RIAA explains why they're cracking down on students
 

Yet this is about far more than the size of a particular slice of the pie. This is about a generation of music fans. College students used to be the music industry’s best customers. Now, finding a record store still in business anywhere near a campus is a difficult assignment at best. It’s not just the loss of current sales that concerns us, but the habits formed in college that will stay with these students for a lifetime. This is a teachable moment — an opportunity to educate these particular students about the importance of music in their lives and the importance of respecting and valuing music as intellectual property.

http://insidehighered.com/views/2007/03/15/sherman

Not to mention the fact that a large chunk of the bittorrent and file-sharing world resides on these campus servers.

Hey, you read Fark too? Cool.

I'm pretty sure these kids won't still be downloading music when they are in their 30s.

I count three. One isn't doing so well (but honestly, never has), the other expanded into books and other nonsense (and may have scaled back) and the other, an indie record store where the clerks know their stuff, still throws in a free promo album into your order every now and again.

All three are in a college campus. Like, not nearby. In. (There's university property on at least two sides).

I thought it had more to do with teaching students about how giant corporations have no problem crushing people. :hscratch:

There are about a half-dozen 'record' stores close to the OSU campus. I just bought three CDs from one less than half an hour ago. :shrug:

Why doesn't the RIAA work with ISPs to block sites that offer stolen music? Probably easier than going after the individual people.

I wonder how easy it is to find people individually in this age of wireless connections. My roommate and I had no less than four wireless signals from different places in our old apt. We live by a Panera bread and can get that signal pretty decently.

The number of people downloading music illegally is irrelevant. The number of people illegally downloading music they would have otherwise purchased is the only significant number. I've downloaded plenty of stuff that I would have never, ever purchased. In some cases, I've discovered music I like and gone on to legally purchase merchandise from these bands (meaning income for them and the RIAA that would have never happened without my "illegal" activities). Of course, they don't want to acknowledge that, they just want to pretend that every single thing you download is lost revenue for them. Which, of course, is total bullshit.

Oh, come on, Numanoid. Let's be real. You mean to tell me that if you could get a new album online by a band you like for free, you'd say no and go out and legally buy the CD? Really?

And I'll bet if Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan showed up at your home, you'd shut the door and go make love to your wife.

:lol:

Have they considered that college record stores are closing up because college music has turned to shit? While it was always quirky, college radio gave exposure to a lot of great bands over the years. R.E.M., the cure, punk. The list goes on and on. Sadly, those days are over, and they're not coming back.

And PopcornTreeCt is right, these kids won't be buying music when they're thirty because they won't be music fans.

I know I do. I tend to always download everything with most of it being music I never would have bought. The bands I like I do go out and buy. The music I download I never burn to CD and only use on my Ipod which I listen to at work and even then I listen to more podcasts. If I like an artist enough I buy the CD to use in my car.

I do.

If I like an artist I try and buy their CDs and attend their concerts. I download music here and there, but I collect concert bootlegs from bands who encourage fans to exchange music...so I see mp3's as an extension of 'taping'.

-p

Trying to claim some of these distinctions... "well, I never burn it to a CD" or "I see mp3s as an extension of taping"... just illustrates the point. If you download a track without a license, you are stealing that work. You can pretty it up however you'd like, use whatever justifications that work for you -- but it's still copyright infringement, and it's still illegal.

(And let me stress that I am not free from sin. I download music and share files with friends all the time. But I don't try and pretend that what I do is morally justified.)

