The usual canned introduction:

The original Napster corporation has been destroyed, its trademarks
now owned by an authorized music retailer which does not use peer-to-peer
technology.  But the Napster paradigm, in which computers and networks
give ordinary people unprecedented control over content, continues.

This is another quarterly installment in a series of weblog and
discussion about the deconstruction of the music industry and other
copyright industries, with side forays into "intellectual property,
freedom of expression, electronic media, corporate control, and evolving
technology," as polygon once phrased it.

Several years of back items are easily found in the music2 and music3
conferences, covering discussions all the way back to the initial
popularity of the MP3 format.   These items are linked between
the current Agora conference and the Music conference.

46 responses total.

News from Euroland:  France has been moving a bill on digital 
copyright issues through its legislature, and keeping up with what
has been happening is hampered by our unfamiliarity with the language,
and our unfamiliarity with the French legislative process.
 
At one point the draft legislation proposed to legalize peer-to-peer
file swapping through the payment of a small compulsory license fee.
That provision sent the French copyright industry into a panic, and
it was deleted from the legislation.  However, the current version
is reported to penalize file sharing at about the same level as 
minor traffic violations.   The fine for downloading copyrighted 
material is set at 38 euros; the fine for uploading is about 100 euros.

Germany, in contrast, has just pushed through a law making unauthorized
downloading a felony punishable with two years in prison.  As the EU
countries are supposed to be harmonizing their laws, it will be interesting
to see how this plays out.

The new French legislation has a goal of mandating interoperability
among digital music file sellers and digital music file players.  
I think this is proposed to happen by forcing market players to 
disclose information necessary to allow competitors to build 
interoperable systems.   This is widely seen as targeting Apple, who have
a somewhat closed market with the iPod players and iTunes store; their
Digital Restrictions Management system is proprietary, so songs bought
on iTunes will not (easily) work with other systems.   But I don't 
see why it wouldn't hurt Windows Media just as much; if the WMA guts
have to be disclosed, it should be trivial for programmers to write
open source code to unlock the WMA files.

Linux already has players for WMA and Realaudio formats.

... but the RealAudio one is provided by the Real corporation. It's free as in
lunch, not free as in freedom -- just because the Linux operating system is
free doesn't mean everything that runs on it is free, any more than everything
that runs on Windows has to be proprietary because Windows is proprietary.

 Linux codecs are available which can handle a *subset* of the WMA format,
 but that's not the same as being able to play all WMA material.  

 In particular the material from on-line music stores is likely to use
 security features which are not (fully) supported in Linux players.

Re resp:1: Apple has apparently blasted the bill that would require them
to open up their DRM scheme as "state-sponsored piracy":
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/03/22/apple_attacks_france/

Frankly, I don't think it would hurt much except maybe iPod sales.  It's
already trivial to circumvent the iTunes DRM by burning a bunch of
tracks to a CD, then ripping it.

Here's an interesting lawsuit.  Cheap Trick and the Allman Brothers 
Band are suing Sony Music claiming that they are being underpaid
for online music song sales through sites like iTunes.

The bands have an interesting argument.  In the old, pre-Internet 
world, music contracts described two different types of financial
transactions.  A "sale" is governed by a lower royalty rate, about
4.5 cents per track; a "license" to use the music should net the 
artist roughly half of the money collected by the label, which 
works out to 30-40 cents per track.
 
The bands argue that the technical and legal encumberances on
online track purchases mean those are really licenses, and not 
sales of product.   Heh.   Stereophile magazine says that should a 
court rule that a paid download is a sale of product, then all sorts
of legal rights for the consumer kick in, such as resale and loan.

http://stereophile.com/news/050106ABB/

That's an earthquake for the RIAA.

 Note that under the terms of the "sale" category, the record
 companies are apparently deducting their contractual charges
 for "packaging" (20%) and "breakage" (15%), or so various 
 write-ups of the story report..

Yup.  The RIAA is in the position of having to defend download sales as
licenses to the consumers and as product sales to the artists.  Either
way, the labels have to pay out, but the conclusion is that the artists'
interests are pitted against the consumers'.

I now have confirmed the story that the British music licensing authority
PPL has forced most/all commercial UK stations to terminate webcasts
outside the UK borders.   Reportedly this already happened.  It does not,
as yet, affect the BBC.
 
Links:  from March 17:
http://www.kurthanson.com/archive/news/031706/index.asp

from the last few days:
http://www.kurthanson.com/archive/news/050506/index.asp
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1766532,00.html
  (Guardian headline:
   "Will licensing kill the radio star?")

The Guardian story says the PPL wants the radio barrier to work 
both ways; PPL's spokesman says they are prepared to sue to stop 
USA webcasters from sending streams into the UK.  

I will miss Britain's light-classical station "Classic FM," which always
brought back nostalgia for our 1995 trip over there.  And, which sometimes
sent me off to amazon.co.uk to buy a CD they were playing...

