Still No Proof of the Existence of Bigfoot, Ghosts, U.F.O.s, or Music 2.0

From Register.co.uk:

"I think it was a one-off response to a particular situation," Thom Yorke said of the band's decision last October to let viewers pay what they wanted for digital downloads of the new album "In Rainbows."

"Yes. It was a one-off in terms of a story. It was one of those things where we were in the position of everyone asking us what we were going to do. I don't think it would have the same significance now anyway, if we chose to give something away again. It was a moment in time."

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A Bill of Rights for Songwriters and Composers

Created by ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers

We have the right to be compensated for the use of our creative works, and share in the revenues that they generate.

We have the right to license our works and control the ways in which they are used.

We have the right to withhold permission for uses of our works on artistic, economic or philosophical grounds.

We have the right to protect our creative works to the fullest extent of the law from all forms of piracy, theft and unauthorized use, which deprive us of our right to earn a living based on our creativity.

We have the right to choose when and where our creative works may be used for free.

We have the right to develop, document and distribute our works through new media channels - while retaining the right to a share in all associated profits.

We have the right to choose the organizations we want to represent us and to join our voices together to protect our rights and negotiate for the value of our music.

We have the right to earn compensation from all types of "performances," including direct, live renditions as well as indirect recordings, broadcasts, digital streams and more.

We have the right to decline participation in business models that require us to relinquish all or part of our creative rights - or which do not respect our right to be compensated for our work.

We have the right to advocate for strong laws protecting our creative works, and demand that our government vigorously uphold and protect our rights.

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In the US, 58% of Music Isn't Paid For

From Guardian:

In 2007, there was an increase in the volume of music acquired for nothing and a sharp decline in the amount paid for, according to NPD's annual survey of Internet users.

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Music Piracy is About the Money

If the reasonable logic that follows is accurate, then nothing short of an ISP filtering mandate will save music.

From Chuck Klosterman, Esquire:

Whenever writers try to explain the collapse of the music industry, they inevitably blame the labels themselves; they point out how wasteful and inefficient the corporate structure was at places like Elektra and Chrysalis, and how unfair it is to charge kids so many dollars for a disc that costs pennies to make, and that modern consumers have come to the realization that "music longs to be free." This may all be true, but I'm not sure it's a viable explanation for things like huge layoffs at Def Jam. Lots of industries succeed despite being poorly modeled. What happened is this: Young people needed more money to pay for their rising levels of self-imposed debt, so they unconsciously gravitated toward the first technology that provided a cost-saving alternative. Because four-minute digital-song files are relatively small (and thus easily compressed), ripping tracks for free became the easiest way to eliminate an extraneous cost. It wasn't political or countercultural, and it had almost nothing to do with music itself. It was fiscally practical. It was the first, best solution.

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Chris Castle on WMG's Jim Griffin's ISP Tax

From Music Technology Policy:

Capitulating to the wisdom of mobs:

I view the ACS (alternative compensation scheme), voluntary or involuntary, as capitulation. Supporting these systems means that you have lost confidence that the legal system can enforce laws and that you are going to simply define the problem out of existence by making something that is illegal into something that is legal, the alchemy of mere analytics, the chorus of consultants, the wailing of the amicii, the proselytizing of the professoriate. Boy, I’m glad that they solved that problem.

Agreeing to ACS is like agreeing that the mob is right. And that’s a very, very dangerous step in a democracy.

Sampling mechanism could just as well facilitate filtering:

First, how do you answer the question that artists and songwriters will ask, namely “how much do I get paid?”

One way to divide up that money that advocates often raise is based on some kind of sampling of usage. (Jim’s EFF seems to think this is how ASCAP divides up their revenues.)

This sampling idea is, of course, dangerous ground for the defenders of Grokster at EFF. If you are going to sample peer-to-peer or BitTorrent files in order to divide up that disaggregated chunk of money, you need to identify tracks. That can be done with fingerprint technology, and there are several companies out there with fingerprinting tools. I personally don’t think fingerprinting works very well at the network level, but can work very well at the client level. There would have to be some discussion of how to get at the client.

If you can identify the tracks on P2P systems enough to sample—and this is where you would probably lose the EFF and apologists for piracy--you can identify the tracks enough to block and filter—meaning you could stop illegal tracks from ever getting onto the network in the first place.

Beating a dead horse:

This idea has been vetted, argued, legislated and rejected for a good five years, and actually goes back even further than that in the Internet world. Discussing ACS is like going to Thanksgiving dinner with your crazy uncle who always wants to argue who lost Poland. You get really tired of it after awhile.

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EMI's Ex-Google Merrill Clueless Out of Gate, Offers Platitudes, Panders to Pirates

Cayocosta

Piracy bad, file-sharing okay. The industry's fight against piracy just got harder now that EMI is on record stating that it all depends on how you look at it:

"I'm passionate about data," Merrill said during a phone interview Wednesday with CNET News.com. "For example, there's a set of data that shows that file sharing is actually good for artists. Not bad for artists. So maybe we shouldn't be stopping it all the time. I don't know...I am generally speaking (against suing fans). Obviously, there is piracy that is quite destructive but again I think the data shows that in some cases file sharing might be okay. What we need to do is understand when is it good, when it is not good...Suing fans doesn't feel like a winning strategy."

Try anything and see what sticks - never mind how long this is going to take to deploy (and quantify) and that we might run out of cash first:

More specifically, Merrill said he would see whether a Google ad model will work for music. But he's willing to try music subscriptions and even an ISP fee. Certainly, what came across about what strategies Merrill intends to use is that he's not married to any one idea.

We've already witnessed ten years of failed experimentation, with the looting worse now then ever - systemic and virtually unfettered - yet EMI is keen to embark on a costly super-complication of the distribution of otherwise free content:

"I think there is going to be a lot of different models," Merrill said. "Those are two (subscriptions and ISP fees) you can imagine. I'm not sure that either one of those will be the most dominant model. But they are both interesting. We should try them and see what the data says. Other options will be things like you can imagine supporting music through relevant targeted ads, the Google model. There is a dozen of other things...we should try them all. We should see what the data says and whatever it says, we should follow the data, and follow our users and let them help guide us. We should engage in a broad conversation about art."

Spoken like a true geek department; or, now might be a good time to study the history of Motown, Atlantic, etc.:

"I think it's important to figure out where can record labels add value," Merrill said. "I don't know the answer."

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Corporate Sponsorship: Bacardi, Groove Armada in 360 Deal

From Lars Brandle, Billboard:

Global spirits giant Bacardi has developed a serious thirst for music, via a 360-degree-style deal with British electronic duo Groove Armada.

The integrated marketing deal encompasses recordings, touring and audiovisual content, leading Bacardi global experiential manager Sarah Tinsley to declare: "Essentially we are taking over the role of a record label -- producing the music, promoting new music, and the artist is playing at our events."

"Bacardi doesn't see this as something that they want to earn money from, which is, quite rightly, something a label has to do," Groove Armada manager Dan O'Neil says. "They are looking at it from a point of view of association, and they're getting access to a license to use the music to implement their strategy worldwide."

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Music 2.0 and the New Economy

Don't buy the hype.

From Wikipedia:

New Economy was a term coined in late 1990s by pundits to describe what some thought was an evolution of the United States and other developed countries from an industrial/manufacturing-based wealth producing economy into a service sector asset based economy from globalization and currency manipulation by governments and their central banks. At the time, some analysts claimed that this change in the economic structure of the United States had created a state of permanent steady growth, low unemployment, and immunity to boom and bust macroeconomic cycles. Furthermore, they believed that the change rendered obsolete many business practices. When the stock market bubble burst, analysts soon realized they had been wrong.

A lot of start-ups were created and the stock value was very high where floated. Newspapers and business leaders were starting to talk of new business models. Some even claimed that the old laws of economics did not apply anymore and that new laws had taken their place.

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Report: Japan to Strip Internet for Illegal Downloaders

From Yahoo News:

TOKYO (AFP) - Japanese companies plan to cut off the Internet connection of anyone who illegally downloads files in one of the world's toughest measures against online piracy, a report said Saturday.

Faced with mounting complaints from the music, movie and video-game industries, four associations representing Japan's Internet service providers have agreed to take drastic action, the Yomiuri Shimbun said.

The newspaper, quoting unnamed sources, said service providers would send e-mails to people who repeatedly made illegal copies and terminate their connections if they did not stop.

The Internet companies will set up a panel next month involving groups representing copyright holders to draft the new guidelines, the report said.

Company and government officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the report Saturday.

The actions would be among the strictest in fighting online piracy.

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Pali Research: WMG Upgraded From Sell to Neutral

Music Industry Proposes a Piracy Surcharge on ISPs

From Frank Rose, Wired:

Having failed to stop piracy by suing internet users, the music industry is for the first time seriously considering a file sharing surcharge that internet service providers would collect from users.

In recent months, some of the major labels have warmed to a pitch by Jim Griffin, one of the idea's chief proponents, to seek an extra fee on broadband connections and to use the money to compensate rights holders for music that's shared online. Griffin, who consults on digital strategy for three of the four majors, will argue his case at what promises to be a heated discussion Friday at South by Southwest.

"It's monetizing the anarchy," says Peter Jenner, head of the International Music Manager's Forum, who plans to join Griffin on the panel.

Griffin's idea is to collect a fee from internet service providers -- something like $5 per user per month -- and put it into a pool that would be used to compensate songwriters, performers, publishers and music labels. A collecting agency would divvy up the money according to artists' popularity on P2P sites, just as ASCAP and BMI pay songwriters for broadcasts and live performances of their work.

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Ambulance Chasing

Cayocosta

If Trent Reznor (or anyone else) wants to do it the right honest way, he or she should support piracy and/or condemn the music industry in such a way that provides no opportunity for personal financial gain while doing so. Otherwise, all you have is self-interested, populist bullshit contrived to make money via capitalizing on the hype of the moment - all the while (wittingly or otherwise) selling their brethren down the river.

Irish ISP Taken to Court Over Illegal Music Downloads

From Mary Carolan, The Irish Times:

Four major record companies have brought a High Court action aimed at compelling Eircom to take measures to prevent its networks being used for the illegal downloading of music.

The case is the first in Ireland aimed at internet service providers, rather than individual illegal downloaders.

Eircom is the largest broadband internet service provider in the State.

Latest figures available, for 2006, indicate that 20 billion music files were illegally downloaded worldwide that year. The music industry estimates that for every single legal downloaded, there are 20 illegal ones.

The record companies are also challenging Eircom's refusal to use filtering technology or other measures to voluntary block, or filter, material from its network that is being used to download music in violation of the companies' copyright and/or licensing rights.

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New Music Model for Suckers

Cayocosta

Where once ten or twelve bucks bought as many tunes, thanks to new 'models' we now have the $300 elite collection and/or multi-thousand dollar package including a personal appearance. Offers that unfortunately bilk those most loyal fans while allowing everyone else a free ride - on their generosity.

Brit Gov't: File-Sharing Legislation by 2009

From Lars Brandle, Billboard:

The British government has vowed to take up the fight on illegal file-sharing as part of a multi-stage action plan intended to ensure the prosperity of the country's creative industries.

Should the recording industry fail to break its impasse with Internet service providers on P2P activity by early 2009, the government will take action by means of legislation.

It's one of 26 key commitments for government and industry, published today in "Creative Britain: New Talents for the New Economy."

In the absence of a voluntary solution between rights holders and ISPs, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport report claims that the government "will shortly consult on options for a statutory solution," with a view to implementing
legislation by April 2009.

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