Elbows Music Blog Community

sorry i was downloading someth oh nevrmnd

I don't see how questioning a label reps encouragement and facilitation of piracy warrants being called a douchebag not once but now twice. It'd be a different story if you and your label didn't regularly hire Web Sheriff to disrupt, monitor and occasionally shut down music bloggers who have posted Beggars material.

I personally feel for these tremendous cult artists in folk and blues who are regularly linked to without authorization. Townes widow has been in a years long fight with labels who own and repackage Townes' music any way they see fit. And it's this use of their material without authorization and compensation that most galls me. Especially in the face of this hypocrisy.

Well I am genuinely interested. One of my own commenters has said that once music is officially released it becomes part of culture and therefore any attempt to control or restrict its dissemination is futile and wrong. I don't entirely agree, but there is definitely a kernel of truth in what he says. Most music for years has centred around the process of copying and repeating and re-interpreting and the idea of trying to own a cultural entity in that way does seem a little dubious. Culture is supposed to be a mutual, shared thing, not a thing that other people make and deliver to you in a one-way transaction.

Another stupid argument made by the 'lock down and own everything crowd' is that people need to be incentivised or they will not create. This is fundamentally wrong. Trying stopping people from being creative - it's virtually impossible. Human beings are inherently creative, it's what we do.

Of course, it would be insane to suggest that artists therefore should not and need not be rewarded for their work. No society should fail to support its cultural enterprises because that makes everyone poorer. I am not suggesting that everything should be given away and artists should just be grateful, but current copyright law is about greed, and is not really helping culture develop, it is restricting it.

Even in my own industry (medical device design) people wield intellectual property law like sharks, to the active and considerable detriment of the creative process, to the detriment of patients, to the detriment of the medicine. At the moment in the music industry the copyright laws do not protect the artists so much as they protect the middlemen. As people are finding out, and as the music industry tacitly accepts, a degree of copyright violation is helpful because it propels the material into public awareness, but the laws at the moment don't really reflect this.

The biggest problem really is the combination of threats and hypocrisy. Craig is right, there is inherent hypocrisy in Adam using copyrighted material without recompense, while Beggars use Websheriff to prevent exactly what he is himself doing. Given that the music industry as a whole is engaged in such a massive self-righteousness campaign at the moment, people are on the defensive, the vast majority of music fans are involved in illegal activity to one degree or other so they are a little nervous. Also, it is frustrating that what I am doing as a blogger is often strictly speaking illegal, and yet the same companies who threaten me with lawsuits for sharing stuff are soliciting my attention for their releases at the exact same time. So while Adam points out that there are perfectly reasonable mitigating circumstances behind this complicity on one hand and threats on the other surely, surely you can understand how it can drive people crazy.

Given no-one seems to quite know what they are doing at the moment, and we are all figuring out what copyright means in the 21st Century, the rottweilers seriously need to be put back on the leash until some sort of sensible compromise can be reached.

Need I remind you (to quote squashed)

MATADOR IS COCK-SUCKING GOAT

Craig, on his blog: "thanks for the support on this one, I thought maybe I was in the wrong". You are in the wrong, Craig, are you surprised that your readers supported you on this?!

Calling Adam out on this was unnecessary, and hardly helps further a debate that is really worth having. It seems that all you are trying to do point score. How is the idea of Adam using copyright material to promote a for-profit event any different to more popular bloggers using copyright mp3s and profiting from the BlogAds that they bring in?

Or are you just upset at being called a douchebag?

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RCRD LBLs model is interesting, and if there was some sort of advertising network that in some way gave money to the artists, that could be a way of moving things forward. But as you say, this, and other models, is so complicated, with so many issues that labels are too often made to look like dicks.

There loads more to say, but I guess an important question concerning bloggers is:

If bloggers are making money off of artists, should they accept that the artists they feature should be reimbursed? Or do the hours that they (I/you/we) spend promoting these artists entitle us to make money from the enterprise?

[In terms of the bloggers that make no money, (fluxblog/ said the gramophone) the promotion part is clear, and perhaps not worth debating]

*Also, when the IP laws are being redrawn for the post-internet music world who represents people like fans who don't have a team of lawyers on their side? Or is it liable to just be a bunch of wealthy people getting together and trying to figure out how to protect their investments? How coordinated is this sort of thing? Are the smaller labels basically just left on their own to figure out a way to not go broke, while the big boys (I guess I probably have to include Beggars in this category) try and lock down the copyright laws?*

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here's the reality. if whomever colludes to design the copyright laws in a way that doesn't benefit the market AND the consumer then those laws won't work.

so i strongly feel that it will necessarily be worked out in a way that brings benefit to both.

if whomever colludes to design the copyright laws in a way that doesn't benefit the market AND the consumer then those laws won't work.

I guess so - that's pretty much what we've seen since the internet landed, I suppose.

- current  entertainment-media cartel is NOT compatible with internet era



- they are part of machines that corrupts representational democracy (ie. lobbyists, bribing, money politics)  Remember soundXchnge' vs. internet radio, how they go back and forth haggling ridiculous rate? Observe all IP an internet control proposals.



- Their idea of intelectual property is not in keeping with internet, computer files, data transmission, etc. They are from era of vinyl, 40 yrs ago.



- even if few people in there want to find new IP concept, the inertia of the entire industry won't permit such change. Can't teach old dog new trick.



- The best chance is to accelerate the demise of current system and build new one on top of it.



