OPINION & EDITORIAL
RIAA casts off logic amid sinking sales
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Also by Jason Smathers:
- Your Christmas gift: Lighten up! (December 13, 2007)
- America in dire need of education on gender identity (December 7, 2007)
- Getting off or going down: Is porn destructive? (December 5, 2007)
- Catholic group deserves funding, at least for now (November 28, 2007)
Related Stories:
- Music industry must tune up to reality (February 6, 2003)
- Misguided music industry at fault for filesharing woes (October 2, 2003)
- Suing fish in a barrel (March 21, 2007)
- Just do it, DoIt (October 9, 2007)
- File swapping 6 feet under? (February 8, 2005)
by Jason Smathers
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Losing sales? Customers leaving in droves? Just sue!
Wrong answer. While the Recording Industry Association of America is blaming file sharing for sinking sales, it might want to look at its own efforts to sell music. Certainly, if people are stealing music in droves rather than buying it, the industry must be making some large mistakes.
First off, the lawsuit tactic alienates customers while driving others to new methods of theft. The RIAA have little means to control other new file-sharing methods. OurTunes is cited in RIAA reports as a new threat. This is because it is an intra-network program. OurTunes can only be accessed by those in a local network. As such, unless your housefellow is actually being contracted by the RIAA, there are no prying eyes. Secondly, options like SendShare allow large groups of people to share songs, albums and box sets with anyone who has the correct link. Then there's the BitTorrent site Pirate Bay, which has survived numerous attempts to shut down its massive database of links to BitTorrent files. Limewire users may be scared off by lawsuits, but anyone with enough patience to surf the web for more than 15 minutes can find a quick loophole out of the recording industry's arms.
Why are these people abandoning the market? Simply put, the industry has failed the consumer in every way — in quality, distribution and access. The industry has become so consumed with increasing profits that the best method of doing that — putting out good music at a reasonable price — has become a lost art.
File sharing doesn't destroy the record industry; it just applies "survival of the fittest" to albums and singles. Good music is downloaded and bought; bad music is downloaded and dumped. In 2000, Radiohead's album Kid A leaked three months prior to its official release. Experts predicted poor album sales with the leak and no singles. It did exactly the opposite. Radiohead became the first British band in three years to top the U.S. album charts. A more recent example is Arcade Fire. Their first album, Funeral, peaked at No. 135 on the U.S. album charts. When their latest album leaked nearly two months before its release date, disaster was predicted again when marketing plans had to be rushed. It debuted two weeks ago at No. 2. People still buy albums, but only the ones they know are good. File sharing encouraged those sales.
The record industry refuses to raise standards of quality in artistry because they're focused on profitable marketing. The Arctic Monkeys may have been right when they said, "There's only music so that there's new ringtones." The industry is concerned with marketing music in ways that sell, which is fine. They are corporations, after all. However, that doesn't mean cultivating artists, but instead shoving flavor-of-the-month artists into whatever commercial niche fits.
The only problem is how it sells. Catchy may sell quickly and easily, but it doesn't have a long-lasting effect. It's easy to get new artists to the top of charts, but it's much harder to keep them there. Quality music stays at the top — Dark Side of the Moon not only spent nearly 1,500 weeks on the Billboard 200, it still sells around 9,600 copies a week in the United States.
Quality music exists, but so does mediocre music. Repetitive, lackluster music still sells — ask Nickelback — but the overall market suffers because of it. So what should they do?
First off, dump terrestrial radio. Considering Sony-BMG got caught paying radio stations to get Audioslave and Bow Wow on the air, radio can't be trusted to play what is demanded. If Clear Channel blankets a radio station with 40 songs all day, every day, some songs are bound to stick. However, it provides options far too narrow for those with Internet or satellite radio. For all intents and purposes, FM radio was the industry's workhorse. By working it the same way in a thicker soil, they've just about killed it. Introduce new and innovative artists through the outlet or bury the horse.
Second, give in to the digital music formats. If the industry is afraid of a complete switch leading to more file sharing, then they should have made it impossible to rip CDs to a computer — something they now claim is copyright infringement. The RIAA is relying on a dying format that is actually easier to share than legally downloaded music, which is encrypted to limit multiple users. The industry needs to switch to digital formats completely, before the death of CDs takes them down as well. Record executives have the opportunity to lead the charge and stop the bleeding, but only if they change paths and dive headlong.
The RIAA lawsuits are the sign of an industry holding on to the old way of doing business. The game has changed, and the players have to switch strategies. Otherwise, consumers and artists will use their new tools — which provide cheaper advertising, recording and distribution — to make music without the old guard.
Jason Smathers (jsmathers@wisc.edu) is a junior majoring in history and journalism.
Anonymous (March 27, 2007 @ 10:33am):
"We'll stop stealing from you when you stop suing us for stealing from you".
Nice. I'm constantly amazed at the lengths people will go through to rationalize their behavior. Stealing is stealing. If you want to steal, go ahead, but please don't try to make excuses for it or paint it as some noble protest of the record industry. You're selfish and immoral and you're stealing. Just admit it and move on.
Anonymous (March 27, 2007 @ 11:24am):
well i think you're wrong but hey its your opion but maybe you should reconsider
Anonymous (March 27, 2007 @ 12:27pm):
Disfuctional markets lose customers to 'black' markets where market factors can interact differently.
Yes we should be in jail for the shit, no I dont care,
Anonymous (March 27, 2007 @ 1:27pm):
I'm 49 yrs old and have a record collection that's tedious to move into a new house. lol Literally thousands of my dollars are in them...1960's thru 1980's. When I download one of those albums or 12" singles which I already have paid for, so I can listen to it in my car on a CD, is that stealing? No. I remember when friends used to share albums all the time. Stealing?
If you think it's stealing, then letting a friend use my fast internet connection to browse for a while would be stealing from my ISP provider as well, or borrowing a book from a friend, etc... It's easy to stand on one's soapbox and be self-righteous, but somewhere along the way I'm sure one has recorded music from a radio or borrowed a friend's music to listen to, or a copyrighted book.
It's the business MODEL the RIAA has that needs to be changed, not forcing me to buy the same music over and over again as technological formats to listen to it have changed.
Anonymous (March 27, 2007 @ 4:03pm):
What you find on the internet qualitywise is usually crap.. I mean: let's say 16/8 tracks tapes are top notch, then vinyl, then cd, then mp3, mp3 is the lowest quality out there. I started downloading tracks, but ended up hunting fleamarkets and online auctions for the cd's.
There is imo still a market for online digital stores, but it has to be quality: lossless files, with all the tags and info (can advertise there too ;)) put a watermark in there, then you can claim the file as property, like we like to do with stuff we pay for.
Who wants to pay a higher price for a less quality digital track that only plays on one player at a time and disappears when your pc crashes?
Anonymous (March 27, 2007 @ 4:30pm):
Ok, to call Nickelback lackluster, but not Arctic Monkeys? I mean, Nickelback sucks, but so do all those other bands that MTV tries to shove down your throat.
Anonymous (March 27, 2007 @ 5:08pm):
File-sharing is the market response to overly restrictive copyright and to advances in digital technology. Copyright terms are too long. Private, non-commercial file-sharing should be decriminalized. Copyright laws need to be reformed and the music industry needs to change their business model.
Anonymous (March 27, 2007 @ 5:34pm):
To the jackass who said "stealing is stealing":
It's not stealing, it's copyright infringement. And then, it's only infringement because the Big Record Cartel got together and lobbied (i.e. bribed) congress to get the law changed in their favor. If you think it's stealing, then using your TiVO or VCR is stealing, too. Catch is that if they went after TiVO or VCRs in 1998 when this law was changed, they'd be run out of town on a rail along with the congress who helped them.
To all the shit-for-brains apologists for the RIAA, infringement is NOT stealing. Just like photocopying pages from a book isn't stealing when you're researching a paper, just like giving an account of a televised NFL game without prior consent of the NFL is NOT stealing, just like song kid singing the Pokemon song on a YouTube video is NOT stealing (who are also being threatened with lawsuits, by the way).
But, even if it WAS stealing, the RIAA is fair game. When I see a fucking Gwen Stefani album for $18 an aisle over from where brand new DVDs sell for $15, I know I'm being gouged. And gouging might as well be stealing, too, if you consider infringement stealing. Two wrongs don't make a right but it sure as hell makes us even, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna just roll over and let some fat corporation rip me off like that without doing anything about it. And the end justifies the means. They need an incentive to change, and losing money to p2p is the way. It'll help artists, consumers and the music industry as a whole in the long run. And that is worth it.
Anonymous (March 27, 2007 @ 7:04pm):
There are already new players arriving that are cutting out the middleman. On SellaBand ( http://www.sellaband.com ) music fans can fund the recording of an album, for every $10 invested you receive a limited edition CD and a share of the profits, which comes from advertising on the site and CD-sales. The best thing is that they let everyone download the music for free.
SellaBand was launched just 7 months ago, and so far there are already 4 bands that have raised enough funds and are now recording their album. And the bigger it gets the better it becomes. I think SellaBand will go a long way, and it won't be just the music industry that will go through these changes.
Anonymous (March 28, 2007 @ 5:28am):
I use to download music tracks of classic oldies from the sixties to late eighties,why?,pretty simple really..because you simply cant buy the music you like I know...I've tried.Now I dont bother downloading because I cant be bothered with aggro that goes on,however I buy my cd's and vynal from amazon and various other outlets that I've found on the net,I've just purchased the album on cd The Who - SellOut and early 70s album I use to have it on vynal but moving house it wwas lost some where in the move,I did find it in Limewire however when played it was some stupid add about download the legal way!!.
I learned the hard way which file formay to download and what not to download, I also learned the hard way what sounded good quality and what was rubbish!,sometimes you'd be made up to find a song tat you've hunted for only to find after download you either got a file of poor quality and half a complete song or a song that was bad quality at the beging and then suddenly jump into another track also bad quality.So at the end of the day you'd end up with a folder with around 20 or less out of 120 tracks downloaded.
Personally I dont think it is stealing,for the following reasons,(A)because it's a usefull tool for locating those hard to find albums and singles that you simpley cant buy in the local stores,(B)For all the bands of the past have a chance for the music to be heard again and someone will say.."Oh T've not heard that since 19?? whatever so if it could be soryed out somehow it will make an ideal promotion machine!,(C) Downloading does not stop the sales of music I've listened to material of poor and middle of the road quality files which has promted me to hunt down the actual album or single.Any how thats how I see things I now have a healthy collection of cd's that I've purchased after downloading because it's what I wanted!,also cd's take up less space than albums and singles.Finally I say if your going to download then go ahead!,I dont any more not because the RIAA frighten me it's lust that I've learned through trial and error finding other routes to purchase my solid goldmusic,I remember when I first purchased The Who-Sell Out a bright red album cover,and inner label with photos and track listing,it cost me
Anonymous (March 28, 2007 @ 10:14am):
For something to be considered stealing, I think you have to actually take something away from someone. In the case of file sharing you only COPY files to your hard drive from someone else.
Anonymous (March 28, 2007 @ 4:51pm):
Well written!!!!
Anonymous (March 28, 2007 @ 5:12pm):
LOL @ (March 27, 2007 @ 11:24am)
Who needs logical reasoning?
Anonymous (March 28, 2007 @ 8:53pm):
Exactly on the mark. Quality survives and enough people are willing to pay for it. As long as any reasonable artist can make a reasonable living, the market works. There is not place for the music industry in this, unless they discover and support talented people. They have as good as stopped that out of the typical corporate greed. At the same time they have dug their own grave, it seems. Good thing, if you ask me, since it means there will be good new music available again in the future!
Anonymous (March 29, 2007 @ 8:29am):
So I guess if you steal crapping music (after all that is all that is out there right now...right) Thats Ok. Just make sure you pay for the good stuff:-p
People will always take free over pay if there is really a very low chance of being caught.
Seems like all the missing creativity in todays music has been redirected into the ridiculous justifications people come up with so they can enjoy some elses hard work and life dreams for free.
No one cares if you do it. Just shut up about it. Don't make yourself out to be an idiot by trying to say it is OK.
Anonymous (March 29, 2007 @ 10:53am):
CD sales are down because Tower Records and others closed their doors.
Tower Records closed down because Wal Mart undercut their prices and they lost sales.
In other words, the RIAA destroyed their own business model. It is exactly the same thing that happens to nearly every retailer that goes up against Wal Mart.
Anonymous (March 29, 2007 @ 10:45pm):
I own 1500 compact discs. Given that the music stores admitted to price-fixing a few years ago, which basically works out them having charged $3-$5 more per CD than they needed to in order to make their profit, I rightly feel as if I have been jerked out of something like 6000 dollars. and that's npt counting the fact that hundreds of these CDs were repurchases of things that I had originally bought as records.
At this point, I feel perfectly justified in downloading whatever I want to, and the small subset of downloads that end up being my favorites, I usually do end up buying on CD anyway.
The point of file sharing to me is that I've heard all 35 of the songs that they are playing repeatedly on the radio already, and I don't like most of them - I'll still pay for music (if it is good enough to pay for) but how can I find out about good new (or old) music if I don't download it and listen to it for myself?
Anonymous (March 31, 2007 @ 11:17am):
note to 8:29 - way to completely miss the point.
Anonymous (April 2, 2007 @ 4:27am):
For those concerned with so called "stealing", will you folks be in line to demand the recording industry recompense those it steals bandwidth from with its p2p poisoning efforts that hit those not even sharing or obtaining a single file ?
What about those it sues and drops the case after driving up huge legal expenses for the victim of their scam ?
Will you put your hand in your pocket to stop that sort of theivery ?
When you can answer yes to the above feel free to call yourself an honest man, otherwise stop abusing those who have decided to opt out of poor quality purchasing methods and poor foresight in delivering solutions for the future that inspire consumers.
Anonymous (April 12, 2007 @ 10:20am):
I disagree with the idea that the industry should dump CDs. Call me old fashioned, but I like to own a physical media. I like the CD cases, I like the little booklets. I always buy my music on CD then rip them.
Anonymous (April 12, 2007 @ 12:00pm):
"For something to be considered stealing, I think you have to actually take something away from someone. In the case of file sharing you only COPY files to your hard drive from someone else."
The RIAA's stance is that you're stealing from them, since if you copy the files, you don't pay the people that did the work to create it in the first place.
I firmly believe that the people who do the work should get paid for it. I also firmly believe that the business model that's been in place for the last 30 years needs to change.
Personally, I find it interesting that in this day and age, where the quality of recordings can be higher than anything that's come before (and done for less cash output), the most widely used avenue of distribution is noisy, lossy files to be used on noisy little headphones.
Anonymous (April 18, 2007 @ 4:24am):
Stealin'...
Mates!
I've owned over 6,000 cd's, thousands of Lp's, hundreds of 45's, 8 trks, cassette's, I even 'ave reel-to-reel tapes...
I've owned thousands of movies too... Rubbish Beta's, terrible Vhs's... I've even have me old crappy RCA vision disks and some not so crappy Laser Disks! I got 'nuff Dvd's to build a bloody house, I do!
I've done me share of lining their pockets, the lot of 'em! Blood sucking monsters!
Bleedin' Beatles! Those bast#rds are rich enough, aren't they? (The "Good" ones are dead now but they died rich, right mate?)
What 'bout the young 'uns!? They make more money in a single day than I 'ave in my whole life time...
An, they ain't the one's that do the sucking! 'tis the corporate buggers, right! The barristers and the corporate carpet suckers, mate's... They's the ones that makes all the money!
I'm bloody-broke mate! Want to know why? 'cause I was stupid enough to put all me money in crap like Lp's, cd's, and rest o' the crap!
I don't 'ave a bloody retirement account, no I don't...
So now, I've listened to so much music... I can tell me mates all 'bout the Monkeys and the bleeding Beach Boys... I can show 'em my bloody Led Zeppelin records, cassette's and cd's...
But ye wanna know why I canna show 'em all me stuff!?
Simple 'nuff mate, I'm too bloody busy working a bleeding job, cause I canna bloody retire!
And when I's gone... The bleedin' stuff's gonna end up at rubbish sale!
Curse the lot of 'em... I hope they rot in hell and be caused to listen to the rubbish, to eternity, they made us listed to, pay to, make baby's to!
Me mates! I's gotta go, 'cause I's gotta work in the mornin' but, know ye what, me little mateys!? I's gonna start some new downloads!... 'Cause now, I canna even buy 'em anymore!
Here bitey, biteys... Come ta old Jeffrey...
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