| The Great Rock n' Roll Swindle 2001 (Comments on the Music Industry's Suicidal Battle Against Free Music)
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By Steve Gilliard
One day this summer, maybe during the dog days of August, someone at Bertelsmann will wake up and realize that they have been had.
Why would I, or anyone, pay money when we can use Napigator to avoid their servers? Napster stopped letting Napigator list their server speed and number of files months ago, but traffic has inched up from 500K files to 1.6m files accessable across their network per server at any given time. It is rare to see anything smaller than 1.2-1.3 million files on any given day at any given time.
The advantage of Napster is that there is a very good breadth of styles available on the main servers. You get a fairly good depth on their servers, all kinds of stuff you cannot find anywhere else.
Now, why is Bertelsmann entitled to a cut of what is on your hard drive? Why should anyone pay to access it? Napster as it stands now is not worth anything a month. Not 5, not 15. So you would pay between 60 and 180 a year to download the same crap you can for free now?
Nope.
Not gonna happen.
By the end of the summer 80-90 percent of the traffic will be elsewhere.
If you download Napigator, you'll see a banner ad for Musiccity.com, which has the second largest number of servers available next to Napster and they run nearly three times as many songs on their servers. They clearly do not have the depth of Napster's more obscure selections, but they clearly have access to millions of files more than Napster. The trick is to find out what they are. Once you do, they will have even more free music available. With nearly 3m files double that of Napster's average server, they can only grow.
I think that Bertelsmann bought a pig in a poke and their efforts to make money with it will crash and burn. The companies were a year late in dealing with digital music and by the time they devise a solution, no one will care. The issue is that the company is trying to make money off being a host for what is on people's hard drives.
What people really want access to is high-quality digital copies of what is in their vaults, not reproductions of commercially available music. No one wants to get BMG's club disks and pay good money for that.They want to be able to walk into a store and get flawless copies of disks pressed for them on the spot cheaply. They do not want to pay now for what is free. Once you introduce the credit card into it, many of the kids will flee to new networks like Music City.com. Napigator or other file-sharing software can use these networks, which run on the Open Nap protocols. Unless Napster uses new software without access to them, no one is going to pay money.
Now, people say, "why would thieves pay?" Well, if you argue that these people aren't thieves, why would they pay for crap? All free beer is good beer. When you pay for it....Bud sucks ass. I want reliable connections which don't crap out, on T3 lines, where you can search by song and album as well as title. Free Napster is OK when you really don't care as much about audio quality. Pay Napster needs to deliver music to me in a far more efficient way. Yes, the standards are higher, because money is involved. You truly do get what you pay for.
Napster wants to pull in all the record companies, who don't really get what they're in for. They have to remaster all their music digitally, make it easy to download for users and keep the cost down. This isn't just cutting a deal with Napster, those days are done. This is about rebuilding their industry for the ditigal age. They just don't see it yet. By the time they do, they'll be chasing phantom servers around the world and Hank, Shawn and the rest of their kin will be laughing all the way to the bank.
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Name: Amarand Agasi
Email: amarand@amarand.org
Date: Thu Feb 8 15:55:07 2001
Comment: If I were a musician, making money off of my artwork or performances, I would probably have the same or similar feelings toward the copying of my music.... Was there ever a time, Wyvern, like maybe before you wrote music, where you felt it was okay to copy music for your friends or whatever?
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Name: The Wyvern
Email: wyvern@nospam.amarand.org
Date: Thu Feb 8 13:54:46 2001
Comment: Amarand et al,
I think there is confusion as to several issues.
First, the difference as to who ownes rights to what aspect of recorded music:
All rights belong to the creators of the music until those rights are sold. Those rights include physical reproduction (which is collected by the Harry Fox Agency) and performance royalties (collected by ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC). When these monies are collected they are paid to the owners of those rights, minus a cut for the collection agencies. The major record labels insist on buying all rights to the music when an artist gets "signed." Only major artists who are already well established can negotiate this point and retain their rights.