A press release reports that Green Linnet Records, the leading American
record label for Celtic music, has been sold to Digital Music Group, 
"the online aggregator and distributor of music to online music 
stores."   

DMGI's business appears to be ALL about sales of digital files through
online stores, though they mention the possibility of licensing out 
the manufacture of physical CDs.   But, it sounds to me like there is 
a good chance that the Green Linnet artists and recordings are going to 
be departing the world of tangible, manufactured CDs.

If there were any Green Linnet recordings I coveted in those old-fashioned
silver discs sold in stores -- especially older catalog titles -- I would
not put off getting copies.

Green Linnet has been in financial difficulties for a while and a 
number of their artists were publically protesting non-payment a 
while back, so a sale of the label is not a surprise.

Forgot the source links:

http://www.paidcontent.org/digital-music-group-acquires-celtic-music-catalo
g
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060510/law049.html?.v=54

forget

HACKED BY GNAA LOL JEWS DID WTC LOL

HTTP://WWW.GNAA.US/

HTTP://WWW.GNAA.US/

http://www.jewsdidwtc.com/

TROGG IS DAVID BLAINE

The MPAA is supporting an effort to train dogs that can sniff out DVDs.  
The problem, of course, is that a pirated DVD smells the same as a 
legitimate one. 
 
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/11/gogs_hunt_dvds/ 
 

Maybe they can train monkeys or Ohio State grads to watch them.

this board is impossible to trlol

I NEED SKYKE CREDIT

hi it's me i'm a camwhore

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GNAA GNAA

Here's a detailed story about the fading of independent CD retail in
St. Louis and elsewhere:

http://www.riverfronttimes.com/Issues/2006-06-07/news/feature_full.html

Here's the numbers quote:

> "According to Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks sales data in the
> music industry, sales at independent retailers in 2006 are down 27
> percent from the same period from last year. In 2000 as many as 5,500
> independent music stores spanned the nation. At the end of last year,
> that number had shrunk to 2,600." 

*** 27% decline from last year !?!?!?! ***   

The industry as a whole is reporting 
"only" a 10% decline, so the indie stores are seeing a sales decline 
over 2.5 times worse.  I don't see how the independent part of the
music retail market survives in more than a few choice outlets.
And even if a few famous outlets like San Francisco's Amoeba and 
Austin's Waterloo survive, what happens to the wholesale and 
distribution system that keeps them stocked?

I like ampitheater concerts.  The death of low priced casino hotels and low
priced CDs does not bother me.

 re #25:  It's hard to mix and match statistics.  With half as many 
 independent stores selling music as there were in 2000, you'd expect
 there to be fewer sales at independent retailers (in fact, if sales
 figures were level per store you'd expect there to be about half as
 many sales.)  So knowing that sales declined 27% last year certainly
 sounds alarming but may be more complicated to intrepret than that..

i once bought a cd in st. louis!

soul coughing

Norman Lebrecht, Mr. Doom and Gloom, writes on the shutdown of Warner
Classics, the classical music division of Warner Music Group.
Warner takes with it a bunch of European labels I had been fond of,
like Erato, Teldec and Finlandia.

So there are only three active classical music divisions left
among the major labels. 

Lebrecht writes that the major label classical divisions are down
to about 36 releases a year of "serious" classical music.

http://www.scena.org/columns/lebrecht/060612-NL-crash.html

What are the 'major labels'?  Is there still a SONY/CBS < Columbia?  Did
someone buy RCA?

The remaining Major Labels are:  Warner Music Group (WMG)
                                 Sony/BMG   (a joint venture which 
                                   contains both the old Columbia and
                                   the old RCA)
                                 EMI
                                 Universal

There's been a lot of talk about EMI buying Warner, or maybe 
Warner will buy EMI.  EMI made an offer but Warner rejected it.

Where did Warner and Universal come from?  I think EMI includes Capitol and
London and Decca.  What happened to Deutsche Grammophon and Philips and VOX
and Angel/Seraphim?  I have records from at least 25 companies.

It seems like niche markets, like classical music, might be better 
served by some kind of Internet outlet.

Sad that classical music has come to be thought of as a "niche market."

It happens to most genres that concern themselves entirely with looking 
backwards.

I wonder what Philip Glass would make of being accused of "looking backwards".

 Probably not much.  I think a lot of his music plays the same in both
 directions..

I don't quite see what you mean, Mike. Anyway, my point was that if you're
going to deride something just because it was invented 200 years ago or more,
you might also like going without: wheels, fire, clothes, and democracy. To 
name a few.

I'm sure there's lots of classical music that has fallen by the wayside, as
has happened with novels, &c. However, in music as in books, the stuff that
has survived has done so not least because, (in contrast to a lot of trash
that has "fifteen minutes of fame" but simply won't be relevant next century
/year/month), it's actually good.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss