misadventures of the recording "industry"

misadventures of the recording "industry"

Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) appeared on CBC's Cross Country Checkup yesterday, as part of a discussion of the Federal Court ruling against the Canadian Recording Industry Association last Wednesday. I'm listening to the audio feed (almost two hours long, i would advise going with the streaming version) right now. Some thoughts:

- the recording industry as a whole has missed the boat as regards filesharing. Rather than attacking the waves and fighting the advance of technology, they ought to embrace it. If they continue to fight the advance of technology, they will go the way of the buggy-whip industry.

- Any digitized file that goes onto the internet is automatically in the public domain, by definition

- pretty soon artists and their managers will realize that they can bypass the "recording industry", and the big record companies, altogether. It is already easy for an artist to make their own CDs without any assistance from record companies, and distribute it on the Net themselves. Bands already make their own websites, with links to their fanclubs; they can easily outsource what they can't do themselves, through an emerging music industry niche market

- Rex Murphy had a notable remark, when a guest quoted some old lyrics and noted that they were copyrighted material: "Sometimes it becomes so well-known it shaves off its own copyright".

- If record companies want to slow their downward slide, they must adapt. The record company spokesman noted that sales of CDs with content dropped from $1.3B in 1999 to $950M in 2003; but that sales of blank CDs had soared. This is disingenuous. Who makes the blank CDs? And how much of the increase of CD use has been regular computer users? I mean, who uses 3-1/2 inch floppies anymore? The total sales of the the entire industry have grown.

- One way to adapt: make CDs that contain MPEGs instead of audio files. Include videos with the music, and include commercials. Encourage filesharing, to spread the commercial. A simple script would download a new (or replay a saved) 10 second commercial before playing each song. The record companies morph into companies that make music videos, arrange for advertising, and package the recorded song with the video and commercial. They become content providers and sell the advertising, like television stations.

- P2P networks are evolving into a kind of super-library, particularly for old data of various types. Once something has been digitized, it is more robust; once it is digitized and shared, there will likely always be a copy of that file somewhere, as long as there is an internet. There will always be a copy of Casablanca, somewhere, because it will exist in multiple copies at any given time, and be copied onto new storage media.

- the idea that people who download a song are not paying for it is a fallacy. Everything has a cost. Bandwidth costs money. Storage space (whether hard drive space or on blank CD) costs money. Downloading time costs money. Whoever buys the CD in the first place is spending money for it. Just because distribution costs are far lower than the method chosen by record companies doesn't mean that it is free.

- this guy is complaining that the artists just want what everyone else wants, to get paid for their work.... ummm... dude... I've got news for you. You already did, as soon as you sold a CD. If you are going to make the claim that you still own that CD even after having been paid for it, and have some claim over what may be done with that CD, you are going to open yourself up to an unprecedented class-action fraud lawsuit; several billion counts, one for every record sold. You might just get copyright laws themselves thrown out. Careful....

- ok around an hour and fifteen minutes in, heeeeeere's instapundit.... quoting princess leia ("the more you tighten your fist, the more star systems will slip through your fingers") as an analogy of the music industry strategy....echoing my point above about how the record companies must adapt....pointing out that intellectual property is not the same as actual property...oooooh he said the P word (payola).... recent Harvard study showing that filesharing may help CD sales...

- Rex is now going on about the question of whether filesharing is unfair to artists, record companies etc... I am sure that the introduction of the internal combustion engine was unfair to buggy whip makers. Is it immoral, unethical? My take is, no. The files do not appear on the internet by magic: somebody buys the CD, converts it to MP3, and puts into a shared folder. Intellectual property is either property or it is not: if it is property, then when it is sold, it belongs to whoever buys it, and no longer belongs to the record company or original artist; or it is not property, and pretending to sell it is fraud. So someone bought it; if that music is property, then the record company or artist have no say to the use to which it is put after they sell it. The immoral, unethical step would be to attempt to extort (through the court system) more money than the record industry is entitled.

- cool link: Iceberg Radio

- this next guy, a new artist with his first CD, has some interesting suggestons: no limitations on songs/movies/etc on the internet if they are poor quality. Filesharing an MP3 would be OK, sharing a full digital version (maybe 10-20 times as much data) would not. That way samples or poor-quality versions would be free, but broadcast-quality would not. Intriguing.

- another musician, in favor of downloading. He says this is not about copyright, it is about maintaining the market share of the big record companies, cites the Courtney Love article (I just read that myself now... and realized about two paragraphs in: My God is this woman ever smart. Here's a sample:"I know my place. I'm a waiter. I'm in the service industry. I live on tips. Occasionally, I'm going to get stiffed, but that's OK. If I work hard and I'm doing good work, I believe that the people who enjoy it are going to want to come directly to me and get my music because it sounds better, since it's mastered and packaged by me personally. I'm providing an honest, real experience. Period.")