Warner Music CEO Says War With Consumers Was Wrong 258
l2718 writes "Edgar Bronfman, CEO of the Warner Music Group, has publicly framed the music industry's failure to accommodate file-sharing as an 'inadvertent' war on consumers. I'm left wondering how you can file a series of lawsuits inadvertently. 'We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding ... By ... moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find and as a result of course, consumers won.'"
Put your money where your mouth is, Ed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Put you money where your mouth is, Eddie boy. If these lawsuits offend you as you claim, dissolve your membership in the conspiracy that organizes them. As long as you're still a member of the RIAA, and as long as the lawsuits keep coming, your comments are just as dishonest as your corrput business model.
So please... don't beat me with both fists while apologizing between blows. The beating still hurts and your "apology" just adds insult to injury.
Re:Put your money where your mouth is, Ed. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Put your money where your mouth is, Ed. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Put your money where your mouth is, Ed. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Put your money where your mouth is, Ed. (Score:5, Funny)
You're seriously comparing the Third Reich to the RIAA? I think you're being a little harsh on the Germans there.
Re:Put your money where your mouth is, Ed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe if they can keep you pointing the fingers at the RIAA they think they're going to buy time and customer loyalty.
Not Kool-Aid, Whiskey (Score:2, Offtopic)
it's not the lawsuits (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, but he's not apologizing for the lawsuits -- he's apologizing for not releasing DRM-riddled restrictively-licensed music fast enough, which he thinks is what forced consumers to share music illegally. He's still behind the lawsuits (except when his own kids share music -- then it's a "family matter" best punished by the parents). He's warning the cell-phone companies that unless they allow limited sharing, consumers will find their own solutions, and not talking about tactics. The content industry (music, film etc) still seems to have no idea what the consumers want, or that the offering people what they want is usually much better than coercing them to buy what you want them to buy.
Re:it's not the lawsuits (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. The bottom line is this article isn't saying anything like what's being implied in the summary; in fact, just the opposite.
His "war" with consumers, from his perspective, is that the music industry wasn't offering consumers what they wanted, so they went out and took it. But if you read the rest of his comments, the problem is he still isn't understanding just what it is that people want. He thinks that DRM-free music is just being used as a means to an end rather than being an end in itself. He thinks that if the record labels just give everybody music pre-made in the formats that they want, even if it comes saddled with DRM and even if consumers need to buy the same music over and over, that they will buy it as long as it's easy and convenient enough for them to get it.
He's totally missing the point, which is that if I have a CD, or a DRM-free digital download, I buy the music once and can then put it anywhere I want to. I can listen to it, my wife can listen to it, I can make a ringtone out of it, I can put it on my iPod or make a mix CD. His idea is still to sell you multiple copies of the same tracks in all these different places, and he thinks where his company went wrong was in not doing that early enough. That's just as wrongheaded as Warner ever has been.
And he says absolutely nothing about the lawsuits, which he will no doubt continue supporting.
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If he's prepared to admit that the industry was wrong in this case, then perhaps the
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Which is pretty much bang on the money. Along with point (b) which is that he finally gets that suing consumers for doing that won't help sales.
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His idea is still to sell you multiple copies of the same tracks in all these different places, and he thinks where his company went wrong was in not doing that early enough.
The problem is that this is not without precedent. When CD's were first released a lot of people did go out and buy the same music they already owned on Vinyl on CD.
From his perspective they have managed to get the public to do this once before so why can't they do it again?
Most of the reasons why they will not get away with this again are technological and I would bet if anyone tried to explain them to him they go straight over his head. I would also bet that anyone trying to explain it to him would have
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still seems to have no idea what the consumers want
That's easy. Consumers want the ability to buy content and use it on any device of their choosing. Personally, I want to be able to take my music and load it onto my mp3 player, play it on my car stereo, play it on my home stereo and listen to it on my computer. I don't want to have to buy it for each of these formats. I don't want to have to pay for it on a monthly basis with subscriptions.
Subscriptions may prove profitable for videos (Netflix is proof of this), but people generally want to own the
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The content industry (music, film etc) still seems to have no idea what the consumers want
No... they know exactly what the consumers want, what the consumers say they want and what the analysts say the consumers say they want. They even know that all three of those are different things.
