances and concerts (and selling memorabilia at such). For all practical purposes that's the way most of the RIAA-contracted musicians work anyway right now, since the studios keep 95% to over 100% (the band owes them money) of all the proceeds from song sales.

The **AA can't afford any more attention like this

If anyone here thinks that the Fool will harm the **AA's business, think again. The Fool is only telling us what is happening. In a family gathering of more than 25 people for present opening ceremonies this year, I watched quite gleefully to find that only ONE CD or DVD had been purchased. ONLY ONE! There were cameras, books, clothes, presents galore... but only ONE lonely little DVD.

My in-laws really don't care about the **AA and their ways, CDs and DVDs are JUST TOO EXPENSIVE. Never mind the lawsuits, their crap products are priced way out of order.

Time to start ePhoenix records I think....

Its not just the lawsuits...

Take a look at Warner Music Groups stock price over the last two years [google.com] (WMG is the only publicly traded music label, in the last year it has decreased by almost $20! You screwed yourself in 2007 if you sided with the RIAA. But look at the long-term, its not just the lawsuits that make music labels a bad investment now or the last five years. Its a dying industry without the lawsuits. The digital age is here, nothing can be done to stop it. There never was anything that could be done. The industry can still exist, but its market share had decreased enormously and they need to accept it. Sorry for anyone who bet the farm on these guys, cause all you have is a cow left. Not even a cash one sadly.

i would like to suggest something unPC

where polotically correct in this sense is sensitivity to the dying music industry: maybe there really is no more money in this business

we all talk about "embracing new models", and anger at the industry for seeing napster and fighting them tooth and nail, rather than changing their business model. we yell at the music industry for not using the internet to their advantage... well what if the suits are right? there is no advantage in the internet. that it's simply death for them?

of course there is still money in concerts and movie theatres, those are real world venues. also advertising plugs. but everything that goes on media: movies, music, maybe there really is nothing but a black hole of no cash for the music and movie industries

not that the industries can do anything about it

and copyright of course means shit: it's simply unenforceable. you can trap a few scurrying mice here and there and extract a few pennies from soccer moms and college kids, but everyone will trade anyways, with just more and more bulletproof protocols and apps

not that i'm worried or complaining about this new world. one music exec assholes financial riches gone means our cultural riches greatly improved. there's more than one way to measure richness than just cash in the bank

it's a wonderful new world in fact

long live the death of the music and movie industries

this is really wonderful

CD/DVD is the consumer transmission medium

Really, at this point, I purchase compact discs for one purpose: to have a real product to carry from the store and then store on a shelf. I rip all my CD's so that I may listen to the music on the device of my choice; one that holds far more information than any single or group of discs. It is getting this way with movies too. I figure that I will start ripping my movies to large storage systems and build a video-on-demand device at home. Don't get me wrong though, I do not like downloading music nor movies. Perhaps I am a relic, but I want a real 'box' product. In addition, I have hated downloading music within iTunes only to be told that I cannot make a mix mp3 CD (for my truck, which reads mp3 discs) with some of the music I just paid for the right to use. I feel the same way about movies, and to take it a step further, I feel most of my drive space is something expendable. If I lose an mp3 from a rip, I simply rip again. If I lose a download, I am SOL.

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Could these be first signs of another failing "industry"?

It's signs of an evil company, not a failing industry. When the industry as a whole fights new innovation with lawsuits against individuals rather than adapt THEN it would be a failing industry.

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What does that say about the GPL and various developers who have threatened to sue companies that might be violating the license?

The former are desperate, the later aren't

Microsoft is digging whatever they could find in their "Imaginary Property" port folio of patents to find something with which they could scare client who would potentially consider fleeing to open-source. They're basically trying to invent new ways to kill their adversary.

**AA are suing who ever they can going through complicated legal justification trying to explain why "Fair Use" never applies, trying to persuade that "Format shifting" represents "Unlawful evil piracy", etc. They're basically trying to find ways to stop everything that normally should be allowed by the law (and somewhat managed to partly achieve this goal with DMCA).

On the other hand the situation with GPL is much simplier.
The copyright law is simple : Thou shall not copy. (outside the list of exception, like personnal backups, etc. against which the **AA are fighting).
The GPL is a license : it gives additional rights, more specifically it gives you the right to freely distribute copies of GPL software, as long as you pass along the accompanying freedom to the next in the chain.
If you don't follow the license, you lose those additional rights and everything reverts to the official copyright law. Which says No-No to distributing software which you don't own personally.
They're basically making sure that the users retains their freedom by using pre-existing legal infrastructure.

You'll notice that :
- GPL isn't threatening to sue users at all. The whole "FreeSoftware" concept is about giving freedoms to users. They threaten to sue companies that would be taking away those freedoms. And in fact they don't threaten as often, as they help misguided companies who don't really understand the GPL. There are only a couple of suit-threats that we've heard here on /. whereas most of the time is companies who don't really understand how they should behave to follow the GPL. Most of the time it's more a polite exchange of explanation (you should publish that piece of code...) than threats.

The end users benefits of the GPL, whereas with the former the end user is the target.

- There are no auto-settlement-bot spilling standart cease-and-desist suit-threat

- GPL isn't trying to twist the interpretation of the law to try to remove rights that where granted in the first place (They're not arguing what is "Fair Use" and trying to limit it). The GPL is based on pre-existing laws.

Re:so, what would Fool say about our Friend

These guys (disclaimer: I'm not one of them and in fact haven't owned any stock for over 20 years) always say that you should pick a stock with a dividends to price ratio if ten to one or better.

Microsoft, the last I heard, pays no dividends.

So I think MS is probably a "stock for fools". If you buy a stock with the expectation of its price rising, you're gambling, not investing. That's not to say that gambling that Mars won't explode in the next two weeks isn't a good bet; some gambles are worthwhile.

As to the record companies, DUH! You don't need an expert to tell you that a company whose sales have been falling for over five years is a turkey.

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Microsoft, the last I heard, pays no dividends.

No longer true, I believe because they got sick of answering the questions you pose in your post. ;)

From http://www.microsoft.com/msft/FAQ/dividend.mspx [microsoft.com]: "Microsoft pays a quarterly dividend of $0.11 per shar

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Maybe I am buying into their crap, or maybe I'm right...who knows. But out of all the companies in the past 20 years that I have seen making huge mistakes, Microsoft is one of the few companies I have seen that is actually at least ATTEMPTING to correct t

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So Vista was an "attempt" to fix XP and the Firewall from hell was an "attempt" to secure the OS? Since Service Pack 2 on XP every time I install a component or piece of software Microsoft rebricks my computer. As near as I can tell they're approach to sec

Re:so, what would Fool say about our Friend

I doubt he'd say much.

RIAA: track record of suing their own customers, based on "evidence" gathered via pretty shady means
MS: doesn't regularly sue their own customers (their competitors, sure, but not random joe off the street)

Failure of vista: Not the only money maker that MS has. Also not their only market.
Failure of music sales: only thing the riaa has.