Not this again. Throw the moral questions out. They're irrelevant. The issue is that the music industry is struggling and they consistently try to blame file sharing instead of examining the reality. The industry is ridiculously bloated and inefficient and the over-corporatization of the radio has strangled nearly all the quality out of the airwaves. Meanwhile, competing industries like film and television have harnessed emerging technologies and are succeeding much better at evolving and capturing limited disposable income. When someone can get an uber-edition DVD with hours of special features for not much more than a CD that may have one single on it that doesn't suck, the music industry loses. There is great music out there worth buying, but the public doesn't know about it, and as long as the RIAA refuses to change and continues to blame their problems on the Internet instead of leveraging its amazing promotional potential to their benefit, they're going to keep struggling. People love to get on their high horse and argue the morality and legality of file sharing, but you could shut down the Internet entirely, and it wouldn't make a dent in the music industry's real problems. In fact, it would probably just hurt them even more, as the only good music I've found in pretty much the last decade has come from exposure generated by file sharing, and that's hundreds of CDs and concert tickets that never would have come from the stale, generic, uninspired Clear Channel clones on the FM dial.

Let me guess -- file sharing is the reason people don't go to the theater anymore too?

das

I have to agree with das. The music being downloaded isn't new stuff, it's the stuff from the 70s + 80s and some 90s which is a bitch to find in record stores.

das, your whole argument boils down to, well, music sucks, and the music industry sucks more. That's not a rational defense -- that's a justification. And lordwow, I am a bit perplexed by your statement -- the music being downloaded isn't new stuff? People aren't downloading Justin Timberlake and Shakira on bittorrent? That's a bizarre statement.

Look, as I said, I illegally download music, primarily from friends and MP3 blogs. I also buy music online via iTunes and eMusic. I haven't bought a CD in ages. Am I proud of what I do? No, but I don't try and pretend that I feel some kind of moral outrage that somehow excuses my behavior. What I am doing is wrong -- I know that -- but at least I recognize the illegality of my actions.

And there is just no question that file sharing hurts music sales. That's pretty well documented. das, if you could download a feature-length movie in 5 minutes, then yeah, it would hurt ticket sales as well. Right now, the movie-going experience is superior to the downloaded experience, but if that were to change, the movie industry would suffer as well.

Bah, fuck the record industry. Give people a way to buy direct from the artist at a reasonable price. I'd much rather give 5 bucks to the artist directly than give 20 to the record label and have the band see 50 cents.

The industry is just grasping at straws here, a last ditch effort because they haven't been able to keep up with the changing technologies. They still want to sell CDs when no one is buying... and people aren't just not buying because they are illegally downloading... they aren't buying because hard media is no longer what people want.

WAKE UP!

Yes.

I do it all the time. And I usually go the artist's shows at least once.

I'd buy more if they were cheaper. I truly don't understand it. Every week stores like Best Buy and Circuit City offer many hit DVDs for less than $9.99 Why can't they do that with music? Why can't they simply sell CDs for $5.00 instead of continually bitching at kids for downloading them? I guarantee more people would buy CDs if they made them cheaper. Also, I don't understand when these sites sell MP3s there's always a catch to it. Napster can only play on Napster players, Itunes can only plan on Itunes, etc.

Sell new CDs for $4.99 and the music industry might actually save themselves. They need to face reality. They made a shitload of money because they controlled the medium over the last several decades. Well, they no longer have that control anymore. They need to grow up and start selling their media to be competitive with their competition. The more they pressure, the more they will get resistance.

My wife and I are on different sides of the spectrum. If I couldn't illegally download I just wouldn't hear it, I'd never buy and it wouldn't effect me in the least. My wife would go out and buy but she's manly into older stuff but she would have to hear a few singles from the CD before she would buy it. How many CD's get around to having second or third singles anymore?

I also don't understand how CD's were $13-$15 back in the 80's and are now $18 and more? What has changed with the technology that has made it a more expensive medium? Surely disc cost and pressing costs have gone down.

Having just graduated recently, I can tell you that the reason downloading is so high is for one reason: people like free shit.

You can dress it up all you want, but you're not Robin Hood fighting the man when you download the latest Pussycat Dolls album.

Albums are already cheap on iTunes. You can bitch about DRM and quality but I can guarantee that people who are downloading MP3s, don't care about that.

