demonbaby.com — For the major labels, it's over. It's f**king over. You're going to burn to the f**king ground, and we're all going to dance around the fire. And it's your own fault. Surely, somewhere deep inside, you had to know this day was coming, right?
Oct 27, 2007 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountOct 29, 2007
What did the RIAA f**k up, their model hasn't changed in 50 years and only conveniently when Napster came around did their sales drop. Gee, big coincidence.
kas70Oct 29, 2007
You say their model hasn't changed in 50 years, and that is the problem.Napster was faster than the record companies at recognizing a tech savvy audience and anticipating their needs/wants from music in a new era. The record companies likely knew before the public did what types of computer technology was knocking on the door, and instead of capitalizing on it, they ignored it and hoped it would go away. Until their sales dropped like stones. People used to "steal" music all the time, even 50 years ago. You would lend people your records, sell them without the used record store middleman, give them away, play them at your parties, play them on any record player you wanted to. 8-tracks came along and we could listen to our choice of music in the car. We couldn't tape over them, but we traded, sold and played them however we wanted to. Then came the cassette tape. We taped songs off the radio and sometimes NEVER bought the album at all! If we bought the album, we made tapes, often many of them, and gave them to our family and friends, who, more often than not, also NEVER bought the album. CD's, same thing. My point is that it is the scale at which the sharing has grown that has the execs freaking out, not the sharing itself. They need to recognize that they are being hypocritical by conveniently forgetting their prior 50 years of looking the other way when sharing occurred. Was it "stealing" then? Why weren't people prosecuted then? If it was not stealing then, why is it defined as such now? Or is it simply that the sheer volume of sharers has made a larger dent in your insane profits than your mortgage can handle? If it is the latter, quit pretending it is the former.People are wising up and not content to be labeled as thieved with such a broad paintbrush.
gregjp48Nov 11, 2007
one of the most well written articles I have ever read.very informative, very easy to understand, and overall, very true!a Must Read.
luciasNov 12, 2007
talk about spot on. Although I believe at heart the artists owns the music they create, not the label, I'm not going to actively participate in profiting "music" giants for the sake of glamor and fame when the artists see feeble benefits from these cooperate entities. "Through sites like Oink, the amount and variety of music I listen to has skyrocketed, opening me up to hundreds of artists I never would have experienced otherwise. I'm now fans of their music, and I may not have bought their CDs, but I would have never bought their CD anyway, because I would have never heard of them! And now that I have heard of them, I go to their concerts, and I talk them up to my friends, and give my friends the music to listen to for themselves, so they can go to the concerts, and tell their friends, and so on."---frickin right!! This is EXACTLY how I feel about the issue. It's a funny relationship, but I wonder what a poll or study would say regarding the profit-loss scenario record labels have gone through, correlating to peoples 'stealing' music, BECAUSE of how those corporations (with the CIRA, RIAA, etc) have responded to this new era in music distribution
dlflashNov 29, 2007
I wanted to add that the bands are generally not at fault for the fact that only one or two of the tracks are really worth listening to. Again this falls back on the record labels, as the bands have a contract with the label to produce a certain amount of work in a certain amount of time (this in itself stifles creativity since music is pushed through to meet obligations rather than music being created for the artistic value). Many bands would produce much better music if they were not held to timetables by the labels that contract them.
djbon2112Dec 12, 2007
What does that even mean?
djbon2112Dec 12, 2007
Wow... um... OK?There's plenty of engaging music that isn't "cookie-cutter" out there, if you care to shift away from FM radio. And please tell me something that requires "more energy to get entertainment out of" than Yes'" Tales From Topographic Oceans" or "Close To The Edge"? Definitely NOT "3 minutes of enterainment"!
djbon2112Dec 12, 2007
Then you have to adapt to a world where your orange can simply be copied at a whim, and think of new ideas to make money off your orange.
imortal986Jan 8, 2008
This definitely captured the state of the record industry. I don't think I could have said a single bit of this article better myself. It seems the record industry is one of the last surviving industries that hasn't capitalized on the Internet yet. The net is a thorn that isn't going away no matter how much the companies try to oppress it.My family and I pay monthly fees for all sorts of things these days and I would love more than anything to do this with music. TV can be streamed for free off the net now. Movies are getting there. Sites that rent out games at a flat monthly fee are popping up (and subscription games). Now where is subscription music? If I could pay $x (maybe $20?) a month to give my respects to the musicians (and the middlemen) and have access to all the latest and greatest music within the boundaries of the law, I would be all over it.Thanks again for this brilliant article!
smohan123Feb 3, 2008
good read. keeps level-headed about the issue even when communicating how ridiculously ineffective the record industry is.
airstrikeJun 26, 2008
their client -and-- protocol are lousy at best, but the users have quite a lot of good stuff.although one can have a hard time finding some quality VBR rips with decent speed, though.
xdarkxanarchyxJul 14, 2008
But, that wouldn't be fair to the artists that everyone is listening to because they will get just as much money as the ones that the one person listens to. Unless, of course, you adopt Last.fm's way of doing it and pay the bands by how much people listen to them. But, that's a little tricky because it requires people to listen to them on their computers with certain software/plug-ins. There should be a way of donating money directly to the artists like Jamendo has. I would, however subscribe to this either way. I am an artist myself in two bands currently.
steveo427Oct 10, 2008
As they said in a favorite TV show of mine, which I find online. "Evolution ..." "...question[s] of good and evil reduced to one simple choice: survive, or perish."If the industries (music and movies) wants to survive, they MUST adapt, or perish.External source Googled:<a class="user" href="http://www.generationterrorists.com/quotes/heroes.shtml">http://www.generationterrorists.com/quotes/heroes. ...</a>
lordveovisDec 26, 2008
INCORRECT. iTunes was the largest dristributor of music last year. PERIOD!!! people buy CDs because they are convenient sometimes... either they cant d/l the music, haven't tried yet, dont know they can, or likely cant burn a CD. Most ppl are fine with digital distribution. it is soon to become the way of the future of alot of industries.
felixschlangFeb 20, 2012
What a GREAT blog! Thank you for sharing your thoughts. There is much truth in your words. I will spread it.