13 Lies of the Modern Music Industry

I've often felt that we in the music business and the city of Detroit are the canaries in the coal mine.

i just watched a documentary on napster, some things that struck me, primarily the total disregard for artists well being, it was a battle of pirates, meaning napster and the record companies, the record companies had 0 vision, and completely blew it for themselves, napster was just a bunch of kids who had no business savvy, the RC's could have controlled all of it if they'd embraced the idea instead of destroying it, but no, they decided to put their future in the hands of the worst drummer who ever lived lol.

the other thing that struck me, unless i heard wrong, Sean Parker, the secondary guy at napster is the prick who put spotify on the map to continue his seemingly personal vendeta to fuck artists everywhere out of a living.... geez

Didn't the bankers come in after the recording industry could of struck a deal w/ Napster to be the digital delivery service though? I have to think if all the artist had been told that the industry would be like it is today they would have allowed the renegotiation of those contracts. I mean it's basically what is going on now with iTunes, but at that time because Napster had allowed copyright infringement the recording industry had them by the short and curly's, they could of gotten a great deal during that time. 

Now they need to go to Spotify and get a deal done so that everyone is happy, and also that people are being paid what they should be paid. They have leverage, people want streamed music, just like people want the streaming side of Netflix, no one sends off for the DVD's anymore, it's just the streaming they want, it's the future of both the film and music industry. Why not go in now when the demand is there, and simply say, "Spotify, either you pay out the proper royalties, or we pull all the music, let you only play independent artist who WANT to give you the music, and go find or start our own streaming service that will pay those royalties." Man that makes so much more sense than just giving them the content and sitting by while they know the royalty distribution is totally screwed up. I think it's a cash cow, but they have to renegotiate the terms so things turn back around. If everyone paid the $10 per month subscription like they do with Netflix, that would be a giant wad of cash. They have something like 25 million subscribers with only 6 million being the paid service. Just make it all paid, get the royalties correct, and everyone is happy. 

The other thing about this streaming is that unlike iTunes where is al a carte, you get the whole album. I like the idea of people pulling up an artist's new album and hitting play and listening to ALL the songs. I mean at least we get that back, and it pays royalties for all the songs on a record so that all the songwriters are getting paid, not just whoever wrote the singles. 

Here is a quote from their site, and I know people believe they are evil, but really if it went to paid subscriptions, they are right on with this:
"Recently, these variables have led to an average “per stream” payout to rights holders of between $0.006 and $0.0084. This combines activity across our tiers of service. The effective average “per stream” payout generated by our Premium subscribers is considerably higher.

Again, we personally view “per stream” metrics as a highly flawed indication of our value to artists for several reasons. For one, our growing user population might listen to more music in a given month than the month before (resulting in a lower effective “per stream”), while generating far more aggregate royalties for artists. As with any subscription service, our primary goal is to attract and retain as many paying subscribers as we possibly can, and to pass along greater and greater royalties to the creators of the music in our service. Theoretically, another service could generate higher effective “per stream” payouts simply by having users who listen to far less music. We believe, however, that our service and the lives of artists will both be best if the World’s music fans enjoy more music than ever before in a legal, paid manner."

I assume you are referring to the Napster suits back in the 90's spearheaded by Metalica and Dr Dre? Yes your right, prosecution probably should have happened. The problem is much bigger than that now though. As everyone knows, as soon as the US government shut down Napsters servers, downloading still happened as if nothing had changed because there were mirror sites all over the world serving the same protocols. And this is always the case. Make a law in the good ole USA and it means nothing because we are now on an instant global scale.

Here's the only fix I can see, figure out a way to make people want to buy something that they can get for free because no matter how much prosecuting we try to do, the area is too big to police. Nab one and a million more will pop up.

Now then, this line of thinking goes back and puts the ball squarely back in the court of music makers and sellers (labels). No better example than bro country right now. I just read an article that proves how absolutely stupid major labels are. They are marketing this stuff to the demographic who is completely broke; high school and college kids who think binge drinking from a Dixie cup on a tail gate is cool. Dies this even make sense?? No wonder we all hate bro country here on this forum. We all realized how stupid that kind of life was years ago.

I have money to buy records and would gladly fork over the dough for a good one. Why not market to me instead of a young broke punk who doesn't have the money to buy records and wouldn't if he did?

No boys, it isn't a lack of good music or artists, it's a lack of seeing the big picture with our art form. Get back to making great music that has something to say and people will buy it. Maybe not the young crowd, but they aren't buying anyway.

Food for thought.

I totally agree that all of this has raised the bar for album quality significantly. Graphics are a big part of what an album traditionally was yet they are MIA.

Did you guys read that article I posted in the songwriting forum? "The music industry should take its cues from TV". I thought it was excellent. Stop catering to 14 year olds.

My theory:

Someone will invent a non-hackable self-contained app for music and put it for sale on the app store. As an artist/producer/publisher/label-like, you will have to send your music to the company making the app who will then embed it into your version of the app and then Apple/Other will sell it on their app store. Each copy will also be unique and require double-ended verification.

The app itself will be quite powerful. Capable of revealing all your artwork, lyrics, videos, pictures, besides your music. And the music will be higher resolution than most MP3s.

this is what kills an otherwise utopian post for me.

Yes. Some serious social engineering needs to take place to eliminate this fallacy.

Well, I'm not totally sure that someone couldn't come up with something that was bullet proof. 

Take the satellite companies. From as soon as the late 90's through about 2004 directv had the cards in the boxes that determined programming, I think maybe they still do? Anyway, my cousin had this little card reader, he'd jump online and download a file and then hack that card and put the file on it, voila full access. Eventually they'd send something out that banned whatever code he had put on the card, but just as soon as it would go out, he'd have like 10 more codes ready to go, they just couldn't keep up with the hackers. Now, around 2003 they came out with new card, and this one was bullet proof. Directv went out and hired the guys doing all the hacking and had them build a card no one could bust.

Someone, somewhere can come up with something that will stop illegal stuff, but it's so much broader. They've got to get ALL of the digital rights straightened out and make sure people are getting paid properly. 

You're so right Bob. 

My old boss sold out the studio I worked in for 6 years and created a program that would crawl the internet for infringed material, and then it would automatically send out DMCA's. I should really call him and get him to come in here and explain things, this guy is a freaking genius and knows this inside and out. His company is called Mimtid.com (Mine.Is.Mine.Take.It.Down) funny name, even funnier how it came about, that was a fun meeting. Anyway, he's told me several times they can stop this, but there are companies like Google and Apple that don't what it happening, because if you peel back the source of the fight, it always goes back to these big companies, but in ways that makes it look like they are innocent. I really need to call and get him to join the forum and chime in on this, he's in Washington like 6 months out of the year fighting it. 

It's impossible to make audio unhackable. At some point its analogue with modern converters being so good all you would have to do is loop it back in.
"Mine.Is.Mine.Take.It.Down" this is really the solution backed up by real enforcement.