As for the argument that 70s and 80s music is hard-to-find and that's what's been downloaded is extremely laughable. Led Zeppelin is real hard to find...

There's no great political statements being made by most people. They just like free shit.

Be glad you guys aren't buying CDs in New Zealand. Most all new albums here cost 35-40 New Zealand dollars. That is about $25-30 US. I will say, and I'm not ashamed to admit this, that price is a detering factor for me. In the states I would go to a local shop or Best Buy and buy several CDs every week. Here it would cost me over $100 (US) to buy 4 CDs. No way can I afford that.

I don't think anyone is trying to say downloading is legal and ok. Everyone knows it is not legal. And? What next?

Everyone knows downloading is here to stay. It doesn't matter if you are honest and "up front" about it or "justify" it. The question is, what is next.

The record industry has every right to go after every single individual who has every downloaded before. It is their right. But as we all know rights are not without consequences. The discussion that is being made by most and I think a reasonable one is: is the record industry going to save itself by going after those that download music or would it be better served by finding a solution and working with the new technology?

You and I and whoever can argue on one side or the other. The record industry has the final say. But I agree with most. The industry better "choose wisely". There could be very serious consequences.

I'd love to see a macroeconomic model for music publishing -- leverage the purchasing power of hundreds of millions of consumers with the cost savings from eliminating production and distribution. There is no reason why you should not be able to legally download a full CD for $5 or less, or buy an individual song for 50 cents or less.

I do see the major labels declining in importance, since modern technology means that anybody can produce, record and distribute a very sophisticated and polished collection of songs. The RIAA would be smart to call an international conference to come up with practical ways to take advantage of this new medium, this new storefront.

Having said all of that... even today, I still see a lot of people wasting a lot of time trying to justify illegal downloading. Sure, the RIAA is evil, the labels are evil, CDs are overpriced, yadda yadda... but so what? File that under the category of "two wrongs don't make a right".

I'm not making any justifications, but I can tell you that I've discovered some of my all-time favorite bands by downloading their tracks on P2P networks. Flogging Molly, Dropkick Murphy's, Pete Philly and Perquisite, etc...

And once I find a band I like, I do support them by purchasing t-shirts, cds, etc... directly from their websites.

I haven't bought a CD in a store for years, however.

Two wrongs don't make a right, but you have to consider the impeding circumstances which create an environment where piracy is the answer. If you track consumer products and their legal and illegal entities, you discover that price was governing factor. Hell, I made copies of my cassettes when I was in high school and gave them to my friends and my friends gave me copies of their music. But what was interesting, is that I STILL bought the official copy at the store because since I liked the music so much, I wanted the cassette case labeling print, the inside jacket, and a better quality version. I suppose these days you can print up your own sleeves and jackets as they are sometimes scanned and available, but still, that's a pain in the ass. I think most consumers will in fact buy the original but the price has to be low enough to justify it. Otherwise, we will listen to our MP3 versions which sound ok.

But let's be honest. Since the digital age is already here and downloading free stuff is king, the music industry is going to need to find another way to make money. They simply will lose at attempting to recoup their "losses" by taking people to court. They cannot keep up with the downloading and sharing. In other countries, the RIAA equivalents are realizing this.

The music industry will have to, for example, make more money on the tours, product promotions, and other aspects of the recording artist. The music industry is going to need to come up with more creativity to keep their product worthy of purchasing an original version.

Maybe the music industry can start REWARDING those who buy the legit copies. This is another issue I have. They don't reward the people who are doing things right. They only punish the people who break the law. Why not have a system where a person buys a CD and they get their next one free with a one-time unique code inside the CD jacket or something. And maybe the music industry can put something inside the label that says, "Hey, we really appreciate you buying this original copy. It means a lot to us..."

The music industry is it's own worst enemy. They have tried to squash digital formats ever since CDs rolled out (they originally wanted to price the CDs at $50.00 a piece and force it to be a rental only business so if people did copy the music it would be onto inferior tape). Instead of embracing the digital age, they try to shut it down.

Allofmp3.com was the ideal website to show how music should be distributed in our day and age. While the website is legal in Russia, outside of Russia the legality of it all is some confusing grey zone, but charging per download on the basis of bitrate makes sense and they pay royalties to the record companies out of that (at least they claim to do so...there is debate on both sides about that, but getting on to my point.) The biggest legal site here, ITunes, charges a flat rate per song, and it's not cheap. Sorry, but a dollar per song is not cheap compared to the pennies per song Russian sites can charge. And, in some cases, it's prohibitive if you want to download an entire CD rather than going out to buy the CD.

And CD prices...they have not come down since they rolled out nearly a quarter of a century ago. In fact, I've seen new CDs even at discounted sites like amazon.com go for nearly 20.00. Meanwhile, we see video games and DVDs that have been out for a while marked down to ridiculously cheap prices all the time. If major studio DVDs can get marked down to ten bucks or less, then why not music? Oh, that's right, the record industry is it's own worst enemy.

So instead of getting with the times, record companies continue to charge high prices, support legal downloads at insanely high prices, and attack their own customers to "teach" them a "lesson" at an early age. A lesson in corporate greed, no doubt.

They wonder why DVD sales rose so high and music sales dropped...it's not downloads. Hell, I bet movie downloads are just as prevalent as music downloads yet DVD sales remain to be a good business. That's because the movie studios let the prices drop on DVDs and they actually offer some great material to go with the prices.

And I don't blame the music either. Corporate pop/rock does suck, but there is more great music out there now than I've heard in a while. The fact it doesn't get radio air play is a shame, but great stuff is out there.

yes and yes.

I'll bet dvd downloading is nowhere near as prevalent. A small part of that is because of the size of the files, imo, but the largest reason is the price, as you said. At $10, I'll blind buy a lot of dvds that I don't know much about. At $20, I won't blind buy a single cd. I'll listen to the snippets on Amazon, and if I am still intrigued, I'll borrow it, etc. before deciding to buy. But I use to blind buy a lot of music when it was cheaper. Not anymore. Still blind buy a lot of DVDs, and the difference is price.

How's the air up there? :lol:

Bootlegs are legal recordings made by fans.

As for commercial stuff that is ripped......I'm not saying it is legal, but i'm saying the way it is currently setup is wrong.

-p

I have a rule of not spending more than ~$10-12 for a CD, with the exceptions being CD+DVDs and independant recordings/bootlegs. I don't listen to most main stream music so it is a bit easier, but I still can't see buying a crap CD for $18, liking 3 songs, and being ok with it. I can just buy through iTunes.

-p

I'm in a similar boat. Aside from established bands I've been following for years now, most new music I find out about is through downloading music videos (since I can't get Fuse over here). If I find it interesting, I'll look for the single on itunes, etc and pay .99 for it. Half the time I can't even find that. Just through vids alone though, I've gotten hooked on Coheed and Cambria, Skindred, Modest Mouse, Franz Ferdinand and a few other bands -- In some cases I have ordered CDs from Amazon for them, but most of them, I've gone and bought whole albums off itunes. Itunes really filled the convenience niche for me -- I hear something, I like it, I go ahead and buy it right then and there -- I don't have to drive to the mall and hope that they're actually carrying that CD in stock at Best Buy or FYE or anything else (chances are that they aren't).

What's frustrating right now for me is the limited supply on itunes -- due to international licensing crap, I can't go and purchase legit (and conveniently) singles to try out different foreign bands like I would for *most* domestic releases. I just have to take the plunge and purchase the CD at cdjapan/yesasia/etc. or wade through crap on other programs hoping to get a decent d/l -- just for a sample. Still, I may end up paying a little more than a US CD price on yesasia (with free shipping), but there's a good chance that my Japanese disc includes a dvd of music videos or something else in addition.

Either way, I think I purchased from the college cd store once or twice during 4 years of college -- not that I went out of my way to purchase from other cd stores either at that time. It just wasn't worth paying $5+ more than I could get on Amazon just for the convenience of them being there, and even for something OOP, I could almost certainly get it at half.com for a fraction of the price.

Absolutely.

These arguments have been re-hashed here so many times in the almost 6 years I have been posting here. What I vividly recall are the plethora of people who bitched and moaned about CD prices and having to buy a whole CD when they just wanted one song, and how they would pay if there was a good way to get just one song, etc.

Then iTunes comes out and the same friggin' people complained about having to pay a dollar for a song and continued to defend illegal downloading of music anyway. What it boils down to is that some people are going to download for free no matter what because they like to.

If the RIAA had gotten outlets like iTunes and Zune in place a couple of years faster than they did instead of letting an entire generation get used to downloading whatever they wanted for free over a period of several years, it might have made a big difference.

They really only have 2 choices now. Ignore those who choose not to pay for intellectual property, or go after them and the Internet infrastructure that facilitate their downloads.

Led Zepp, yes. But what about Honeymoon Suite, Bel Canto, Romeo Void, etc. Pretty much impossible to find in a B&M.

OTOH, iTunes has all of them, in the highest quality available, for a buck a song.

To the best of my knowledge, I've never downloaded a song illegally. About the only 'illegal' music I own is if someone makes me a mix cd or burns me a copy of something they think I'd like. If it's the latter, I'll always buy the album if I enjoy it. That said, every time I hear the RIAA talk about piracy, it makes me want to stop buying cds entirely and switch over to obtaining all of my music illegally.

Sure, music piracy has probably cost the record industry some money. Certainly not the massive amounts they claim, but I'm open to the idea that it's lost them some undefinable amount of revenue. I'm also glad to accept the fact that downloading a song is 'stealing' and, as such, is wrong. That said, the bastards bought legislation that allows them to sue for $150,000 per downloaded song. That's just fucking absurd. As long as they have that kind of disproportionate leverage to use against people, I will be aggressively anti-RIAA, as I think the punishment the government allows them to inflict on illegal downloaders is 1,000 times more immoral than the act of actually illegally downloading some music.

Oh, and I was on the campus of my alma mater this weekend. All three of the small record stores that I used to frequent when I attended there were still plugging right along.

<i>Mod note: since this is about music/music industry I'm moving it to the Music Forum. If you want to turn it into a political discussion though let one of the Mods there know and they can move it to the Political Forum.

thx
</i>

I'm not defending or justifying anything. As I made very clear in my post, I think the moral questions are irrelevant. The music industry's problems aren't because of file sharing. It's really that simple.

As for it being documented that file sharing hurts music sales, that's impossible. No study can accurately account for the viral word of mouth that the Internet creates. I'd estimate that I've spent thousands of dollars in the past decade from interest generated solely from "illegal" file sharing. Hell, after our DVD Talk Mix Tape Project, I went out and bought 4 new CDs. No study can account for these things, and they're not going to try because it doesn't suit their purpose, which is to distract from the true problems. That's not a "justification" or a "defense" -- it's just reality. The RIAA can demonstrate that the upper 0.0001% of artists who are heavily promoted to the point of complete saturation are losing revenue because of file sharing, but they cannot demonstrate that the industry as a whole is losing revenue for that reason. The industry <i>is</i> losing revenue, but if file sharing is a source of some of that loss, it is an incredibly small slice of the pie. My gut tells me that it's a wash, but I can no more prove it than they can refute it.

Again, I repeat, I'm neither defending nor justifying anything. I'm simply irritated that an industry which is clearly struggling continues to waste billions of dollars on a faux moral crusade that won't do shit to solve its problems. In the meantime, both the public and the majority of artists continue to lose.

I don't use iTunes -- I prefer to own the CDs -- but isn't it incredibly successful?

das