What they also know is that they're sitting on top of the world's most rigged market with stockholders demanding increasing profits. They're literally staring down the gun-barrel at their own extinction and trying desperately to figure out how they can dodge the bullet. They can't. They know they can't. That make
Its called saving face. (Score:3, Interesting)
The really smart ones have been pirating the music all along, and maybe buying merchandise from the actual concerts. Personally, I know a few local bands that got their start selling CDR's of their own music. They're still small but at least those of us who like them, listen to them live and know most of them by name/face in real life. Can't say that with the big boys. Once they "sell out" as it were, they all develop "sta
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Just curious. How many "big boys" have you known personally that "sold out" and stopped being your personal friend after they became famous and started releasing poor art ?
Also, as a musician I can tell you that a lot artists' "first album" are collections of songs that had been written and perfecte
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The really smart ones have been pirating the music all along, and maybe buying merchandise from the actual concerts.
Modern media is already supersaturated with music. I feel no compelling reason to possess any of it for its own sake.
Haha, nice question... (Score:3, Interesting)
So I would call those who prefer not to go ga-ga over bands and their internal issues as "free".
----------------
Now for my own opinion of "mainstream music" and the urge to have it blasting non stop? As far as I've seen, participation in certain types of music concerts and or CD/tape collections tend to be more related to "fitting in"
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I think he just got wind of the number of people who don't trade with the enemy. He hasn't figured out what to do about it yet.
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But yes, you're right. Stepping down from the RIAA does make a strong statement.
System Shock 2 (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Put your money where your mouth is, Ed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, dude, you're glass. We see right through you and we're going to break you if you don't get the hell out of our way, and if you don't break yourself first.
We know you know that MP3s should be advertising for CDs. We also know that what you're afraid of isn't people downloading Lars and Gene's stuff, it's downloading your independant competitors' stuff. You control the FREE radio and you know it. You can't control the internet and you know it.
You're shaking in your boots over Radiohead. I'm afraid it's too late; you're cracked. It's too late, but I'll tell you what you should have done.
When Napster, the old Napster you bozos sued out of existance came along, you should have embraced it. You should have flooded it with 56k samples of every tune in your inventory, and gone on a PR blitz telling everyone how superior the CD was to MP3. It worked against vinyl when the CD first came out, despite the fact that there are pros and cons to CD and vinyl (each has its shortcomings) [kuro5hin.org], it would surely work with CD vs. MP3 and CD's vastly superior sound.
You blew it.
You no longer matter. A musician no longer needs an expensive studio and even more expensive factory, he can rent a studio even in a small city like Springfield [kuro5hin.org], which has several. He can get his CD professionally mastered and copied with insert and jewell case for a couple thousand bucks, less than the price of a decent drum kit.
Now your only recourse to stay alive is to be a hitmaker.
You're stupid, Eddie, and I'll be glad when your twitching corpse stops kicking over the china and bleeding all over my government. Die, damn you, die, you worthles scumbag!
-mcgrew [kuro5hin.org]
Inadvertent post (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Inadvertent post (Score:4, Funny)
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This past summer they inadvertently filed a summary judgment motion against her, trying to get a judgment for $36,000 so that she can start off her adulthood with a bankruptcy.
Re:Inadvertent post (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Paying = Winning? (Score:5, Funny)
Pontiac: "We build excitement". The brakes and handling suck.
Chevy: "Like A Rock". Damned thing won't start
Ford: "Quality is job 1!" They have a lot of work to do in the "quality" department.
It's kind of like the lottery, too - "you can't win if you don't play". You can't lose, either.
These boys are liars. If Zaphod were listening to these bozos, his glasses would go jet black in no time. It makes me feel dirty just listening to them.
-mcgrew
Truthfully (Score:5, Insightful)
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Disposable income not piracy is behind falls. (Score:5, Insightful)
How can you ever win a war against your own customers? If you fight them, they don't pay you and you die. How did they ever expect to win?
I think the reason they haven't made as much money recently has little to do with piracy and everything to do with the changing perception of value. Personally, I think that the value per pound spent on an album compared to something like Halo 3 is vastly different. Halo 3 at the £40 it costs is at least ten times the value to me than the equivalent number of albums I could buy for that price.
There is only a limited number of areas I can spend my disposable income. Between, Halo, the X-box 360 to play it, the iPod, iPhone there just isn't room for such an overpriced product.
