I usually don't make a habit of copying things
verbatim from other sources, but Dani from the excellent
KissAtlanta blog has a lot to say on the issue of downloading music. Swing by K.A. and show some luv.
What’s Happening Outside The Blogosphere
Posted by Dani Deahl on January 12th, 2008
Over the past few months I’ve been following what has been happening with the major labels. Without forseeing how the internet was going to impact them (dummies…), the scrambling they have been doing lately is incredible. Here’s an overview of what’s been happening.
Take Jeffrey Howell, some random guy the RIAA sought to collect damages from because he had 2,000 stored music files on his computer. The files weren’t illegal downloads, they were from LEGALLY bought personal CDs and placed on his personal computer. Oh, and have you heard about the proposal for an ISP tax directly tied in to music downloads? Trent Reznor is all for it, (perhaps because he recently found out that only 18.3% of people would choose to pay $5 for an album if there was the option to download it for free) and has this idea regarding the tax:
“I think if there was an ISP tax of some sort, we can say to the consumer, ‘All music is now available and able to be downloaded and put in your car and put in your iPod and put up your a–- if you want and it’s $5 on your cable bill.’”
These attempts to maintain a stronghold are merely a poor mask for a floundering industry. We’ve already seen it crumbling; take Universal’s CEO Doug Morris who is JUST now building the doomed project “Total Music,” a last-ditch effort to hang with the ‘cool kids’ on iTunes, or the fact that the dreaded DRM is being all but pitched to the wayside by majors like Sony. Even on our level we see it - reps for groups like the Klaxons asked Nick from
Red Threat Blog to take down a post with an unsanctioned remix on his site. Oh, did I mention that album sales dropped 9.5% in 2007 while the sale of digital tracks rose 45%? But wait, there’s more to this bureaucratic mess.
Lately, there have been persistent rumors that EMI will pull its funding from music trade groups like the devilish RIAA and IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the European version of the RIAA). EMI is considered one of the four “pillar” labels supporting these groups along with Warner, Universal and Sony…so pulling funds sounds like a blow which is…good, right? Maybe not. There is also rumor that the RIAA will merge with the IFPI. Should that happen, the RIAA would disappear completely while its work continued under the IFPI umbrella.
How does this affect us? While getting rid of the RIAA might sound, well, awesome, the fact is, no one has been happy with either the RIAA or the IFPI for some time, especially because of their anti-piracy focus. If the two groups combine (which is unlikely, but possible), it could give the still participating record labels more muscle in further implementing anti-piracy measures and taking down the Jeffrey Howells of our country. So, despite lagging record sales, with three out of the four “pillars” still scared witless to try anything else but the RIAA/IFPI mindset, it looks like there’s still a long road ahead.
I have to point out that this all (coincidentally?) comes in the direct wake of Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” album which as we all know, had label heads looking out their windows for flying pigs when they heard it was available…for free…online…with no backing label. Since it was first made available, the album has sold a respectable 122,000 copies in the US (according to SoundScan). Of course, those are the official sales numbers and with Radiohead refusing to tell how many copies it’s distributed, along with thousands of burned, hosted and copied files, it’s hard to piece together exactly how many are floating around. With 28,000 sales from iTunes to the record stores reporting vinyl sales upwards of 9,000 units a week, perhaps the most interesting thing about the “In Rainbows” experiment is the ‘proof’ that there is still a community of people who will dish the cash. Not all music has to be free, but not all music should be paid for.
The first group I have seen uphold this mentality is the new online company
RCRD LBL, headed by the geniuses over at Gizmodo and Engadget. I had the opportunity to interview them recently for URB Magazine and for once, I think someone is getting it right. If you aren’t aware of RCRD LBL yet, here’s the breakdown. Technically a label but formatted like a blog, RCRD LBL offers free, ad-supported downloads from acts like the Cold War Kids. “We have nothing invested in the current system,” says RCRD LBL, “so it was really easy to say, hey, what if we started from scratch? We look at labels as one arrow in a quiver for an artist’s career. I think that’s one of the biggest differences between us and the major labels. We recognize that it’s a very pluralistic, open and transparent world now and you have to be flexible.”
While I’d like to believe that the majors will take their heads out of the sand and finally notice the world has changed around them, it’s unlikely. Those like RCRD LBL and Radiohead are early adopters, and while us bloggers had a “finally!” moment with their accomplishments, the rest of the world is really, still a bit behind. With companies like Warner and Universal headed by men hired for paper pushing, not podcasting, I expect that change will continue to have to happen around them, not within them. Eventually, us early adopters might become the new backbone for the way music is distributed, whatever that might be. Thank goodness for our blogs, for RCRD LBL, for Radiohead; they might be our dark horse in this flagging industry.