- observe technological trend, global economy, and geopolitical situation. They are done for. less than 5 years, they all be gone.

nevermind China or Russia. It's dollar value/exchange rate and trade balance.



notice when movie industry tried to pushed around china few months back. The chinese simply ban the entire movie and sale drop to near zero. Few years before they could resort to thuggery, WTO, etc. but now all china has to say "why don't we shut you down and start dumping dollar". End of story.



so that's one aspect of global geopolitics/economy.



Now imagine, 3-4 yrs from now, global economy is flipping after dollar collapse while china and asia in general is in dot.com boom. (ie. just about every kids have their server there)



there isn't a single thing they can do when an angry russian kid decide to create mp3.com clone with server in mumbai, and selling it using chinese base credit card. (or google start making music search engine.)



This is assuming, people online even listening to music that is being offered by current big labels. HIGHLY unlikely ... !!!!



I mean, we all run blogs that post ever so different music by indie labels, and everybody is growing. For most of us, the big labels can drop dead and nobody would care.

....wow.

if anyone really wants a balanced view of what we're talking about here, i would recommend reading AIM's recent manifesto on copyright in the digital age and monetization via supra-distribution and usage economics.

the point here is that we accept how consumption has changed, we want our music to be consumed in as many channels as possible and we want figure out a practical means for getting compensated for the use because we are in the business of creating value from copyrighted works (this is why artists give us the exclusive right to do this). the industry should really stop going after consumer / small-timers and shift its focus toward going after those companies that are benefiting in the market (device manufacturers, PC makers, ISPs, publishers). basically, it might some day make my flub of posting a link to a mixtape all_good.

http://www.musicindie.com/254.asp?sub=General%2520Resources

Second, explicit reliance upon intellectual-property theories will improve conversations between lawmakers and their constituents.  Why should the term of a copyright be extended from the life of the author plus fifty years to the life of the author plus seventy years?  Because the additional time is necessary to encourage additional creativity?  Because authors deserve greater rewards for their labors?  Because the culture would be worse off if works like “Steamboat Willie” were released to the public domain? Why should it be possible to register as a federal trademark the sound made by motorcycles bearing a particular brand – thereby preventing other manufacturers from making motorcycles that sound the same?  Because otherwise consumers will be confused concerning the manufacturers of the motorcycles they are buying?  Because a culture in which motorcycles can be recognized from a distance by the noise they make is better than a culture in which they cannot?  Because employees of the first company deserve a reward for the effort they invested in constructing a muffler that emits a distinctive guttural sound?  By articulating and defending a theoretical rationale for each innovation, Congress (in the first example) or the courts (in the second example) would increase the ability of the public at large or, more plausibly, affected interest groups critically to appraise the change.  Lawmakers, in short, would become more accountable.[97]

I think the real problem in this situation is the disparity of interests between basically the RIAA and everyone else. The RIAA are the most vocal about these issues and hence will probably have the biggest impact on legislation. The problem is that you can basically divide modern music into 2 camps, the RIAA (profits driven) and everyone else. The major league artists don't have any concern for blogs and they do not benefit from them. They use the old business model, and they make money that way, and they could care less if they shut down every blog on earth, because Mariah Carey will still sell 8 million records and sell out MSG, etc. The rest of the musical world (those on the creative edge) are the ones who have seemed to embrace the mp3 blogs and they are the ones who benefit from it. It is a great symbiotic relationship between these lesser known artists and these blogs, with the blogs being a great avenue for these previously unheard of people to get heard and get out there. They would never be heard by anyone otherwise, radio wouldn't play them, and the popular masses won't look beyond their Mariah Carey if that's all they are fed by mainstream media. But the rub lies in that these lesser known artists are not the RIAA. They probably like the current trend, they want their stuff to be heard, they want their stuff to get out there, and to gain a true audience. It is much easier now for bands to really find an audience with these blogs. There is a whole network of listeners and fans wanting to hear good new stuff. But where they like the current trend, again, the RIAA people just see it as losing money, because they get no benefit from the blog, and they don't care about their artists finding an audience, etc., because it is all about the bottom dollar. Their thought process is that every person who downloads an mp3 for free is 99 cents they didn't make. But that's not true, they probably wouldn't have downloaded it anyway. And they would never even comprehend the idea that if someone downloaded an mp3 of a band, they might buy the full album, they might go see them play live, buy their shirts, etc. Nope, all that happened was that someone stole 99 cents from the RIAA. The problem is that either way you solve this problem, either creativity or the RIAA's wallets are going to lose out.

@ # cubikmusik

yup. record labels don't get paid but the songwriters do. with web radio, both record labels and songwriters get paid (record labels learned their lesson).

Right on the effing dot. Their stupidity is so predictable, you can set your clock with it.



http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200805081114DOWJONESDJONLINE000860_FORTUNE5.htm



2nd UPDATE: Warner Music Widens 2Q Loss, Suspends Dividend

Warner Music Group Corp. (WMG) widened its fiscal second-quarter loss and suspended its quarterly dividend as the company continues to struggle with the drop-off in CD sales amid the continued consumer shift toward digital music.

But Chairman and Chief Executive Edgar Bronfman Jr. said Warner Music remains "excited about the long-term prospects for our business" despite the fact that " an uncertain economic backdrop and evolving recorded music industry make a conservative approach to our balance sheet a prudent strategy."

Still, the worse-than-expected loss and dividend suspension helped send the company's stock down 23% to $7 in early trading, reversing about half of its growth since late March. The stock had been on an upward swing following positive investor response to a partnership with News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace.