[bootlegga]

Lemmy Lemmy:

BINGO! That's it exactly. Except in 2012, that applies to music too. With current technology, no one will buy it (the song) if in order to hear it they'd have to pay the record company a fee. File sharing has lowered the market price of a song to $0. The song is worth nothing. Music no longer has economic value in recorded form. The equilibrium price of an mp3 file is $0. You can pass any goddamn law you want, you won't alter the equilibrium price established by the market.

Not only that, but with the distribution costs at ZERO too, it's now possible to find so many old songs that were next to impossible in the days of cassettes and CDs.

BTW, the book industry is next - and the industry is doing all it can to kill e-books. Books still have value, just not the $19.99 to $29.99 the big six publishers want to charge. It one of the reasons e-books are taking off. Authors can actually make more selling an e-book on their own for $4.99 than they can selling a hard copy through a publisher for $10.99 (paperback) or $19.99 (hard cover).

Lemmy Lemmy:

Don't we measure benefits as NET benefits? The entire system, the entire music industry, is better for musicians now than before file sharing. They're not giving their creation away. They're just distributing it differently. The artists are getting the whole pie instead of the paper-thin slice the record companies used to give 'em. Someone should name the newest file sharing platform Robin Hood because that's what this technology is for musicians.

[Tricks]

Why are people calling this stealing? Is stealing denying something they never had?

If I download a movie, I'm denying the company their profit. I'm not stealing it from them. They aren't losing their profit, they're not losing their product. If I download a movie it's generally because I want to see if I like it and I don't want to spend 10-20 dollars on it. If I do, I often buy it. If I wasn't able to download this movie, I would never buy it.

[Tricks]

Also, GOP actually got it right...

[PublicAnimalNo9]

bootlegga bootlegga:

BTW, the book industry is next - and the industry is doing all it can to kill e-books. Books still have value, just not the $19.99 to $29.99 the big six publishers want to charge. It one of the reasons e-books are taking off. Authors can actually make more selling an e-book on their own for $4.99 than they can selling a hard copy through a publisher for $10.99 (paperback) or $19.99 (hard cover).

A while back I mentioned a writer that had his work put on the internet without his permission. His attitude was "as long as someone is reading my work, that's good enough for me".
Funny thing is, it didn't hurt his bottom line. Even funnier, ultimately he set up his own site where people could d/l his books for free or buy them. And despite what the idiots behind PIPA/SOPA would have you believe, people still paid for them.

Another way to look at it is from a marketing pespective called a "loss-leader".
Think of a single as a consumer good. You sell it for way below market value(or give it away even) to tempt the consumer to purchase more of your products.
In this example, the "more of your products" would be the entire cd.

If we take a look at how the record companies compensate the artists, the artist is lucky if they receive as much as $1 for each $15-20 cd sold.
Now, since the industry has pegged the going rate to d/l a purchased single song at $1, the artist(if they receive any royalty from the d/l) would likely be getting one cent or less per d/l.
So here we have an industry that has pegged the value of a song at $1/download. Yet if I d/l it from an "unapproved" souce ie:free, the value of that song suddenly increases by several tens of thousands? And to top it off, this is supposedly to "protect" the artists? That's the biggest load of bullshittedy bullshit I've ever heard.

[DrCaleb]

Lemmy Lemmy:

Smacle Smacle:

Before, the record companies had an agreement with the musicians and the consumers. Now, the consumers are screwing over the record companies to try to help the musicians.

The difference? The one where everyone gets what they've bargained for, fair and square, is legal, moral, and fairly negotiated. The one where the consumers screw over the record labels and in turn the musicians is illegal, immoral, and unfair to the binding agreements (contracts) that were negotiated before hand.

It sounds more to me like you think we should subsidize the record company at the expense of the artist and the consumer. I'd rather remove the parasite from the equation.

Why do record companies need their outdated business models legislated into profitability?

$1:

There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back. Robert A. Heinlein "Life-Line" (1939)

[PublicAnimalNo9]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

$1:

There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back. Robert A. Heinlein "Life-Line" (1939)

Damn, Heinlein actually managed to "pre-zing" the recording industry.

[Public_Domain]

[Dragon-Dancer]

Thanos Thanos:

You got that right. For all their villainy the record companies acted as a necessary and vitally important filter that kept the market, especially commercial radio and the music video channels, from being flooded with unlistenable crap. Even the alternative acts had to at least demonstrate some technical and musical proficiency to get an opportunity to press an album or a single. And sadly it's no longer this way. What should have be left behind in someone's parent's basement or garage automatically goes to the internet. If it gets enough hits on YouTube it makes money for something that doesn't even remotely deserve it.

I have to disagree with this. Tastes vary widely and what is and is not deserving of distribution is pretty much where it belong right now for the very first time. In the hands of the people who want to listen to it. If it's terrible it may not have wide appeal but it's still there for people to decide. The only difference now is that you don't have someone telling you what is and is not good enough for you.