And that's why I haven't bought a single CD since 1999 - and I imagine I'm not alone. That's why the music industry is shrinking. They expect to be paid rather than realising they're competing for our money just like everyone else.
Simon.
Re:Disposable income not piracy is behind falls. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a rare movie or game that gets played more than 2 or 3 times for me, but it's even more rare for me to have a song that doesn't get played at least 10x. From what I've read and seen, this is the case for most people.
Re:Disposable income not piracy is behind falls. (Score:5, Insightful)
But even that is missing the underlying point. Time is a really lousy measure of enjoyment. That's saying that any 2 hour movie is just as enjoyable as any other 2 hour movie. If I listen to music for three hours, is that exactly as enjoyable as three hours of a Lord of the Rings movie? Is that as enjoyable as playing through Portal? Maybe, depends on what you find enjoyable. But that is a big dependency.
But even that is missing the underlying point. You pay the amount that both you and the seller agree to. If the seller is smart, he takes into consideration how much of the market is willing to pay what amount and maximizes his profits. If the buyer is smart, he considers how much the seller is selling it and how much it is worth it to him. The music industry in general might not be selling at maximum customers, or even maximum profit, but they've picked a price. If you don't like the price, don't buy it.
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Conversely, Movies, or at least a lot of movies, are just background while I'm eating, making out, surfing the internet, or otherwise chilling on the couch.
Video games I think we can agree are 100% involved, but I think on a dollar/hour basis, CDs can't be beat. Probably why I own hundreds of CDs, dozens of
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But movies and games are a more immersive experience, I rarely just sit and listen to music, it's something I have on while I do other things.
Movies and games, however, get my full attention for the time they are on.
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This is definitely off topic, but I was thinking the exact opposite. I have a large DVD and game collection that I hardly ever use. I figure I've gotten maybe 5 hours of enjoyment per DVD (some more, some less) and maybe 10-20 out of an average game. On the flip side, each song that I buy from itunes at $1 each have gotten played at least 20x. That's over $1 / hour of enjoyment for music as opposed to $3-$4 for a dvd and $.50-$6 for a game. If I buy a whole album, it usually gets the same amount or more play than the songs i buy a la carte, which usually leads to a higher value over time.
It's a rare movie or game that gets played more than 2 or 3 times for me, but it's even more rare for me to have a song that doesn't get played at least 10x. From what I've read and seen, this is the case for most people.
It really depends on who you are. Music is background. Radio is enough. I buy a few albums but I get bored with them after the 4 or 5th play through. Thus I get ~5h of entertainment for $10-$25. A Movie will be played maybe 3 times. So for $15-$30 I get ~5h. I have a taste for fairly deep games (Warcraft 3, diablo, FFXII, Ratchet and clank oddly, etc..) thus for $50 I get between 20h (ratchet and clank) - 2000+h (warcraft 3, at least 1h a day for 5 years).
Re:Disposable income not piracy is behind falls. (Score:5, Interesting)
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I think you're right, which is why it might be fair to call their actions 'an inadvertent war'. The question now becomes, will they change their practices in light of this new information? Can they somehow deal with the fact that "pirates" and "customers" often overlap, and that often their non-sharing customers still want DRM-free music?
It's not just the overlap (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure there is some considerable overlap between people who (to some degree) pay for music and people who (to some degree) rip it illegally. But I don't think that's the root cause of the problem (or at least, not the only root cause).
The basic problem is that by attacking the pirates, the megacorps have made their products worse even for 100% legitimate users. I am sick and tired of having to sit through unskippable ads at the start of legally purchased DVDs. I am sick and tired of having to wait several seconds while my legally downloaded music track is checked out by some DRM-checking engine. I'm sick and tired of having to jump through hoops to "activate" my legally installed software. I'm not even going near various new toys (I'm looking at you, HD discs and Windows Vista), in large part because I don't trust them not to break and the companies who took my money to leave me hanging after all the horror stories.
Now, sure, part of their problem is that by doing this they make their legal products relatively worse than the illegally ripped versions, rather than equivalent except in price and legality. This no doubt motivates a significant number of people to rip things just to avoid the crap.