I think the issue at stake is that this is in a grey area. It's not a physical copy and it's not a performace like radio or even internet radio. Personally I feel that it is the same as a physical copy since it can be stored on a hard drive and burned to CD-R so it really should be the Harry Fox Agency's jurisdiction. I don't think the record labels have any business negotiating this deal with Napster, and the Harry Fox Agency should take the reigns and assemble their army of lawyers, that is if they can pull themselves off the lyric websites long enough P
Another point of confusion: This is a free country, and you have rights, yes. Your rights are to protect you from others. Who protects me from you? I'm a musician and I would like to make some money from my music.
You are not entitled to copy my music. That is not a "right". In fact, if you copy my music you are violating my rights. You are stealing from me. There is a big difference there. You think you entitled to take something from me without my permission for free?
That being said, I recognise the music industry is changing because of this technology. Our methods must evolve to use the technology to our benefit rather than let it be used to our detriment.
I am involved in two projects. On one hand in our group Urban Jazz Coalition (see www.UrbanJazzCoalition.com) we have pressed 1500+ CD's and sent a separate pressing of "promo disks" to radio stations, set up commisions with stores, found 4 reigional distributors, etc. as well as hired an attorney to help us copyright, register with ASCAP and Harry Fox, get a barcode, get a national and state Trade Name, incorporate, and get a tax id for the LLC.
On the other hand I am working on a rock project which will be released soley on the internet with the exception of the radio disks I will send to radio stations. I will put my music on Napster and MP3.com in the hopes of raising public awareness of my music. This is mainly my stategy because I do not have a working band playing these tunes and since I gig 2-3 times a week with the Coalition I don't have time to get that together on this side project. I want to see just how far I can take this using "nontraditional" means to promote the music. I'm going to distribute the music under some kind of public lisence such as the GNU liscence or something like that. I also want to experiment with making .iso files available so listeners could burn CD's with good sound quality rather than using only MP3's, which have poor stereo reproduction and other sound quality problems (despite their great advantages).
I think that this technology is great, and I use Napster myself, so please don't think that I'm trying to take the attitude of the American Federation of Musicians (the musician's union I _had_ to join to get paid for some gigs). Their usual philosophy is to oppose change and new technologies instead of learn to use them to the benefit of their constituents. For example, in the early 80's when Joe Jackson recorded "Into the Night" it was completely sequenced and no live live band was used in the recording sessions. It became a big hit in part because of that unique drum-machine sound (new at the time) and the AFM had a fit. That's stupid. I couldn't record my music if it were not for this technology.
The bottom line is to remember that someone _ownes_ this music. They may be too stupid or short-sighted to react appropriatly to new technologies but they do own that property. When you download the music, remember that this is not your "right" but a violation of their rights. I still do it because
1) I will not buy a whole album for one song
2) There is no legal mechanism in place to let me get just the songs I want
I always buy the disks of artists I like, even if the whole album really isn't good. I might skip the albums owned by dead artists long gone, but I especially hate to cheat musicians just getting started. I could have copied A Perfect Circle when my friend brought over a burned copy, but I went out and bought it.
Please remember that if an industry makes no money it goes belly-up. If you want to listen to good music you should pay for it or you will no longer have good music to listen to. Sorry, that's the reality of capitalism. (and please don't take that the wrong way--I am NOT advocating any other economic system nor any more subsidisation of artists who can't survive without government grants... if you make something of value people will be willing to pay for it.)
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Name: steve gilliard
Email: sgilliard@yahoo.com
Date: Tue Feb 6 23:59:01 2001
Comment: The Beast? Oh God no. We used to drink Old Mud (Old Milwaukee) or Black Label. Now that my friends are bar owners, we drink Bud when we can't drink anything else.
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Name: bill
Email: bill@netslaves.com
Date: Tue Feb 6 23:45:49 2001
Comment: Em,
If it weren't for The Beast, I wouldn't have been drunk in Grad School and that would've been a bad thing!
At least The Beast is drinkable. Want to sample some foul shit? Try:
1) Utica Beer -- from the brewing capital of the world, Utica, NY.
2) Meister Brau -- a fine blend of hops and what seems to be margarine
3) Black Label, Piels, Private Stock -- hand-made by the Devil himself.
4) Olde English -- don't settle for the 40 oz. Upgrade to the 64. You won't get drunk. You head will hurt and you'll be so sick you think you're drunk. Recommended for the unemployed NetSlave.
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Name: Amarand Agasi
Email: amarand@amarand.org
Date: Tue Feb 6 19:53:19 2001
Comment: My homebrew puts other commercial beers to shame!
