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by George Ziemann
April/May/June 2007
They Must Be Joking
April 2, 2007
~~ There's a story out today that
EMI
has decided to sell songs without DRM and Apple's iTunes
Music Store will offer them for $1.29 each. If it had appeared
yesterday, I wouldn't have believed it at all. I'm still skeptical
because this sounds like a day-late practical joke. Even though
the media seems to think this is some kind of breakthrough, ARS
Technica nailed it in February when they assessed that music
without DRM was coming, from EMI, but it was going to cost more.
First of all, this means Steve
Jobs relented and let them charge a higher price for new releases,
which is what most of the DRM-less offerings will probably be.
Thankfully, the Beatles haven't bought into this yet. At $1.29
a song, Abbey Road would cost $21.93.
So they really don't want to
sell more music. If that's what they wanted, they would have
dropped the price, not raised it. They're still thinking short-term,
still worrying about the next quarter.
They're also still suing music
fans. The major labels seem devoid of any inkling of the depth
of the public annoyance this activity has dredged up, along with
increased public awareness of payola and contract rip-offs.
The good news is that the lawsuits
have reached the wall. The RIAA never had any evidence that anyone
did anything. Their
cases are crumbling.
Another small ray of common
sense comes from the music publishers, who have decided to let
guitar tabs reappear on the Internet. (That link is to the
New York Times and registration is required. Sorry.) Guitar
tabs are like cheat-sheets for guitarists who want to figure
out how to play a song. The publishers had most of the tab sites
shut down last year because of copyright issues -- you know,
the usual "stealing our stuff" complaint.
In the NY Times article,
Irwin Z. Robinson, who runs Viacom's music publishing arm summarizes
his rendition: "This gives us, for the first time, the opportunity
to get something that's been given away or stolen for all these
years. I'm very positive about it."
He follows this up with the
fact that about 2 percent of the songs in the company's catalog
have licensed guitar tablature associated with them.
So... 98% of the company's catalog is not legally available.
They're not even trying to make money on guitar tabs.
Whatever is happening is certainly not lost sales because there
was never anything to sell in the first place. When the tab sites
shut down, there was no chance of driving musicians to purchase
the publisher's official version because there isn't one.
This is why guitar tabs are
so popular among musicians, many of whom just want to know how
to play the songs so they can perform them in a venue that pays
royalties to ASCAP and BMI, which pay the publishers and songwriters.
In the long term, they were more likely to lose revenue by stopping
tabs from being available.
The publishers have suddenly
decided a cut of ad revenue would make everything okay. They
could have done this in the first place. From the article:
"Representatives from
Ultimate-Guitar did not respond to calls seeking comment. Cathal
Woods, the director of Olga, wrote via e-mail that he had, in
the past, approached Harry Fox, the Music Publishers' Association
and the National Music Publishers' Association with similar business
deals.
Those groups "have always
rejected out-of-hand any requests about licensing," Mr.
Woods wrote. "I'm somewhat surprised by this."
So am I. It seems to
be a rational decision until you consider how long they rejected
it first. Why is a portion of ad revenue a reasonable idea today
and it wasn't six months ago? What has changed?
RIAA Threatens NIN Fans
April 5, 2007
-- I haven't been following Nine
Inch Nails, but apparently they're promoting their upcoming album
with some sort of scavenger hunt. While most of the puzzle seems
to be online, Trent Reznor arranged for three flash drives to
be "lost" in bathrooms at three separate concerts,
each containing a single mp3 from the new album, "Year Zero".
The rest from
Billboard:
According to one post, a male
fan, allegedly by happenstance, found a USB drive in a bathroom
stall during a NIN concert at the Coliseum in Lisbon, Portugal.
This flash drive (yes, Reznor's idea) contained an MP3 of album
track "My Violent Heart." Additional USB drives were
purportedly found in Barcelona and Manchester, England; they
included MP3s of album tracks "Me, I'm Not" and "In
This Twilight," respectively.
Excited fans then began swapping
and sharing these music files online. Another Web posting alleged
that all this activity resulted in entertainment blog Idolator
and other sites receiving e-mail from the Recording Industry
Association of America, demanding that they remove the MP3s from
their sites. An RIAA representative confirms this, a move that
boggles the minds of many. "These f*cking idiots are going
after a campaign that the label signed off on," the source
says.
Record Store Owners Blame RIAA
April 6, 2007
-- "The sad thing is that
CDs and downloads could have coexisted peacefully and profitably.
The current state of affairs is largely the result of shortsightedness
and boneheadedness by the major record labels and the Recording
Industry Association of America, who managed to achieve the opposite
of everything they wanted in trying to keep the music business
prospering. The association is like a gardener who tried to rid
his lawn of weeds and wound up killing the trees instead."
-- Complete
Story at NY Times
May 23, 2007 ~~ Trent
Reznor explains the current rock star dilemma, namely that
being signed to a major record label has officially become an
embarrassment as well as a threat to an act's credibility.
May 27, 2007 ~~ There's an article
at Slashdot today about Ohio University banning all p2p access.
