I guess they can now read your mind

Ever a patron of the arts, Bill Gates muses on how to support artists with lifelong grants (or something) instead of trying to protect their work with digital rights management. Is this a veiled reference to Microsoft “donating” a dollar…

On the other hand Baen who have their free library for people to browse online have grabbed my attention with some truly inspiring authors that without this means of access I might never have looked at at all, now I’m trying to get my local bookstore to order in the Honor Harrington books by David Weber. Jim Baen (who died earlier this year sadly) was very much a visionary in the publishing industry whose midas touch is somewhat legendary in science fiction readership for supporting many of the best future authors to get off the ground, and his understanding of his customers. I know I’m not alone or even unusual in my willingness to buy something I have received through illegal means, ie I bought Evanescence’s “Fallen” after I discovered the group through a P2P download, I bought most of my anime collection only after watching downloaded episodes from the series in question.
When I have the money I buy what I like, when I don’t, or don’t know if I will like something I will download it first to check it out. Yes I know this is illegal, but I do not consider this immoral or unfair to the artist because if I bought something thinking I was going to like it and didn’t I might come to hate that artist and ignore them completely in the future and in some cases that would be truly a shame (an example from my own experience was the number of other people who would no longer touch Linkin Park due to the lack of new songs on Meteora).
In the long term what is most telling about the piracy despite the cry of foul by recording labels and other publishers is instead of the diminishing sales due to piracy they claim at times their overall sales seem to be escalating.

Here in Australia it’s a legal right to make a backup copy of any media for personal use, a fact that seems to truly annoy a lot of companies judging by the fact their anti copying methods are so prevalent and IMNSHO infringing on our legal rights. I own over 10,000 Australian dollars worth of computer and console games I bought new (not bargain bin prices or second hand there is probably another 10K there in truth). I own a DVD recorder which I bought for a single purpose to make backups of my ancient VHS collection which hadn’t been released as DVD, many titles still haven’t (at least not in Australia in some cases). The levy on recordable media annoys me because most of my own usage of CDs and DVDs is for archival or backup purposes, the few burns done of applications I do these days tend to be entirely legal ie my stack of free Linux distro discs.
I know I’m not unique, I know I’m not even rare, so why the heck can’t the companies see the big picture? They might like having pirates as scapegoats, but in the end I feel the only people hurting their sales are themselves, if this $1 per player will be used by UMG against Apple, their iPod and/or the iTunes store than UMG (and anyone else that follows suit) deserves to go bankrupt as far as I’m concerned, the iTunes store has out performed most labels when you consider market impact. iTunes might only be a small part of their overall revenue, but I wonder how many indie artists are at least thinking of using iTunes to get noticed by the global community.

Do people pirate media? Yes.
Do these pirates buy the original media? Not all, but a quite respectable percentage do.
So why do the big companies complain? IMO it seems so they can justify the unrealistic prices they put on a lot of media when it is released. Some people even believe them.

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Since Apple makes very little profit on the iTunes store, Apple loses more prestige and convenience for its customers than money.

Realistically, UMG would not sell just as much. They’d sell some more CDs, but some of the sales would go to other labels online, some replaced by piracy, and some just not happen. Distribution and convenience matter.

Apple has real leverage here because it delivers real cash. Without it, UMG has to go back and cut budgets, close labels, drop artists, and layoff people.

And the $1 is just the camel’s nose under the tent. I’m sure the labels think they should have most of Apple’s profits.

I love the way they talk about how their revenues are down: like somehow they’re entitled to a certain level of our cash in perpetuity. Yes artists should control and get compensated for their work. But middlemen have no such inherent rights–they need to add value or die. The bad old days of few options for artists and consumers made them fat, lazy, corrupt and arrogant.

Oops. Digressed into rant.

Of course P2P traffic represents a huge chunk of internet traffic, it doesn’t take many users downloading season 5 of 24 at 8Gb a pop to dwarf all the of the ordinary web page impressions! The internet is mainstream, but the majority of internet users are either unaware, uninterested, confused by or afraid of P2P downloading. We’re talking about grannies, mothers, office workers, school kids, not just students and techies.

r.pad is spot on. When I was at university, we had high speed internet, and it was the early days of P2P, the wild west. Anyone could download music - it was easy, unrestricted, unchallenged and fast. Plenty of songs were cbeing downloaded, but plenty more CDs were being bought. It isn’t a matter of honesty, it’s purely about convenience, laziness. To some it’s easier (and more fun) to spend the time required to get to grips with P2P, others enjoy shopping for CDs and find it easier to get their music that way. And plenty more will do both.

Now that I’m an adult (arguably) I can afford the music I want. There are zero pirated songs on my iPod. Most of the songs are burned from CDs I own. There’s a decent portion of songs and videos I purchased from iTunes as well. More and more I find myself purchasing from iTunes. I’m starting to think that physical media is just stupid; I rather waste space on my iPod and PC hard drive instead of space in my apartment.

Ranjit

See my post on the subject here: http://www.mathoda.com/archives/86

What I do is I buy music streight for the bands - if they offer it ofcourse. If the music industry goes down it, well, that’s fine by me. They do not make the music, people do. And the people who do make music would be much better of without them.

Sorry for getting a bit of topic, but the music industry has been stealing from the artists for decades now. I felt somebody had to point this out. Do some research about the contracts offered to the artists and what they actually mean and you will see my point.

Sure, ITunes represents 80% of the pie now but that number would quickly be replaced by any number of distribution outlets if Apple ceased to exist. They have very little leverage in any negotiation with rights holders. Sure, the sales are nice but the right to be able to sell the songs is a much larger trump card.

Why do people assume Apple renegotiate’s every year? The first round of deals was for 2 years, and the second round the term was undisclosed but much likely probably longer.

As for thinking this precedent has any weight, it doesn’t. UMG says, “Well, Microsoft paid it.” Apple says, “We represent 80% of all digital sales, are the #3 distributor of music (soon to happen) of any media (hard or digital), we sell several million tracks per week.”

Oms final statement is brilliant and deserves repeating: “If Apple had to pay at least $1 per device for every iPod sold over past [five] fiscal years, its cost would be $62 million at minimum: or about one more song per device [or 12.4 million per year or .2 songs per year]. If music industry cannot sell [two-tenths of an] additional song to consumers [per year] (and has to blackmail for more money) then, you as a business, have lost grip over your core competency.” [Revised for accuracy.]

Or more appropriately consider the varying degrees of leverage if Microsoft somehow, miraculously sold as many Zunes in year one as Apple has sold over five years: MS nets $62 million for UMG, Apple nets .65 (% given to studios per track sold) x 1,000,000,000+ x 1/3 (the % of the market UMG represents) = $216,666,666+. That makes Microsoft’s/UMG’s leverage equal to 28% of Apple’s share to/leverage over UMG presuming that Microsoft can equal Apple’s market over 5 years in one year. Absurd.

Microsoft’s current monopoly was created by forcing anti-competitive arrangements on their partners. Why would they ever regard this as a bad idea?

It seems like a desperation move by Microsoft even before the battle has begun with Apple or its bribery to make the Music industry feel more comfortable in working with them.