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Name: Emily Dresner-Thornber
Email: zenith@pave-france.org
Date: Tue Feb 6 17:06:07 2001
Comment: What Steve should have used as an example is the Beast -- better known as Milwaulkee's Best. The Beast is foul, yet cheap! Oh, so cheap!
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Name: steve gilliard
Email: sgilliard@yahoo.com
Date: Tue Feb 6 14:51:30 2001
Comment: Troy,
If you think Bud is delicious, you need to expand your palate. My friends make a rather good living selling Bud, but they don't expect their friends to drink it.:-) There are so many beers which make Bud taste like dishwater, it is not funny.
Two words:Pilsner Urquell
What Bud SHOULD taste like. Try it on tap and see what you've been missing.
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Name: Troy Turner
Email: troyt@qx.net
Date: Tue Feb 6 13:44:02 2001
Comment: Very eloquently put and I agree almost entirely. Where we disagree, I'm afraid, is in your malicious tearing-down of an American beer product that I find to be rather damned delicious. :)
beyond that, your take on the future of digital music couldn't be more dead-on.
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Name: Amarand Agasi
Email: amarand@amarand.org
Date: Tue Feb 6 10:49:52 2001
Comment: Another scary thing, off-topic a bit but still apropos, is that some states are trying to enforce decades-old Use Tax laws applying them to Internet purchases. If you purchase something on-line, from out of state, they want you to voluntarily tell them what you buy on-line or out of state, how much it costs and now they want to tax you for using a product that you purchased without paying tax out of state. Talk about erosion of rights!
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Name: Amarand Agasi
Email: amarand@amarand.org
Date: Tue Feb 6 10:45:02 2001
Comment: I believe that "real" musicians perform in order to say something...in other words they have something to say, and they express it through their music.
Pop musicians, on the other hand, are just (as is mentioned below) creating a reflection of ourselves and our culture, and regurgitating it back to us. The average American is so narcissistic (loves to see him or herself reflected somewhere "out there") they only want to see, hear and FEEL things that are comfortable, easy, tonal. That's why atonal music, arhythmic music makes most people feel so uncomfortable: because everyone must conform. Everyone must watch Survivor. Everyone must drink Pepsi...but if you don't drink Pepsi, drink Coke. Conform or we will make your friends, family and co-workers shun you.
Pop music makes me feel good, but doesn't make me think. Real music makes me feel uncomfortable because it DOES make me think.
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Name: steve gilliard
Email: sgilliard@yahoo.com
Date: Tue Feb 6 10:36:52 2001
Comment: No name,
See, the problem is that the law on music is fairly clear. Ownership of music in one medium is ownership in ALL mediums, vinyl, tape or digital.
The legal Napster will facilitate breaking the law by allowing legally ditigized music to be distributed illegally.
The right to control your property is not a minor right. The music industry is as wrong as the film industry was about video.
Their agenda is to erode my property rights by ending my right to control my property. Forget Napster for a minute. The record industry wants to get paid for use, like Divx, which failed badly under brutal assault by techies.
It will take years for the industry to understand that the technical possibility to control use doesn't mean it will be permitted.
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Name: Derren Mangum
Email: derren@metrove.com
Date: Tue Feb 6 10:11:27 2001
Comment: Excellent article. I loved the "free beer" analogy. You are exactly correct, people aren't going to readily pay for this stuff. Half of the reason people put up with Napster's shortcomings was that you were getting something free. People will definitely migrate to another means, all except for the most uninitiated of new digital music users.
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Name:
Email:
Date: Tue Feb 6 09:22:12 2001
Comment: I think that people in the Record biznis are in the biznis of appropriating our culture and then trying to sell it back to us in diluted form.
Music is a language, a dialog, and can be participated in by anyone with an interest. In our primarily visual culture, music is glossed over and otherwise ignored by educators who don't understand it's power.
Pop culture is least common denominator culture. I used to go there when I was youger but now, Give me Maurice Ravel, Give me Mingus. Give me Zola. Give me Dickens. Give me Homer. Give me something which feels good and will engage my intellect.
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Name: Amarand Agasi
Email: amarand@amarand.org
Date: Tue Feb 6 07:53:58 2001
Comment: I guess I'm just sick of Corporations legislating my personal freedoms away from me. Record Companies were making tons of money before the Internet, they are STILL making tons of money, and they will never stop making tons of money if they do the right thing. Making something illegal will never stop the average person from doing it. The way to stop people from doing bad things is to give them an alternative that's reasonable. I want my music at cost and I want to know that the person who wrote the music gets most of the money. I think Napster's great because it affords America the framework and the habit of downloading music for free. At some point, we will be offered to pay for downloading songs, and if the price is right, some people will pay, and others won't. I'm not against paying for things that are high-quality, I buy CD's all the time. Heck, my closest friend is a musician, and I beg him -NOT- to loan me his master CDs because I know I have no self control, I will copy it, and I won't end up buying it in the end if there's no incentive to buy it. I want to see his band succeed with their product...but it upsets me that musicians have to be screwed by the record industry just to get play on the radio, time on a tour or a reasonable amount of money for the service they are providing to loyal fans.
If I have a choice between screwing a Big, Faceless, Nameless Company and an Artist the choice is totally clear to me. I love supporting artists. I even buy shareware when I think it's worth having. I could have easily not paid for my check-writing software on my computer, but I liked the interface, the amount of time clearly spent designing the stable product so I paid for it gladly. Stealing is wrong, yes. Harming individuals is wrong, correct. If I owned a company, and someone were to break into my store front of corporation, I'd be upset too. I hope you realize that I was speaking figuratively with the breaking-of-the-locks business, right? I was talking about encryption, copy-protection, digital music rights enforcement.... I enjoy watching DVDs...but the instant someone is able to duplicate them to screw the industry, they will. That comforts me. The recording industry has had the power (too much of it, to be exact) for too long of a time now. Then again, the Banks and the Insurance companies own the world at this point, so it would be nice to see them go down too.... Too bad they have armed guards and The Police (I'll send an S-O-S to the world...) guarding their "product" which is money. The Banks and the Insurance industries make the laws, they get them enforced, control our lives completely. Investigate that...or call me a crack-pot and live your life in ignorance.
Oh, and I'm all for putting away people who physically steal things, harm other people physically and break into cars and houses. Those people should be thrown in jail or "rehabilitated" so they won't do it again (yeah right). I feel that once I purchase music, I should have a lifetime right to listen to that music without having to pay a single cent again. How many cassette tapes and records have been lost that didn't have to be? With digital media, you can make archival copies, and the music is there always! What difference does it make if I get that Led Zeppelin IV album off the Internet backup I made (Napster) or off of an actual CD I burned? Personally, I'd rather know that it's out there, somewhere, and I can get it whenever I want to, wherever I am, regardless of whether I'm legally "entitled" to it or not. They have no morals: they just want to make more money. That's it! They could care less why I want to archive my music in a safe place. They'd rather I purchased multiple copies! If you can't see that, you have a problem. Plus, sharing is a good thing. It works for radio, it works for television. Write a Napster client so it has advertisements (someone would defeat that too) and then you could charge advertising revenue to the advertisers, who have way more money than I do, to subsidise the "losses" from Napster. I'll still go out and buy the CD at the higher-quality if I like the music. If I don't like the music, I'm glad I saved myself 15, or more in some cases.
I'm not advocating stealing! I am advocating people learning about the laws, figuring out what freedoms are being taken away on a daily basis without your consent, being armed with your intelligence, not your might. Whenever I see a large company make an evil move like my Sony CD/DVD player that won't play a mix CD I made because it doesn't have the SDMI crap on it, I love it when some smart-guy out there makes an override chip so I can play it. Or when Sony puts copy protection in their Playstation, and I can buy a chip from some other smart-guy to bypass that so I can play imports because their technology limits my legal freedom to play games that I have obtained outside of the United States.
Big corporations suck. Long live big corporations!
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Name:
Email:
Date: Tue Feb 6 02:21:00 2001
Comment: I find it comforting that any lock can and will be broken by someone eventually.
Remember that when your car gets stolen or you house gets burglarized.
Q: Whats a conservative?
A: A liberal that got mugged.
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Name:
Email:
Date: Tue Feb 6 02:17:23 2001
Comment: I certainly don't think that someone should have to pay for the right to listen to music unless it's a concert or you have some physical media to show for it
Agasi, thats such a crock of shit. What your opinion of what the law should be is irrelevant. The fact remains that hearing a peice of music (or purchase of a copy for that matter) does not transfer ownership of either the performance or the intellectual property that is the lyrics and melody.
To assume that all the content on Napster is stolen is wrong. You can download digital copies of music you own.
Yeah , right Gillard, everybodies mp3 collection consists solely of music they own on CD that they downloaded, or even ripped themselves. Absurd? Of course. But then I never stated that anybodies collection was 100% pure pirated.
I own it and I can make digital copies or download them.I own it and I can make digital copies or download them.
No, you don't own it. Anymore than you own that copy of Windows/PhotoShop or for that matter BSD or Linux
that you have a backup copy of. These are all copyrighted materials albeit with different distribution terms. Some allow redistribution (provided you adhere to certain guidelines) some forbid it.
Out of all the battles in the world to pick, defending your "right" to violate
copyright law is certainly not worthy of being on the top of the list. I can't wait to hear you guys bitch when DRM gets shoved down everybodies throat.
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Name: Steve Gilliard
Email: sgilliard@yahoo.com
Date: Tue Feb 6 00:58:04 2001
Comment: That's too high, commie. Make it about .25 cents and you have a winner.
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Name: dotcommie
Email: commie@youworkit.com
Date: Mon Feb 5 22:20:43 2001
Comment: Provide delivery-certified decent MP3's at 0.99 a pop and sit back and count your money.
Like the film industry and video tape ... it will take a while for the music industry to 'get it'.
Video saved Hollywood.
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Name: Steve Gilliard
Email: sgilliard@yahoo.com
Date: Mon Feb 5 22:08:44 2001
Comment: To assume that all the content on Napster is stolen is wrong. You can download digital copies of music you own.
So Bertelsmann may be selling music you legally own and distributing it illegally. Just because it's on your drive doesn't mean it was downloaded illegally.
I burned all my CD's and downloaded music I own on cassette. So why should Bertelsmann have any right to redistribute this music? I own it and I can make digital copies or download them.
So there are many people who do have the right to the music on their hard drives.
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Name: Amarand Agasi
Email: amarand@amarand.org
Date: Mon Feb 5 20:17:32 2001
Comment: What if someone DOES have some rights to the music that's on their hard drives, though? A radio station can play music and "distribute" it to a large group of people...why can't someone have a group of their favorite tunes and share them with the world? I certainly don't think that someone should have to pay for the right to listen to music unless it's a concert or you have some physical media to show for it. Otherwise, it should be treated like normal media sharing that occurs between friends.
I ask you this: If I purchase a CD, Tape, Album, whatever...and then the original media is destroyed, do I still have the "right" to listen to that music? I think so.
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Name:
Email:
Date: Mon Feb 5 20:01:07 2001
Comment: The issue is that the company is trying to make money off
being a host for what is on people's hard drives.
Oh, the irony. Sure, the music business should accept the inevitable and make high quality (by definition that excludes mp3) music available for download. No arguments there. But bitching about Bertelsmann making money off whats on peoples hard drives as if those people have any rights to the content to begin with, that's just priceless, really.
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Name: Amarand Agasi
Email: amarand@amarand.org
Date: Mon Feb 5 16:15:14 2001
Comment: I find it comforting that any lock can and will be broken by someone eventually. Napster will die when it goes pay, period. As has been mentioned before, the people who really use Napster the most are the most likely to switch to a cheaper (i.e. free) service.
While I feel that the decentralized peer-to-peer method is neat and promising I prefer the idea of centralized servers that keep track of everything. Maybe something that was a balance between the two? Checks and balances, where the peers/clients had a certain amount of info/power/codes, and the servers/peers had the remaining info/power/codes so that you couldn't really bust anyone because the information was encrypted, and both halves of the equation were required to decode the information?
The most important thing is that we should not allow the music industry to dictate how we use or obtain our music. I've been reading articles about a future where speakers, wires, etc will ALL have the digital-rights-management software built into them, so if you try to play a copied disk, you can't listen to it, because your speakers/headphones/whatever will refuse to play pirated information. It's scary...but that's the only way that they'll be able to control what's happening. Make it simple like: if it's official, you can play it otherwise, don't. Equipment is getting smarter. I hated DiVX where it would call and check-in to download rights to play. That's scary. Keep that stuff out of my house. I guess I'm glad there are people out there who can hack away at the software, be intelligent enough to figure out copyprotection, and keep information free!
Knowledge is power.
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Name: Chunky Cheese
Email: ithunk@thinkybob.com
Date: Mon Feb 5 15:30:08 2001
Comment: What if this is the real plan: Bertelsmann and other mega corps buy into Napster, and then they can charge more money for the music that the artists don't stand a chance of seeing. Napster will not keep track of downloads in order to pay commensurate royalties to individual artists, I wager. So, instead, whatever money is earned by this scheme will flow into the pockets of the mega corps, with no paper trail allowing artists to see a cut. Good deal for the mega corps, eh?
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Name: Steve Gilliard
Email: sgilliard@yahoo.com
Date: Mon Feb 5 14:09:12 2001
Comment: They do, but it's pretty small scale compared to TV , and they would have to create a receiver which could burn CD's as well as play music.
I think with all the online stations, one is inevitable, since online radio beats the shit out of regular commercial radio.
What I mean is that they would have to build one comparable to what's on your TV. They've moved towards something like that with DTV/DSS, where maybe 100 channels are music only, but TV sound bites and you obviously can't listen to music and watch TV independently.
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Name: bob
Email:
Date: Mon Feb 5 13:58:15 2001
Comment: I thought they already had cable radio? I swear they had it at the bar I managed years ago in college. Maybe a dish system? Maybe I consumed too much of what I was selling...
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Name: Steve Gilliard
Email: sgilliard@yahoo.com
Date: Mon Feb 5 12:49:22 2001
Comment: Yeah, if they can build a cable radio system, sure. But that's years and billions away. As software goes, Napster is easy to use. If it wasn't, there wouldn't be 57m user names. It's fairly simple to use Napigator.
The thing is that everyone thinks Napster is the short cut to creating commercial digital music. It isn't.
Once you sell it, you have to provide more than home access and more than songs with missing parts and scratchy coding. You'll need a directory tree so you can find music far more easily than you can now.
In short, pay Napster has to be a far more efficient creature than free Napster and that is going to cost a lot of money.
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Name: nicegurl
Email:
Date: Mon Feb 5 12:18:52 2001
Comment: technology with confusing interfaces are the bane of 12:00 flashers
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Name: eudas
Email:
Date: Mon Feb 5 11:39:41 2001
Comment: 12:00 flashers are the bane of technology.
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Name: Marcus Gröber
Email: mgroeber@compuserve.com
Date: Mon Feb 5 09:49:06 2001
Comment: There will always be a certain percentage of people who will (or have to) go to any great lengths to get their music for free, and with the internet, it is easier than ever.
On the other hand, the viability of such a business will depend very much on what exactly the market share of these people is.
A student with access to plenty of help from their friends and notoriously short on cash may find it easy to chase "phantom servers" around the globe.
But there are still almost two generations out there who have not been raised on "warez" sites, and who expect things to just - work. Think of the crowd whose VCRs are still flashing 12:00...
If they buy a "connected stereo" with an infinite supply of songs for a 9,95 subscription, they would probably shake their heads in disbelief when you tell them what "simple" hacks you'd have to apply to get the same stuff for free. Why would I want to go through all the hassle of copying a video movie if I can rent it for a few bucks?
You write:
<<< Pay Napster needs to deliver music to me in a far more efficient way. Yes, the standards are higher, because money is involved. You truly do get what you pay for. >>>
This is certainly true, but it may also work the other way around. If the pay services offer something "extra" and just a little bit of usability benefit. This could even consist of simply not having to change your server's IP address every couple of weeks because the old one go busted by DMCA police. :-)
Of course, if the business model is simply "more of the same, just charge them for it", it can be easily undermined by somebody offering them same service for free.
As usual, it all depends on them having a good idea of what their market is, and executing their plan accordingly. I agree that this involves much more than just making Napster a for-pay service, because the current user base is probably the one that is most likely to switch and least likely to pay.
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Name: Michael
Email: Brady
Date: Mon Feb 5 07:48:05 2001
Comment: Today Shawn Fanning announced details of his next major project, selling ice to the Eskimos.
BMG have made a big mistake, they have indeed been sold the Emperor's new suit.
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