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April Fools Roundupby George Ziemann -- April 4, 2009 Any proper list of fools begins with the music industry, which is so ashamed of how 2008 went that they're evidently not going to share any data about it -- not even the phony numbers they usually report. The RIAA's marketing page has no stats for 2008. As some sort of replacement, they offer a link to the IFPI's "Digital Music Report." The summary mentions that digital music sales were up 25% in 2008, and now comprised 20% of the market for recorded music. The other 80 percent, they're not talking about that.
If you look at the full report, the opening page of the pdf file is enough to show you these guys don't have a tech clue yet, as you wait for 42 separate images to render. After that there's an index, but it's kind of misleading. Here's what's really in it: Page 3 -- A plea for governments to protect digital content because "the music industry has embraced the future with new business models." Like what, other than the $5 a month plan where all four major labels work together? "One music label to rule them all"? The rest of the report will surely explain the many ways they are embracing the future. Page 4 -- Some people hear music without paying for it. The IFPI would like to see this come to an end because no one would ever buy a record if they could hear the songs first, right? Page 5 -- MySpace "extended from the world of music discovery into a commercial service," when three of the four majors bought into it. YouTube was "hugely popular with consumers in search of music," which is why the labels are making YouTube take down all their music videos. This is how they embrace the future. Buy it or kill it. There's something there about "nurturing and investing in talent," but they spent more time talking about social networking. Then we're back to the "role" of ISPs and the government in music. Page 6 and 7 -- Key facts and figures but just for the 20 percent of sales that were digital. These are comprised mostly of pergentages and, without the other 80 percent to compare to, are totally worthless. Page 8 and 9 -- The shift to "music access." I call it a shift to low-quality music, which you're supposed to pay extra to buy a cell phone to be able to hear Led Zeppelin on a half-inch speaker. Good times in store for all. Page 10 -- "More Choice in Music Downloads" It's about iTunes and Amazon, but the photo of Madonna as "premium content" will tell you a lot. Page 11 -- Social Networks They "monetized" MySpace by buying into it and creating MySpace Music. It's legitimate now that they own it and get the money. Page 12 and 13 -- Games, Brands and Merchandising Forgetting that they tried to stop it, too, Guitar Hero is praised as the new Elvis. The IFPI proudly notes that Guitar Hero, in its various forms, has sold more than 13 million copies in 3 years, without ever making the connection that maybe those sales were instead of record sales. If you take pricing into account, a Guitar Hero sale probably displaces 2-4 record sales. Personally, I think games are the pirates which are stealing the record labels' revenue. The billions they are making a year at the games companies had to be diverted from some other souce of discretionary spending. Yet no one seems to acknowledge this obvious correlation. Page 14 and 15 -- Public Performance This is the whine about how U.S. radio doesn't pay performance royalties to the performers, just the songwriters. Of course, nothing about how much the record labels spent in payola over the past 3 or 4 decades. Page 16 -- Pirates in China and Japan Page 17 -- Brazil has cell phones, too! Page 18 and 19 -- The Core Mission: Investing in new talent The record labels are so awesome because they invest 20 percent of their revenue back into artist development, at least when they aren't cutting their rosters to downsize. Or so they say. Interestingly enough, not a word about how many artists each label is gently nurturing, but there is a graphic of how many bands have a page on MySpace (1.8 million rock bands alone). And there's a bit in there about how EMI made Amy Winehouse into what she is today, which I'm certainly glad to see someone take responsibility for. Pages 20 and 21 -- Still trying to convince artists that they need a record label and a manager, etc. Pages 22-30 -- A ream of piracy bullshit. I didn't read any of it except the titles, which weren't even memorable enough to mock. Even all of this is not what qualifies the music industry as fools, or puts them at the top of the list of what you think about when the word "fool" is used. A fool is not an ignorant person or an idiot. A fool is someone who knows exactly what the truth is, chooses to pretend that something different is going on, and acts on the fantasy instead of reality. The music industry vs the internet pirates is a fool's mission. The industry may have started out ignorant, even computer illiterate, but that excuse dried up a long, long time ago. Somewhere in here is a lesson. For more than a half-century, the record labels were the holders of the brass ring (the recording contract), which was the only way to ever reach the Holy Grail of radio airplay. The recording contract was the fool's quest and a Faustian deal was required to attain it, but only if you were first proven worthy by biting the head off of a living small animal or some other test of your thirst for blood and/or public attention. I must confess to being part of that fools errand for a couple of decades myself. It was the only way to go for a musician. It was also the only way to get a physical album created, and physical CDs lasted 10 years before normal people could even back up their own data on them, almost another decade before mp3s and software to rip and burn showed up. The most obvious clue of an alternate reality that I personally saw exhibited came in late 2002. Universal Music had bought/taken over mp3.com, which was actually popular at the time. Universal was trying to correct that by reducing how much material artists could offer, although if you paid a monthly fee, you get get the original limits back. I wrote an e-mail to Universal (or maybe called them) and asked why downloading music from Universal artists was considered theft, but I had to pay extra to let them hear more than three of my songs. They responded that I was free to go elsewhere for promotional services. Universal had already developed two definitions of downloading -- it could be stealing or it could be promotion, depending on which was most advantageous. Kind of like radio, I guess. The labels used to compete with each other and payola was the result. Now that they've teamed up, started buying into ventures together and own the U.S. Justice Dept., they don't even have to pretend to compete anymore. To get all the old payola money back, radio has been moved from the "promotion" column back into the "They're stealing our stuff" category (see pages 4, 14 and 15 above), which resets that foolish quest back to 1922, or at least 1940. I would think that their biggest inherent problem right now is that the Holy Grail of radio was melted down to make a proper cigar-sized ashtray. The old brass ring, no longer being the key to any prize, looks a lot like shackles, not to mention the fact that everyone now actively hates the RIAA, especially the 30,000 or so people that they tried to sue -- all unsuccessfully. Low-resolution (128k) mp3s are promotion, not theft, just like radio is, just like YouTube is, even when it's a baby dancing to a Prince song. The "pirates" are music fans, those people that fill up arenas, concert halls and auditoriums at inflated ticket prices. Or at least they used to. The RIAA sued enough people to fill a small stadium. Of course, there aren't any real numbers on that, either. Bragging about how many people the RIAA filed lawsuits against evolved into the number of cases the RIAA has initiated without winning a single one. The number has been 30,000 for a year now. The only thing for sure is that the record labels will continue their hunt for the invisible pirates instead of hunting for music with a wider appeal. They will continue annoying music fans instead of enticing them. In exchange, we get Nickleback, Coldplay, Katy Perry and Lady GaGa, the only apparent results of their all-encompassing artist development. CD sales will fall again, but they won't even add it up, so it won't seem so bad. Neilsen will once again note an increase in "music purchases," an interesting calculation wherein two singles are worth more than one CD. The sales decline will, once again, be the fault of the pirates. I don't even expect the fact that the entire world's economic system have all gone to hell simultaneously or the frightening unemployment rate will even merit consideration. If the facts don't fit, the industry just ignores them and plods along like they own everything. They are the biggest fools around right now. I'm hoping for karmic justice on this one, like real pirates hijacking a ship full of CDs. |
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