Within was a comment wherein some pro-industry type was making
the typical "stealing-from-the-artists" accusation.
I resisted the urge to reply there because at this point anyone
still trying to blame the general public for the music industry's
problems is probably part of the problem. See the Trent Reznor
story below.
June
June 8, 2007 ~~ Current Events -- Since there's
no real music news to speak of, I decided to address some of
the burning issues of the day.
Urgent Non-News ~~ Wall-to-wall coverage on Fox
all the major news networks today of the War on Terror,
immigration issues, rising crime rate, presidential campaigns,
godless liberals, abducted blonde, gas prices, blonde teacher
having sex with student, Rosie O'Donnel's argument with a blonde,
John Edward's haircut Paris Hilton getting sent back
to jail.
I really haven't been paying
attention to the whole story because, well, I could give a rat's
ass what happens to her skinny ass. I do, however, have a piece
of advice for her, Lindsay Lohan, most of the cast of "Lost,"
Mel Gibson, Nick Nolte, Shemar Moore, and Billy Joel, just to
name a few -- When you get drunk or have your license suspended,
hire a driver, you cheap bastards. Or hire some big guy to kick
your ass when you try to do stupid shit.
Scooter Libby ~~ Got a six-figure fine and jail time
for not being the one who outed Valerie Plame as a CIA agent.
Dick Cheney and Karl Rove high-five each other and go back to
their plans of world domination. Prez Bush immediately considers
how fast to pardon Libbey because, c'mon, if it's okay to jail
people for lying...
Bush-Bashing ~~ It seems like only a few months ago
that if you said anything negative about Dubya, you were a far-left,
unpatriotic godless liberal who deserved to be sent to Guantanamo.
Today, it just means you might be a Republican presidential candidate.
Immigration ~~ Got at least three calls in the last
two days from anxious pollsters (congressional aides?) trying
to find out what what I think about the proposed amnesty/guest
worker bill. I told them that you can't judge a bill by its title
(see Patriot
Act), I haven't read it and so, consequently, it is impossible
to have an intelligent opinion. Send me a copy and call me back.
At the school my child attended
last year, 69 percent of the parents were "illegal"
immigrants. One of her best friends is from Ukraine (her father
teaches physics at ASU), and a boy who has a crush on her is
from China. There was a recent event where a major issue was
listing a kid's name on a roster because one of her parents is
from Mongolia, where there is no such thing as last names, so
they used the last name of her Korean mother. My personal
sadistic torturer dentist is from Russia but I have
had to see the one from India on occasion.
Which immigrants is it we're
talking about exactly? Just the Mexicans? I thought we were building
a wall to keep them from trimming our lawns and palm trees.
June 10, 2007 ~~ Remember the 700-mile long fence we
were going to build to protect the 1400-mile long border between
the US and Mexico? Turns out it's going to be a virtual
border instead of a real one. The new plan is apparently
to require all the Mexicans to get accounts at Second Life and,
if they can get across the virtual border, they get a visa. Those
who choose not to participate can still cross into the US at
will, as they always have.
The Sopranos ~~ I'm not a big Sopranos fan. I liked
the show and would watch it sometimes, but I rarely made a point
of it. But I did watch the last two nights. It was the
finale, the big finish.
I have not yet seen what the
rest of the world thought about said big finish, but mine was
"That's it? What the hell kind of ending was that?"
Perhaps it should have been a clue that the prominent musical
number as the last hour opened was "Keep Me Hanging On"
because that's what happened. Or perhaps there was some esoteric
significance that I don't understand attached to the fact that
Meadow Soprano really could parallel park, given enough
attempts.
June 29, 2007 ~~
The
Guardian reports that this Sunday's edition of the UK publication,
The Mail will include Prince's new CD, Planet Earth,
a month before it is scheduled to go on sale. This also means
that, technically, it ships at least double platinum before the
first copy appears on a store shelf.
Not that you'll be able to
buy it, at least in the UK. All the retailers bitched about Prince
giving the album away. "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince
should know that with behaviour like this he will soon be the
Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores," said someone
or other, after framing the issue as "another example of
the damaging covermount culture which is destroying any perception
of value around recorded music." Whatever that means.
Columbia/Sony solved the problem
by deciding not to distribute the CD to UK stores at all. That'll
teach 'em.
Supreme Court ~~ Price fixing is now legal and an "except
for" clause has been introduced into that whole "freedom
of speech" idea. Also, the death penalty cannot be carried
out on the mentally incompetent, much to the relief of all the
psychotic killers waiting in line to be fried.
Ann Coulter ~~ Called Bush a "nincompoop"
and then mused that we're "all on the same page" now,
just before suggesting terrorists should assassinate John Edwards.
Dick Cheney ~~ Declares he does not have to report
his actions to the National Archives because he is not part of
the executive branch. White House responds to subpoenas from
Congress for Cheney's records by asserting executive privilege.
Blast from the Past ~~ The
RIAA discusses piracy. In 1978. Explains why it's illegal
to video tape a TV show and watch it later. Bonus: Asshat in
comment section justifies RIAA's current activity by pointing
out that the law is still the same.
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