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Grex > Music2 > #112: Changes in the Music Business | |
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| Author |
Message |
| 14 new of 189 responses total. |
mcnally
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response 176 of 189:
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Aug 28 18:01 UTC 2000 |
True, but even the record companies must realize that "What on-line music
business?" is a pretty fair rebuttal to the charge that Napster, et al.,
are killing the major labels' on-line music business..
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brighn
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response 177 of 189:
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Aug 28 21:10 UTC 2000 |
I thought the charge was that Napster was damaging RIAA's business in general.
Also, there's MP3.com, a commercial venture, as well as ecommerce sites that
sell CDs (notably Amazon and CDNow).
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mcnally
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response 178 of 189:
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Aug 28 22:20 UTC 2000 |
Another recent intellectual property-rights battle being fought in the
music industry is covered in Salon this week.
http://www.salon.com/ent/music/feature/2000/08/28/work_for_hire/index.ht
ml
Artists have been up in arms about a 4-word amendment stuck into the
Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act by a congressional staffer (who has
since been hired by the RIAA) changed the law covering sound recordings so
that such works were now classified as "work-for-hire" with the rights
belonging to the record companies, at the expense of the artists.
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krj
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response 179 of 189:
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Aug 29 03:16 UTC 2000 |
What I loved from that article--besides reinforcing my belief that
the record industry is run by weasels--was the horrified realization
of the record labels that they were pissing off the artists whose
rights they were stealing at the very moment they needed the support
of those artists in the Napster battles.
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mcnally
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response 180 of 189:
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Aug 29 05:14 UTC 2000 |
Yep. I'm hoping that as in any good Greek tragedy, their hubris will
bring down the wrath of the gods.
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brighn
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response 181 of 189:
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Aug 29 16:40 UTC 2000 |
Yes. IT enables Napsterites to justify their theft, since stealing from
thieves is morally more sound than stealing from non-thieves.
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krj
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response 182 of 189:
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Jan 4 19:15 UTC 2001 |
News item from mp3.com passes along a press release from musicmaker.com,
reporting that their board has voted to "liquidate and dissolve the
company." The web site seems to be gone, though I have been having
erratic browser problems today, so...
Musicmaker.com provided custom-made CDs where the customer selected
the tracks to be burned. I am fairly sure that musicmaker.com handled
the big Pepsi promotion of custom-made CDs this summer, which we talked
about somewhere else in this forum. (I don't actually have my Pepsi
CDs here to check.) Musicmaker.com was also trying to
sell legitimate music downloads.
Perhaps musicmaker.com was a victim of Napster, which offers a better
song selection.
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dbratman
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response 183 of 189:
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Jan 6 04:27 UTC 2001 |
Someone - I think it was Mitch Wagner on sff.net - having tried Napster
and found bad sound quality, incomplete files, and mislabeled songs -
said that he's discovered how copyright owners will maintain a paid
market for their wares in the cold new economy.
Two words: Quality control.
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other
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response 184 of 189:
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Jan 6 20:52 UTC 2001 |
/. reports that Napster has followed up their agreement with Bertelsmann
with a similar agreement with Edel AG, another major European media
group.
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krj
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response 185 of 189:
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Jan 27 00:51 UTC 2001 |
New York Post, http://www.nypost.com/01252001/business/20975.htm:
EMI and BMG are reported close to a merger deal. European regulators are
unwilling to see the five major labels consolidate down to four, so
the plan is to sell EMI's Virgin label to independent label Zomba,
home of N'Sync, Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears, and then claim
Zomba becomes a fifth major label.
Another web site somewhere pointed out that such a merger would bring
the Nipper icon back into general use. Currently the USA rights to
Nipper are controlled by BMG, while the European rights to him are
controlled by EMI. As the classical music industry is now doing global
manufacturing and packaging, it's often not been feasible for BMG to
stick Nipper on American releases.
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dbratman
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response 186 of 189:
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Jan 27 17:26 UTC 2001 |
How many people are there today, I wonder, who wouldn't realize, on
seeing the Nipper icon, that the strange-looking thing he's listening
to is a type of phonograph?
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krj
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response 187 of 189:
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Jan 30 02:43 UTC 2001 |
BMG announced today that the for-pay Napster goes up in June.
Supposedly "digital rights management" will be an integral part of the
experience. Sources at Napster did not appear to know anything
about this. Source: www.wired.com, I think, and probably cnet too.
I'm puzzled by it; it sounds like a somewhat ignorant BMG exec
rushing into press with something he doesn't understand.
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ashke
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response 188 of 189:
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Jan 30 18:40 UTC 2001 |
That sounds about right to me...they have a habit of doing that.
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krj
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response 189 of 189:
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May 2 23:50 UTC 2001 |
News media everywhere report that the proposed merger of EMI and BMG
has been dropped. The two labels could not get European regulators
to go along with reducing the number of major music companies from
5 to 4, and they were unable to come up with a spinoff proposal to
somehow create a new fifth "major."
This is EMI's second failed merger attempt in about a year.
EMI and BMG remain the weakest of the five major record companies
and they still look vulnerable to takeover by somebody.
--------
Some time back, Rykodisc, the largest independent American label,
was acquired by Chris Blackwell's new company Palm Pictures.
All is not sweetness and light: Joe Boyd, who sold his Hannibal label
to Ryko back in the early 1990s, has left Hannibal/Ryko/Palm.
There's an interview with Boyd in the new issue of Folk Roots magazine.
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This is really becoming the Music Business Conference, isn't it? :/
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