But they also make their products worse in absolute terms. Why on earth would I pay the same amount of my money for something that is less pleasant to use than what I used to get? In fact, why would I pay my money at all, when I can use numerous legal alternatives that come without the headaches, even without resorting to copyright infringement? I have a finite budget, and I can find entertainment from perfectly legal sources that don't line the pockets of big media: live music or recordings by independent artists, OSS for software, etc. Does it really matter that I haven't seen the latest blockbuster movie on HD-DVD, or played the latest DirectX 10-enabled game, as long as I'm entertained by what I spend my leisure budget on?
The short answer is no, it doesn't. If the megacorps want me to spend my hard-earned money on their products rather than someone else's, they need to make the better products. This argument has nothing to do with ripped versions of the same products, and everything to do with more pleasant alternative products becoming more widely available.
Re:Disposable income not piracy is behind falls. (Score:5, Insightful)
As to Gene Simmons bitching on another
Re:Disposable income not piracy is behind falls. (Score:5, Interesting)
IMHO that is not entirely the case. In fact, compared to the "new" material that the "professional" artists are putting out in the MAFIAA label system these days, shows like Pop Idol and American Idol are a breath of fresh air. These shows actually do find and select some talented new vocalists from among the general populations (the diamonds in the rough if you will) who would never have gotten exposure otherwise under the marketing driven, make anyone sound good in the studio, craptastic MAFIAA label system. Consider the following:
1) The contestants are selected in a grueling process of elimination where actual performance is judged brutally by judges, like Simon who doesn't pull punches when the performance is sub-par, without regard to favoritism, who the contestant is connected with, or crap like that but rather solely upon whether or not, in the opinion of the judges, the contestant could earn the best return on their (Simon's) money if they sign them for a recording contract. Now, admittedly the audience sometimes votes for bad contestants just to make some trouble, but everyone knows that they are still bad so in the end it doesn't really matter that much for who wins the competition.
2) At almost every stage the contestants get to choose what songs they are going to sing and although the choices are sometimes limited to the catalog of a particular guest professional artist or genre there are generally plenty of potential song choices for each contestant.
I particularly like it when professionals make a guest appearance on the show and end up sounding worse then the talented young contestants. They invariably invite the comparison just by appearing on the show. In fact, I don't understand why some professionals appear on the show, it only highlights the fact that they are over the hill or even worse that they were never as talented as some of the up and coming contestants...a potentially bad career move for them.
Frankly, I don't much care for pop style music, but there have been some really good female African American Jazz style vocalists on the show who sound great when they sing the old standards from the likes of Billy Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald.
My point is that contrary to contributing to the problem of mediocre music, shows like American Idol, could potentially be the antidote to no-talent bands and the crap that has come out of the marketing driven "promotion" of sub-par "artists" by the MAFIAA labels. It is really hard to hide the fact that you suck when you have to sing live in front of a studio and television audience straight into the mike with no second takes, remixing, or other studio tricks. In such situations the real talent tends to come forward while the hacks leave in disgrace (or hopefully don't even make it onto the show in the first place).
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In the 60's and 70's you had bands like Kiss and The Monkeys who were entirely about show and very little about music. Boy Bands are the descendants of Motown groups. You mentioned Michael Jackson as being an example of a talented artist but it's arguably groups like The Jackson 5 that gave birth to modern boy-bands.
Madonna was taking off her cloth
Re:Disposable income not piracy is behind falls. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Disposable income not piracy is behind falls. (Score:4, Insightful)
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I missed them. I like a good bunfight, I might check them out.
[Paging Dr Freud... I'm guessing you're 20 stone and had a Hershey bar in your mouth typing that...]
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I think the reason they haven't made as much money recently has little to do with piracy and everything to do with the changing perception of value.
Quite right. Like it or not, most music gets "consumed" in a very off-hand kind of way. For instance, people want some "tunes" for driving, working out, or while they are doing something else. They may download a song, and never listen to it (or listen to it once and decide they don't like it). As a result, the value one can place on such incidental usage is necessarily low.
Some people will indeed obtain music in order to really enjoy it, and listen to every nuance. But they are the minority (in a marke
Re:Disposable income not piracy is behind falls. (Score:4, Interesting)
Another example that comes to mind would be loitering laws at malls (as teenagers who loiter often have the highest disposable incomes to spend, and those who complain are often the ones tight in the wallet).
Warner may have believed they were suing "bad people" and providing music at the same time on CD for "good people" and have finally realized (possibly as a result of recent studies) that they've in fact been alienating their customer base.
Yes yes, we all knew this already, but its also quite obvious to me that most executives thought the loud "we" who hate these lawsuits were also not customers of theirs and therefore irrelevant. I've had personal discussions about this with people who work for record companies (some related, some not) and they often have a strange view of my perspective as somehow only existing within the "pirate" world and don't see it as pervasive amongst their customer base.
Hopefully that's changing.
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Personally, I think that the value per pound spent on an album compared to something like Halo 3 is vastly different. Halo 3 at the £40 it costs is at least ten times the value to me than the equivalent number of albums I could buy for that price
Value is what each person decides it is. I know a number of audiophiles that sink thousands or even tens of thousands of bucks into buying music and gear. I don't understand it, but there you go. I also don't understand people that build five thousand dollar water-cooled gaming systems, but if they enjoy it all the power to them.
Personally, I see value in Pandora. I have a paid membership even though I didn't really need one to enjoy it. I don't see as much value in CDs because I have to deal with
stop the lawsuits (Score:5, Funny)
It's easy.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Easy...just like our government inadvertently took away ever more of our freedom with the patriot act
Who won? (Score:4, Insightful)
Really? What do I get? Have all the lawsuits been dropped and all the judgements and settlements been refunded and consumers reimbursed for their legal fees? Did I miss something?
I'm still boycotting new music purchases.
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I also happen to find that the music is better, too.
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These days, if you are not using a Free license, and preferably a copyleft one, I don't consider you consumer friendly. Your works are always subject to being bought out and abused. Even if against your will.
Even if I like your stuff, unless I am getting paid, I try my best not to promote you or your stuff unless you are going the Free route. And after all,
Re:Who won? (Score:5, Interesting)
In the "war on piracy" their intention was to prevent people from sharing music (i.e.: to at least maintain their previous business model). However, the consumers won that war: at present people routinely fileshare. Most people I know have an iPod (or equivalent) and all of them have it filled with music, where they only paid for 0-20% of those tracks. The average consumer is file-sharing. The industry couldn't stop it. The consumers won that battle, and the industry lost.
As they say, however, the battle may be won but the war is far from over. The grander issue here is whether copyright law itself is valid in its present form... and whether changing it means more protections/enforcement (for the established industry), or more freedoms/rights (for the citizens).
That's when the real victory will come: when these currently "fringe" sources of music become the norm, and the established cartel withers away (or reinvents itself to survive).
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Nah, screw that. If I won the war, I want reparations.
Re:Who won? Part 2 (Score:2)
Other collusion investigations have quietly ended (surprised?) as well. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,1000000097,39118776,00.htm [zdnet.co.uk]
A nice summary of how the whole thing works: http://techdirt.com/articles/20060112/1223218.shtml [techdirt.com]
This kind of mea culpa is a way to deflect the obvious control of global media distribution. They are still going to overcharge you for a DVD, and screw mo
first end the war (Score:5, Insightful)
Bingo (Score:2)
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Ironically (Score:5, Funny)
Turn of the tide (Score:4, Insightful)
This is when Big Media have to start looking at the internet differently. The same way the studios did when they looked at Betamax/the VCR.
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Score one for the Judiciary, and the concept of checks and balances amongst three branches of government, that are organized in different ways and are not monolithic.
--
Toro
Perhaps (Score:5, Interesting)
I think he means that back in the Napster lawsuit days, when all you idiots were crying about how the RIAA should be suing illegal filesharers and offering up a stream of condescending analogies about how toolmakers shouldn't be responsible for the actions of users, they made the mistake of believing you.
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Well I think the problem was also believing that there's a clear distinction between "illegal file sharer" and "customer". As though there aren't plenty of people who are both.
So the record industry set out to wage war on "pirates" and inadvertently ended up attacking their own customers and hurting their own business interests. Instead, they might have realized that the people "pirating" their content were also "sharing" their content and thereby giving free marketing. They might have realized that the
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Re:Perhaps (Score:4, Insightful)
If they finally restricted their targets to people who were obviously making money from it (you know, like the real physical media bootleggers do), there would've be zero problems at all.
