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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 165 responses total. |
russ
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response 15 of 165:
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Mar 30 01:00 UTC 2002 |
Re #9: In the case of the dual-casting station which currently
pays $1000 a year to BMI and ASCAP, instead of paying $1000 a
day for the compulsory webcasting license they would only have
to pay $500 a day. That's only 180 times what they pay now.
Whatta bargain...
You can bet that there will not be any webcasting by student
radio stations if this is not radically scaled back. Non-profits
will be pretty much removed from the market too.
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krj
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response 16 of 165:
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Mar 30 01:37 UTC 2002 |
I've come across some mention of a lower rate for non-profit organizations,
but I can't remember all the details.
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raven
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response 17 of 165:
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Mar 30 20:38 UTC 2002 |
re #15 Why Russ it sounds like you are calling for goverment regulation
of the record companies? I think the genuis of the market knew everything,
could it be that life is more conplicated than that?
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krj
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response 18 of 165:
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Mar 30 21:15 UTC 2002 |
Here's a story from about ten weeks ago about the DataPlay discs:
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-864058.html
"Small discs to feature big artists"
DataPlay discs are "about the size of a quarter and can hold 5 to 11
hours of music, or three to five albums." (Those are really,
really long albums...) Leading independent label Zomba, home to
Britney & N'Sync, has signed a deal to start using the format for
new releases, joining major companies Universal, EMI and BMG.
The hope of the recording industry is that they can convince
consumers to switch to DataPlay discs, which include digital rights
management, so the unprotected CD can be withdrawn from market.
"Blank discs will cost between $5 and $12." (*coff, coff*)
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oval
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response 19 of 165:
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Mar 30 23:33 UTC 2002 |
i've put this item off until i could thoroughly divulge into it and i must
admit it all seemed confusing and inevitable what with tv and the
entertainment industry being how it is already. but until i read *this*
article:
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,51274,00.html
i wasn't nearly as angry. maybe they should should control the english
language so that every word i'm typing here comes with a fee.
(#11 was very well put by jazz)
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mcnally
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response 20 of 165:
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Mar 31 00:08 UTC 2002 |
Wired News is now reporting that Senator Leahy, chairman of the Senate
Judiciary committee (which for some reason has jurisdiction over the
SSSCA / CBDTPA) is opposed to the measure and has stated his intention
to prevent it from reaching a vote this year.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51425,00.html
However, the bill (or one like it) is still proceeding in the House
and if Leahy's opposition should falter or fail the bill is still a
danger. It's still important to contact your elected representatives
to let them know that you're strongly opposed to this legislation.
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krj
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response 21 of 165:
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Mar 31 02:37 UTC 2002 |
Tsk, mcnally's resp:20 belongs in the Agora item on the CBDTPA, not
in the Agora/Music "napster" item. :) But it's mildly encouraging
news anyway.
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oval
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response 22 of 165:
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Mar 31 02:40 UTC 2002 |
there's a CBDTPA item?!
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krj
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response 23 of 165:
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Mar 31 02:50 UTC 2002 |
Yes, spring Agora, item 13, is discussing the CBDTPA. ( item:agora41,13 )
I can usually find enough about the music industry and other
copyright topics to keep this one busy.
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oval
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response 24 of 165:
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Mar 31 02:52 UTC 2002 |
it's all closely related though -- hard to talk about one without fondling
the other just a bit...
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jazz
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response 25 of 165:
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Mar 31 08:04 UTC 2002 |
Fondling bits is expressly forbidden by the CBDTPA.
The DataPlay maneuver will proabably go over about as well as consumer
copy-protected DAT; the industry really had to learn that it isn't quite
smart enough to predict the format consumers will choose, and if they were,
their meddling with rights management will delay it's entry to past the
critical few months where the format would have been chosen, anyways.
That's kind of a salvation to Napster users; hacker kids, like 'em
or hate 'em, are always going to be smarter about subverting data security
than professionals are about instituting it. Instituting is by nature a
harder job, and professionals are often more in business than obsessed.
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krj
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response 26 of 165:
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Mar 31 19:36 UTC 2002 |
The DataPlay people have a website at http://www.dataplay.com.
You can buy clothes and bags with their logo imprinted, and there is
a promise that blank media and recording/playback machines will
soon be available.
