Hard News: The Public Good
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I don't believe it's the job of the NZ (or any other government) to help businesses to prop up an unsustainable business model.
Imagine I decided to set up a business renting bicycles. The bikes would be left at collection stations around town with an honesty box for people to deposit a gold coin. Would it be the job of the cops to catch people who stole the bikes or failed to pay? I think not.
People have *always* copied music. When I was a kid I'd tape the John Peel show off the radio, tape friend's records, etc. Digital copying is no different - it just increases the scale of copying.
The music industry needs to find more robust routes to value. Possibly the existing record companies won't be able to make this shift and will become history. That's just the way the world works.
We should not be criminalising kids, holding back technological progress and boosting monopolies in order to try and abate change. We didn't do it for the railways or the freezing works - so why should the music business be different.
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According to Bomber Bradbury, it's all KiwiFM's fault!
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You know what really killed the music business for musicians?
Records. And then radio.
Seriously. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, musicians had regular gigs in dancehalls, theatre, opera, and so on. If you wanted to hear a good musician, you had to pay for a ticket. And it was a viable career.
Once gramophones became cheap and accessible, and the radios even more so, most professional musicians had to hang up their instruments because they couldn't make a living any more. And from that day to this, life for real musicians hasn't changed much. Most people who can play never work at all - they are so pleased to be asked to play that they will play for free. 99% of the small minority who do play for money barely make a living from it, or more likely have a day job. And the tiniest, most unusual group are those who can live off royalties.
The difference between the plight of the 1930s dance band musician and the modern recording industry is that sheer concentrated money means the recording companies have lobbying power. Well screw them. My musical ancestors got hit by the technology train, and now it's their turn.
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Wow...
"or an automated process to identify and selectively record certain sound recordings from a communication work."
I shudder to think of the potential scope of such a clause.
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People have *always* copied music. When I was a kid I'd tape the John Peel show off the radio, tape friend's records, etc. Digital copying is no different - it just increases the scale of copying.
I was going to put this in the post, but I figured 200 words was enough:
There were a number of influences that led me to grow up as a heavy consumer of popular music, but the two most important ones were a direct consequence of the kind of copying RIANZ would ban.
1. When I was at primary school, my buddy John Holdsworth had an older brother called Gerard. Gerard had records. I would go around and tape them. I might not think much now of the stuff I taped - Uriah Heep, Deep Purple and bloody Supertramp (Alice Cooper was a bit more like it) - but that got me listening to albums.
2. Casey Kasem's Top 40. There was a lot of crap, but I would listen to it, tape-record songs and thrash them afterwards. I remember the first time I heard Patti Smith's 'Because the Night' and thought WTF is this?
I recently made up a CD of __Music A Young Man Should Know About __for one of Leo's friends. His mum doesn't have a lot of money and there's no other way he'd have heard that music. I think of it as making a music fan for the future.
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People have *always* copied music.
Word.
And that whole stream-ripping business is just mental. If you're so enamoured with a song that you have to install some sort of software to scan metadata from streaming radio stations around the world, then you're probably after something so obscure that you'd probably already know the exact station that was going to play that sort of track anyway, and just hit the record button when it came on. Or hit Soulseek...
And if it's just a track from the Top 40 - well, just sit there with your audio outs from your FM receiver plugged into your soundcard and record it via the line in. Sheesh.
In fact, I look forward to RIANZ going after the radio stations. What sort of DRM are they putting into their freely-broadcast music?
And ... everything else Rich says. Ditto.
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Seriously. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, musicians had regular gigs in dancehalls, theatre, opera, and so on. If you wanted to hear a good musician, you had to pay for a ticket. And it was a viable career.
I think that might increasingly be the focus of the post-mp3 music revenue making paradigm. People still do enjoy going to live music, and with the right management and enough places to tour to, a band or artist can make a pretty penny by just doing enough live gigs. Sales from albums/singles just become a bonus.
Bands with genuine loyal live followings also seem to be more immune to piracy than other acts as well (eg. Fat Freddys), as the fans presumably feel they have more of a personal connection with the band they've seen in the live environment, and thus have more qualms about ripping them off by grabbing their music for free.
In this way, it's the bands and acts that put on a decent live show and generate an authentic following (as opposed to those with the biggest marketing to push their latest over-produced piece of puff-pop) that get the real rewards.
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noizyboy: I think that's exactly right. In the short term most musicians will be no worse off than they are now, and in the longer term, the more talented will benefit from the publicity of filesharing.
I would love to know how many musicians in New Zealand earn a living (or even a substantial proportion of their income) from royalties. I bet you could fit them all in one pub.
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Generally speaking, I don't approve of illicit copying and downloading of music: which isn't to say I've never done it, but I try not to...
But then those damn pirates come and force you to share their files?
The idea of automated content-identifying stream ripping sounds awfully complicated compared with simply typing the name of a song into the 'search' box of your favourite P2P program and hitting Enter.
I remember the whole Illegal Downloads Are Hurting Our Artists thing being raised when the second Stellar album came out a few years back. The sales were compared with the first album and the difference was blamed on pirating, as if it's a legitimate expectation that the second (and presumably third, fourth, fifth) album must sell the same amount as the debut.
It's a very long bow to draw, especially when the first album has a bunch of hits, a strong record company push and as with Nesian Mystik, just seemed to fit the zeiteist better than the second.
Illegal downloads are bad (m'kay), and I'm a little dubious about some of the studies showing they're not having any negative impact on the industry, but at the same time I can't remember a time when as many people were listening to music.
By being the consumer item to have, more people must own and use ipods each day than ever carried walkmans to work before. And rather than passively listening to whatever crap the radio station feeds at you, it's up to the individual to make a choice what music they want to listen to. People are therefore more engaged with their music, and whether it's through illegal downloads or legitimate purchases, in the long run that's gotta be a good thing.
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In this way, it's the bands and acts that put on a decent live show and generate an authentic following (as opposed to those with the biggest marketing to push their latest over-produced piece of puff-pop) that get the real rewards.
Actually, this principle works in another way, ie, when your fan is in the business of licensing.
There was someone at Grundy in Australia who really liked the songs of Andrew Brough, for Straitjacket Fits and Bike. And a lot of Broughie's songs got used in Aussie soaps that played all over the world. Other artists have benefited similarly; Broughie bought a house off it.
And if you're more in, say, the SJD mould, you're in luck if a fan is working in creative for an agency and flicks you a license deal that makes you more than your last 1000 sales.
One more: Chris Knox's 'Not Given Lightly' achieved a cultural status that far outstripped its very modest sales. A few years later, along comes Vogel's bread in search of the evocative Kiwi tune. It's the gift that keeps on giving.
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"I'm not aware of a single New Zealand podcast made available on a paid basis, and few that New Zealand contain musical elements - because RIANZ almost always denies permission."
Actually, are there *any* podcasts that are made available on a paid basis? When the Ricky Gervais show switched from free to paid-subscription, it became available via the iTunes store and Audible. They may call it a podcast, but technically speaking, it's an audiobook.
The only other paid podcast I can think of is the Rush Limbaugh one, which requires a special downloader. Again, not by technical definition a podcast, although I can't confirm since for some reason I haven't subscribed to that one :)
It's both a blessing and a curse of podcasting that the technology seems almost resistant to paid subscriptions and DRM by design.
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Do you think the Freddy's relative immunity to file sharing might have less to do with a connection through their live shows, and more to do with the fact that even with broadband and a 128kbps sample rate, it's a lot slower/harder to share a 20-minute dubbed-out jam than 3 minute pop song? :)
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But then those damn pirates come and force you to share their files?
Last time involved a song that I wanted now, that wasn't on iTunes NZ, but was on iTunes UK. I thought that was pretty dumb in the 21st century. So I availed myself of it.
What I object to a lot more than plain ol' file-sharing is allofmp3.
I try to explain to people that it's a simple artist rip-off, and their money is just pocketed by the Russians, but it looks legit and people assume that it is. Taking money for pirated music is a lot worse than simply sharing it.
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The net effect of the whole rights management, down-loading, "ripping is stealing" debate on music consumers like me (interested but not obsessed) is that I have stopped buying music altogether. Has the RIAA measured that effect on their drop in sales? I'm not downloading illegal music. I'm not buying original music. I do listen to commercial radio and watch a bit of music on FTA TV.
I'm effectively lost to the music industry as a direct source of revenue. Mainly because of their bleating about how easy it is for me to be a criminal in their eyes.
Maybe I'm the only one in NZ who feels like this but I doubt it.
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Based on these submissions, the logical next step for the RIANZ to take is to insist that a consumer is not allowed to remember the actual content of any music at all. Forget time limited DRM media on your "devices" - your brain has to be next.
Say for example that I like singing Metallica to my kids when I put them to bed at night. Or that my wife enjoys my rendition of Walk this Way by Aerosmith and Run DMC when I'm in the shower (Word Up - My rapping is dope).
Aren't I depriving those artists of income just as much as I would have if I have had "Stream Ripped" those tracks? What about all the other tunes rumbling around in my brain? I wont be able to belt out my version of Lovefool by the Cardigans when I drop the in-laws off to lawnbowls on a sunny Sunday morning.
What about cover bands? How do they get away with it? They don't pay the songwriter/composer royalties for reproducing their work for commercial gain? Podcasters can't do it, so why should they?
...I'm mean... jeez wayne.
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Say for example that I like singing Metallica to my kids when I put them to bed at night. Or that my wife enjoys my rendition of Walk this Way by Aerosmith and Run DMC when I'm in the shower (Word Up - My rapping is dope).
Actually, precisely these qualms have been raised about the worse-than-the-DMCA copyright amendments Australia passed last year. From an IIA release:
“As an example,” said Mr Coroneos, “a family who holds a birthday picnic in a place of public entertainment (for example, the grounds of a zoo) and sings a song under copyright in a manner that can be heard by others, risks an infringement notice carrying a fine of up to $1320. If they make a video recording of the event, they risk a further fine for the possession of a device for the purpose of making an infringing copy of a song. And if they go home and upload the clip to the internet where it can be accessed by others, they risk a further fine of up to $1320 for illegal distribution. All in all, possible fines of up to $3960 for this series of acts – and the new offences do not require knowledge or improper intent. Just the doing of the acts is enough to ground a legal liability under the new ‘strict liability’ offences.”
The attorney general subsequently modified the bill to allow families to escape on-the-spot fines for singing in parks ...
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"In sum, this all proposes an unenforceable law that no one will pay the blindest bit of attention to..."
Come on people - I can't believe that anyone didn't pick up on this line by Russell vis a via the Section 59 bruhaha...
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The thing I particularly like about the bizarre time-shifting thing where the alternative is available, is that it assumes that people all have access to broadband...
I'd really like to try downloading a TV episode on dial-up. -
Actually Troy, I think you'll find that cover bands playing in licensed venues are theoretically required to submit their songlists or something (so are DJs, which is even more ludicrous in a dance music environment, with white labels and so forth), and then because the establishment owner pays fees to APRA, it all gets worked out that way. Supposedly.
I had a friend at APRA for a while who was responsible for getting business owners to pay fees. If you have a shop and you play CDs in it, you're supposed to pay a licence fee for public broadcasting. I assume this also applies if you just have the radio going quietly in the back of the dairy.
Speaking of radio, the music industry really needs to get onto their backs - don't they realise those bastards are giving away music FREE, over the airwaves, to anyone who wants to listen to it? And they've been getting away with it for years! Surely that's something to be sorted with the new legislation...
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So the end of cover bands is nigh?
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Marcus, I for one refrained from pointing it out because I didn't want that particular debate colonising this discussion thread. Russell is one of the few people working hard to keep the copyright discussion in the news and I appreciate that.
Oh, and yes I have paid the princly sum of $24 USD for a podcast (50 episodes or so). However it was more of a donation than a fee, as it could be downloaded officially for free. Now that it has advertising I no longer pay.
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Come on people - I can't believe that anyone didn't pick up on this line by Russell vis a via the Section 59 bruhaha...
Way ahead of you. I acknowledged my discomfort with symbolic or hard-to-enforce laws the first time I posted about the Bradford bill. But it met my relatively high threshold for approval, given that it related to the safety of vulnerable children, rather than the business model of an entertainment company.
And I actually would expect the Bradford bill to have an impact on social behaviour. I wouldn't expect Sky to suddenly recall all MySkys or people to report their neighbours for using a VCR.
But yep: let's not turn this into another Section 59 thread.
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Actually Troy, I think you'll find that cover bands playing in licensed venues are theoretically required to submit their songlists or something (so are DJs, which is even more ludicrous in a dance music environment, with white labels and so forth), and then because the establishment owner pays fees to APRA, it all gets worked out that way. Supposedly.
I had a friend at APRA for a while who was responsible for getting business owners to pay fees. If you have a shop and you play CDs in it, you're supposed to pay a licence fee for public broadcasting. I assume this also applies if you just have the radio going quietly in the back of the dairy.
The dairy won't get a call, but the trendy cafe that plays music all day and the gym that blares it out during aerobics classes will. The fee's modest and it seems a reasonable way of returning money to the creators (which APRA overwhelmingly does).
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Troy - no, that's exactly the opposite of what I'm saying - the music industry has already worked out how to ensure artists get their slice of covers bands, and has been doing so for years.
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Whangarei, circa 2001. APRA 'employees' send out letters enmass to businesses.
Short version = "You play compact disc or radio for customers. You pay money for privilege. "
Letters not answered are followed up by said APRA employees with a "Professional and Courteous" visit to business premises to collect cheque.
APRA did very well out of that little bit of extortion. To the tune of $75 per business per year. Oh and plus GST.
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