Thanos Thanos:

Rock 'n' roll is now functionally dead because of this effect. And pop music has been overwhelmed by a horde of ridiculous pop-sluts that make Madonna look like Luciano Pavaroti in comparison as far as simple talent is concerned. The slaves might have been freed from the record label planatation but they're really only burning down the countryside and literally destroying what it took the last forty or fifty years of rock and pop music to build. As a lifelong listener I can't think of a single moment in my lifetime (not even from the darkish days of the disco era or the 1980's Britpop inundation) where mass music has been in such a deplorable state of basic quality or listenability. It's disgusting and beyond tragic to see things come to such a sorry state.

This is yet another call that something is dead, the kind of call that seems to come up every generation about what everyone is listening to now. The internet has been a huge boon for me over the years in finding that the styles and music I used to love are not dead but instead more vibrant than ever even if that means looking a bit further afield to find it. Also in discovering an evolution into styles I would never have otherwise known about.

[Public_Domain]

[DrCaleb]

Mr_Canada Mr_Canada:

Politicians in Poland protest the signing of ACTA...

Love that!

[bootlegga]

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

bootlegga bootlegga:

BTW, the book industry is next - and the industry is doing all it can to kill e-books. Books still have value, just not the $19.99 to $29.99 the big six publishers want to charge. It one of the reasons e-books are taking off. Authors can actually make more selling an e-book on their own for $4.99 than they can selling a hard copy through a publisher for $10.99 (paperback) or $19.99 (hard cover).

A while back I mentioned a writer that had his work put on the internet without his permission. His attitude was "as long as someone is reading my work, that's good enough for me".
Funny thing is, it didn't hurt his bottom line. Even funnier, ultimately he set up his own site where people could d/l his books for free or buy them. And despite what the idiots behind PIPA/SOPA would have you believe, people still paid for them.

Another way to look at it is from a marketing pespective called a "loss-leader".
Think of a single as a consumer good. You sell it for way below market value(or give it away even) to tempt the consumer to purchase more of your products.
In this example, the "more of your products" would be the entire cd.

If we take a look at how the record companies compensate the artists, the artist is lucky if they receive as much as $1 for each $15-20 cd sold.
Now, since the industry has pegged the going rate to d/l a purchased single song at $1, the artist(if they receive any royalty from the d/l) would likely be getting one cent or less per d/l.
So here we have an industry that has pegged the value of a song at $1/download. Yet if I d/l it from an "unapproved" souce ie:free, the value of that song suddenly increases by several tens of thousands? And to top it off, this is supposedly to "protect" the artists? That's the biggest load of bullshittedy bullshit I've ever heard.

I know Neil Gaiman is one of those writers;



He's actually in favour of people putting his stuff online because it BOOSTS his sales, in some cases by as much as 300%!

[PublicAnimalNo9]

bootlegga bootlegga:

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

bootlegga bootlegga:

BTW, the book industry is next - and the industry is doing all it can to kill e-books. Books still have value, just not the $19.99 to $29.99 the big six publishers want to charge. It one of the reasons e-books are taking off. Authors can actually make more selling an e-book on their own for $4.99 than they can selling a hard copy through a publisher for $10.99 (paperback) or $19.99 (hard cover).

A while back I mentioned a writer that had his work put on the internet without his permission. His attitude was "as long as someone is reading my work, that's good enough for me".
Funny thing is, it didn't hurt his bottom line. Even funnier, ultimately he set up his own site where people could d/l his books for free or buy them. And despite what the idiots behind PIPA/SOPA would have you believe, people still paid for them.

Another way to look at it is from a marketing pespective called a "loss-leader".
Think of a single as a consumer good. You sell it for way below market value(or give it away even) to tempt the consumer to purchase more of your products.
In this example, the "more of your products" would be the entire cd.

If we take a look at how the record companies compensate the artists, the artist is lucky if they receive as much as $1 for each $15-20 cd sold.
Now, since the industry has pegged the going rate to d/l a purchased single song at $1, the artist(if they receive any royalty from the d/l) would likely be getting one cent or less per d/l.
So here we have an industry that has pegged the value of a song at $1/download. Yet if I d/l it from an "unapproved" souce ie:free, the value of that song suddenly increases by several tens of thousands? And to top it off, this is supposedly to "protect" the artists? That's the biggest load of bullshittedy bullshit I've ever heard.

I know Neil Gaiman is one of those writers;



He's actually in favour of people putting his stuff online because it BOOSTS his sales, in some cases by as much as 300%!

I dunno if it's the same guy but that's exactly what I'm talking about. The internet is a huge gold mine for artists of all stripes, be they musicians, writers, drawers, whatever. The internet is bad for the recording companies and possibly publishers, because they can be cut right out of the picture.
SOPA/PIPA is a desparate act by a dinosaur industry that's trying to remain relevant while grasping on to outdated business models.