Some of the promotional material on their web site actively
touts the DataPlay resistance to file sharing, so I don't think
this site was intended to market to end users. :)
One of the aspects they are happiest about is that DataPlay discs
can be given away or sold with content "locked up" so the holder of
the disc cannot get it unless additional payment is made.
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jazz
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response 27 of 165:
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Mar 31 23:03 UTC 2002 |
How long d'ya think that'll take to reverse engineer?
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oval
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response 28 of 165:
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Apr 1 08:54 UTC 2002 |
so if my friend comes over and i play a cd for him, and he likes it and i let
him borrow it for a while, am i in trouble?
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gull
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response 29 of 165:
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Apr 1 17:01 UTC 2002 |
Re #17: Record companies don't seem to be part of a free market. Sales
of CDs have been falling for months now and the price has oddly
remained the same. The "unseen hand" doesn't seem to be doing its job.
Re #26: That sounds like the DIVX "pay for play" model. You'll note
that DIVX was extremely unsuccessful.
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mdw
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response 30 of 165:
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Apr 2 00:07 UTC 2002 |
Unless the DataPlay discs have some sort of per-disk uniquification
(using a long enough key), I don't think it will last very long.
There's already an active market in subverting satellite TV encryption
systems, which are apparently based on a shared symmetric key.
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krj
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response 31 of 165:
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Apr 2 21:24 UTC 2002 |
In the Napster legal case: Judge Patel has given Napster *TEN MONTHS*
for the discovery procedure, in which Napster gets to look in the
record companies' paperwork for evidence that they were abusing their
copyrights. This was reported by the L.A.Times. This drags the Napster
case out into January 2003, at least.
http://www.calendarlive.com/top/1,1419,L-LATimes-Music-X!ArticleDetail-5461
3,00.html
(warning, URL is wrapped)
-----
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-872765.html
"Small Webcasters Campaign for Survival"
This is a good article from Cnet, with some numbers. Quote:
> Negotiations over the actual rates for the new royalties proved
> bitter, ultimately winding up in front of the U.S. Copyright Office's
> arbitration panel. Record labels proposed a per-song rate that
> was about 100 times what the big Webcasters' trade association --
> led by companies such as America Online, MTV and RealNetworks --
> said was feasible. The arbitration panel's proposed rates
> split that difference.
...
> The fees, once passed, will add a large new expense to Webcasters'
> bottom line. To date, they've only had to pay the same songwriters'
> fees that regular radio stations pay -- about 4 percent of their
> revenues.
The rates are so unmanageable that everyone outside of the record business
agrees it kills all independent webcasting. Some large companies are joining
the effort to change the rules. Arbitron, the ratings firm, wrote to
Congress:
> ...a Webcaster that reached as many people as a big radio station
> in New York would have to pay more than $30 million a year in
> royalties alone. That would make it almost impossible to survive,
> Arbitron said.
Small webcasters and their fans are organizing to lobby
Congress to revise the rules, since they have no standing at this
point in the Copyright Office procedures.
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krj
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response 32 of 165:
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Apr 5 22:41 UTC 2002 |
The dead tree edition of USA Today has an overview story about
home copying in their business section today. Little new, but
a few interesting snippets:
"The public is almost evenly divided on whether Internet users have
the right to swap music from CDs online, according to a CNN/USA TODAY/
Gallup poll: 43% say it should be legal, 46% say illegal, with
11% undecided."
"((CD)) Sales this year are worse. Total units are down another 12%
vs. the first three months of 2001." (KRJ adds: Total units were
down 10% in 2001, but a big chunk of that represented the industry's
decision to wind down CD single production, which is why the
dollar value only went down 6% or so. If that 12% decline for
2002 to date is mostly album sales, then the companies are getting
walloped much worse than last year.)
Band manager Miles Copeland says banks are turning down
music companies for loans.
Pam Horowitz, president of NARM (music retailing trade group)
says: "Do we still have a competitively priced product?...
DVD sales have exploded, and it's a product where the price has
come down while the price of CDs has gone up. If our only response
as an industry is to stop copying of CDs, we may be missing a
consumer message."
A few other people in the article mention the usual argument that
consumers are buying less music because most of what the companies are
flogging right now is crap. (A big point of support for that position
came from a similar article in the Miami Herald about a week ago,
which reported again that rock concert attendance is also down.
A falloff in the business of live music indicates that the public's
attention is shifting away from music.)
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dbratman
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response 33 of 165:
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Apr 11 18:34 UTC 2002 |
Good column today by Jon Carroll on the morality of the proposed
restrictions.
It's at http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/carroll/ - click
on "04/11/2002 Jolly new threat to our freedoms"
Direct access at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?
file=/chronicle/archive/2002/04/11/DD240137.DTL
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krj
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response 34 of 165:
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Apr 14 02:30 UTC 2002 |
April 6 Billboard, browsed at Borders, has a big lead story:
"Losses Mount for Music Industry Digital Services":
which seems to be mostly about Pressplay and Musicnet.
Apparently the losses are mounting to a point where the parent
corporations are getting concerned.
I wasn't willing to spend $7 to take it home with me, and Billboard
does not put the juicy business news on the web site. I forgot to
note if there was any clue as to the number of paying customers for
the official services.
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jaklumen
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response 35 of 165:
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Apr 14 04:10 UTC 2002 |
I've forgotten again-- these are the for-pay sites?
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krj
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response 36 of 165:
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Apr 15 12:56 UTC 2002 |
"Music-for-rent" would be a more accurate description. :)
-----
A Washington Post writer gets a beta-test version of actual
DataPlay hardware and pre-recorded music disc. The reviewer
thinks the technology might have some potential for replacing flash
memory in digital cameras, "but I can't figure out why anybody would
want to buy music this way. The CD works just fine as is."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42176-2002Apr13.html
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jaklumen
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response 37 of 165:
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Apr 16 08:59 UTC 2002 |
Interestingly enough, I think equalizing forces may be at work here.
I seem to have no problem getting big hits from the KaZaA et al
community. But every now and then, there is a song that millions of
users don't seem to be fond of and don't have online to share.
I was looking for Jazzie Redd's "I Am A Dope Fiend," which was a
little hip-hop tune back in the early 1990's (perhaps 1990-1991) and
was remade in 2000. Apparently, I will need to order the single or
the CD/album it comes from to get it.
Ironically, might that mean that hard-to-find music might actually get
more real sales?
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krj
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response 38 of 165:
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Apr 21 17:22 UTC 2002 |
Very nice overview article from the Chicago Tribune on the
consolidation in the radio business, and spillover effects into
the record industry and Internet radio.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/showcase/chi-0204140469apr14.story?coll=
chi-n
ews-hed
"Rocking radio's world"
Quotes:
> Since 1996, Arbitron surveys show that the
> average time spent listening to radio by consumers
> 12 and older has dropped 9 percent. In the
> last two years, listenership has dropped more than
> 7 percent, Arbitron says. The young
> especially are tuning out: Teen-age listeners are
> down 11 percent, and people between the ages
> of 18 and 24 have declined 10 percent.
...
> Playlists at stations across the country
> continue to shrink, with only about 20 songs a week
> played with any regularity, most from the best-funded
> major labels. Many commercial stations say
> they play only records approved by their audience
> through extensive market-testing, but this
> practice has led to a numbing sameness of programming,
> with many of the same records played
> in the same formats from Miami to Seattle. In one week
> recently, the 40 biggest modern-rock
> stations in the country opened a total of 16
> slots for new records, and the 45 biggest top-40
> stations added a total of 20. That means that
> even though more than 30,000 CDs are released
> annually, the vast majority of the songs played
> at these stations is the same week after week, a
> pool of a few dozen artists who are also seen
> extensively on video networks such as MTV and
> VH1.
The quotes from the Clear Channel execs, about how they are only there
to serve the public, are particularly nauseating.
The article also reports that (KRJ paraphrasing) the RIAA is starting
to wake up to the idea that destroying the fledgling Web radio business
would be a bad move, in terms of choking off promotional opportunities
for record companies.
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mcnally
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response 39 of 165:
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Apr 21 22:11 UTC 2002 |
Meanwhile the New York Times has an article this week about the band
Wilco ( http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/21/arts/music/21PARE.html )
and their new album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Deemed unsuitable by Reprise,
a part of the Time-Warner-AOL media megacorp, the album was rejected.
The band, unhappy with their label support anyway and unwilling to be
forced into the alt-country niche in which Reprise had successfully
promoted their 1996 album "Being There" fought for and obtained control
over the recordings.. They shopped the completed album around and
eventually placed it with Nonesuch, another part of the Time-Warner-AOL
media megacorp.. Go figure.
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