But you see, the problem is that they don't want/need to go after the bootleggers. It isn't the bootlegging industry that's sharing content on P2P networks. It's college kids, little girls, and the nice couple next door. The whole problem with the situation is that their business model was created by distribution, based on the inability of some random guy to press 10 million vinyl records in his basement and distribute them worldwide for free. However, in the digital age, some random guy can effectively spread millions of MP3s around the work for free (well, you have the cost of a computer and Internet service).
So don't think these lawsuits were an effort to stop bootlegging "pirates" who make money from selling illegal copies. The goal was to protect an outdated business model.
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Lots of people are willing to pay for music offered that way. The RIAA gave us very crappy onlin
Lawyers are the problem here (Score:2)
Sometimes I would like to see the Klingon legal rules about the lawyers...
Problem is with the antiquated business model (Score:3, Insightful)
An easy source for some older classical music recordings would also result in increased sales. If you have an interest in classical music the change that has taken place over the last 10 years is disgusting, there is no longer an easy source for good classical recordings which is my biggest gripe! Edgar is right the industry has no one to blame but themselves for alienating the public.
Doubletalk (Score:4, Informative)
No, the war ain't over, and we haven't won yet. But be warned: We WILL win. Sooner or later, we will win. Whether you make peace with us or are mercilessly defeated, depends on you.
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They never learn (Score:4, Insightful)
He should have asked the ice man, the milk man, the telephone operator, etc. They probably thought their industries would never change, until one day they were handed pink slips. When they walked outside, the world had changed. That's the constant -- change. That's a CEO's job -- to anticipate, recognize, and plan for, change. Not only is he a little late in recognizing this (the damage that's been done isn't going to be undone anytime soon), but he hasn't done a very good job doing his job.
Simple (Score:2)
Easy. Lobby your incompetent bunch of lawmakers to pass an industry sweetheart bill allowing you to file them in bulk, at little to no risk or cost to the filer, and in defiance of centuries of legal precedent.
If they hadn't filed those suits, they would have been sued by their shareholders for gross negligence.
It was a foregone conclusion of the DMCA, not a malicious act. Blame Congress. They're a bunch of lawyers, and they should kno
and apple won (Score:4, Insightful)
they instead viewed digital content as a threat because they liked their model: $20 per CD, 60 cents to the artist, "only one song i like" to the consumer
now it's belt tightening time, if not outright extinction. artists can distribute online on their own terms. giving away free music with an online tip jar is still better money than the suffocating terms the record companies pay artists. and artists make their names online: who cares if the record company can hype you on mtv or the radio. myspace, facebook, hello?
hard to figure how the old record behemoths matter anynmore. their relevancy shrivels every day. sorry, dinosaurs. must suck to realize you're extinct. guess it's time to sue some more grandmothers out of spite i suppose
nothing but shortsighted assholes and losers. good fucking riddance to the whole lot of them
i actually agree with you (Score:5, Interesting)
in the new world, all music content will be free. artists will support themselves with tip jars and advertisements and touring. and THERE WILL BE NO MIDDLE MAN. because the internet has simply replaced them
iTunes, bertelsman, polygram: dust in the wind. the dutch east india company. extinct. defunct, irrelevant and unnecessary
and these developments have nothing at all to do with all the tired old legal arguments. it will just happen, because it's simple economic forces at work
the final implications of the new technology called the internet is the extinction of all music publishers
Warner & Simmons (Score:3, Insightful)
see what happens.
Read this guy's resume. (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, what do you expect? Read Bronfman's entry on Wikipedia. [wikipedia.org] He was the heir to Seagram's Liquor. His whole life has been carried along by family connections. Highlights from Wikipedia:
- "He was particularly active in school theatre, an interest his parents supported by donating to construct The Ann and Edgar Bronfman Theatre during a 1967 expansion at The Collegiate School, the prestigious private school in Manhattan which Edgar Jr. attended."
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"The summer before his final year of high school, in 1972, he was a credited producer on the film, The Blockhouse. Despite his inexperience, Bronfman's involvement was accepted because of his connections and access to financing."
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"By 1994 he became the Chief Executive Officer (of Seagrams), where he began a move away from the traditional liquor business and into entertainment.
The first step in this diversification was the widely criticized sale of Seagram's stake in DuPont."
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"Bronfman, Jr., then led Seagram into a disastrous all-stock acquisition by French conglomerate Vivendi in 2000."
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"Seagram's for all intents and purposes ceased to exist."
