The Tida Has Turned

[Meehowski]

Tide Has Turned

Posted by George D. Ziemann on November 27, 2003 at 12:38 PM (printer friendly)

by George Ziemann

For a brief moment, I thought there was something extra to be thankful for this year. I guess I should just accept it as a token of the RIA's defeat and celebrate. Because even the downside has an upside.

The Good News

Frank Ehrens of the Washington Post has an article today, titled, "Music Industry Reluctantly Yielding to Internet Reality." (Complete Story)

Ehrens says we won, guys.

"The battle over online song trading is over; the Internet has won. The music industry is grudgingly giving up on the idea that it can preserve the tightly controlled business practices that once made record companies and artists flush with cash. Instead, a transformation is underway."

"Revenue across the industry continues to decline -- and layoffs continue to pile up -- as companies race to catch up to unauthorized services such as Kazaa and Morpheus, which have millions of devotees."

Then he goes into a long sales pitch for the "legitimate" music services. Blah, blah, blah, the industry is working so hard... blah, blah... "new opportunities to commercialize online music"... blah, blah, Napster...blah, blah, iTunes... blah blah Rhapsody, etc. blah, etc.

"The downside to all of these legal services instantly is apparent to anyone who has used them: Gaping holes in the song catalogue. For instance, four of the 14 songs on Jay-Z's "The Black Album" are not available for purchase on BuyMusic.com. Yet the entire album can be found for free by using Limewire, a service not licensed to distribute songs."

"Services such as BuyMusic.com attempt to compensate for these gaps by offering back catalogue and live versions of songs when they can't get the hits. At BuyMusic.com, for instance, hard-core R.E.M. fans can load up on B-side tunes from the obscure 1987 'Dead Letter Office' compilation CD but cannot buy any songs from the recently released greatest-hits album."

"Which is why unauthorized services such as Kazaa retain their appeal."

Services such as iTunes "are not an alternative to [Kazaa]. They include restrictions, the selection is pathetic," said Fred von Lohmann, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is representing some defendants in the music industry lawsuits. Services such as Kazaa "have millions of tracks -- stuff that's out of print, stuff that's never been widely available. That's what music fans deserve. You're asking people to trade the greatest library of recorded music ever created for this very limited selection."

Of course, von Lohman's statemnet has to be "balanced," so Ehrens adds this...

"Since the Recording Industry Association of America announced in early summer that it would initiate legal action against pirates, Kazaa's users have been fleeing, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, which monitors Internet traffic. At the end of the first week of June, Kazaa had 7 million users per week. In the week after the RIAA launched its first wave of lawsuits, on Sept. 8, that number was down to 4.2 million. By the end of the first full week of November, Kazaa was down to 3.2 million users."

Before I begin my rant, Kazaa users are urged to post today's REAL usage, which I will incorporate into the story.

The Bad News

"The battle over online song trading is over; the Internet has won. The music industry is grudgingly giving up on the idea that it can preserve the tightly controlled business practices that once made record companies and artists flush with cash. Instead, a transformation is underway."

You evil, evil P2P users.

You see, the record labels have been taking care of the artists so well throughout the last 50 years. Then P2P came along a ruined everything overnight. You destroyed everything. The artists will no longer be "flush with cash" and it's YOUR DAMN FAULT.

They had their "tightly controlled business practices" going just fine until you came along.

Of course, I'm being sarcastic.

If you drop a 1990-2002 chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (end of year value) on top of a chart of CD shipments for the same period (just lop off the ending zero on the DJIA and they're the same scale) and any moron can see that the economy has driven the sales decline. It's a no-brainer.

The plain truth is that the economy has turned, the music biz sees it happening and they have no choice but to shut the hell up. The best they can do is try to pretend P2P use is down or else their entire "piracy" scam is going to blow up in their face any minute now.

Now they're going to shrink back under the woodworkfrom whence they came, where slime belongs, turn the screws even tighter on the artists and go back to their usual ways of sneaking in legislation to benefit themselves.

And it's your fault.

You see, the war is not over. In my opinion, the entire P2P issue is, and has always been, a sideshow to cast light away from their business and accounting practices. It's no surprise that they are "tightly controlled" since that's the way they like to keep their artists.

Nothing has changed in this respect.

And nothing will until major artists look at their contracts and ask the simple questions -- Whose music is it, anyway?

Almost forgot the upside to the downside -- they'll never get the Indie mp3 files off the net because they can't keep their OWN mp3 files off the Net.

The majors are screwed. The Indies have an opportunity.

http://www.boycott-riaa.com/article/9214

[DudeAsInCool]

This article sums its up aptly - - the recording industry lost because they didnt learn that when it comes to copyright, technology always wins out.