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"On February 27, 2004, Bronfman finalized the acquisition of Warner Music Group and he has served as Chairman and CEO of the music company since that time."
He didn't build up Warner Music, or move up within the company, or come to it from success elsewhere. He bought the thing with inherited money, after a long career as a failed executive.Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
To be brutally honest, it's unlikely that he can do worse than the guys who are running the other RIAA "members".
Oh hell (Score:3, Funny)
I'm SO sorrry, I got that damned nasty lawyer all over you. Here, let me get you a napkin...
Pff... (Score:2)
What he said: (Score:2)
An inadvertent download.... (Score:2)
His mea culpa is convenient (Score:2)
As he said, you can get what they have elsewhere.
Do it and never look back.
Yeah, I am still PO'd as for my youth they all had a pricing and sales model which made it nearly impossible to enjoy music, my culture, at a price that I did not have to trade off something like food.
Consumers won? (Score:2)
Really? I can't see how anybody won anything. Consumers were sued. That's hardly a win. And now everybody hates the music industry more than ever before. That's not a win, either.
The RIAA/MPAA are kind of like GW Bush, fighting a war they never should have started, that nobody wants, and that is doing nothing but harm.
At least they recongize it is over (Score:4, Interesting)
Now the record companies can move on. Only problem is, where are they going to move to? Nobody in their right mind is going to pay lots of money for trinket go-with items like jewel cases for their CDs. Pretty much the "recorded music industry" is going to disappear now that the exec's have figured out their "war" is over.
I'd expect to see in the next year or so some new media distribution deal coming along. One that doesn't involve music in any way but is difficult or impossible for the average person to re-distribute. Probably because of raw size, but also temporal locality - something like a 24-hour live Big Brother show but only on the Internet. If you miss something, well, keep watching because something completely new and original will happen - just keep watching 24x7.
Just think about some unknown "instant celebrity" having a camera on them 24x7 (night vision in the dark) for people to watch. Look! She's combing her hair again! Look! She is putting on THAT dress!
bummer (Score:4, Insightful)
Bummer it's too god damned late. Sorry guys, you could have delivered musical nirvana in 1996 (musical nirvana, not the music of Nirvana) but instead you refused to take any action, followed by insisting on taking only the action of suing your customers. It's a decade late for you to start saying you 'get it', and the fact is there are only a few of you who get it anyway.
(Musical nirvana would be like Napster except with an inexpensive pay system: all the music ever recorded in high-quality format easily searchable for inexpensive cost. That would have been possible in ~1995, and certainly by 2000 or 2001.)
The music industry was like the drug industry and the RIAA acted like the government: consumers had a demand and the RIAA/government thought that demand was morally bad, so instead of meeting demand in a reasonable, safe, and profitable manner, they stuck their heads up their asses and made the problem worse. In reaction, consumers filled their own needs created by their own demands with their own products and services, cutting the RIAA/government completely out of the equation completely.
If the industry 'gets it' in the next five or six years, it won't matter; if they 'get it' tomorrow, it won't matter. The time to get it was about 1997, maybe 1998, and certainly by 2000. You didn't get it, and you have caused yourself irreparable harm. You will survive, but you will not thrive in the brave new world you allowed to be created without your input or help. And I'm happy enough to see them go. I think they add value to the music culture, but not much.
Show us that we're all on the same side (Score:4, Insightful)
That's corporations for you... (Score:3, Interesting)
Getting it right (Score:4, Funny)
He went on to state that many of his label's acts had been promoted based on style over substance, and that these acts would no longer be actively promoted. Instead, Warner's new site would also provide a place where any band could freely compete for listeners based on word of mouth and the quality of their work, with the most appealing bands rising to the top, and being rewarded with the opportunity to be promoted by Warner. Warner will split the profits from album, t-shirt, and touring sales with the bands, but the bands will retain full creative and copyright control of their works.
Oh wait, that didn't happen at all.
Too little, too late (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Death throes of an industry (Score:5, Insightful)
That is really the entire problem in a nutshell. The funny part is, this is almost 2008. The time for the recording industry to be pioneers was back in 1995! Thirteen years ago! They could have become a major player in the digital age been a guiding force. Almost every other industry in this country adapted themselves in some form or another to do business in this new age.
Re: (Score:2)
It's been done [penny-arcade.com].
Except he missed the point anyway (Score:2)