It has come to my attention that the music industry now wants royalties for those 30-second clips of music you hear in iTunes. That, I think you’ll agree, is bullshit. Seeing as how we’re a solution-oriented blog here at CrunchGear, I want to offer a completely fool-proof way to save the music industry and put an end to the years and years of nonsense we’ve seen since Napster was first released: let’s ban music. That’s right, let’s pass a law that says “the creation or performance of music, in any form, is hereby banned. Any violation of this law will be punishable by death.” Problem solved, let’s all play Hungry Hungry Hippos.
It’s clear that there’s at least two sides to this argument: one, people who think music should be free, and that includes bands that give their music away or sell it for mad cheap, and kids who have grown up with Kazaa and BitTorrent; and two, people who demand to be paid for their work, which includes organizations like the RIAA and musicians like Lily Allen.
I say screw all of them. You like being paid for music? Too bad, it’s banned. Go work at the post office. You think you’re being altruistic by releasing a few songs for free? Too bad, it’s banned. Since both you guys can’t agree on whether or not you think it’s a good idea to sue a single mother for more money than she’ll ever see in her life let’s shut the whole damn industry down.
All music radio stations will be scuttled, and we’ll mine the Sirius XM satellites for the useful metals they contain. Instrument stores will be transformed into Chuck E. Cheese’s or Discovery Zones. All music gadgets—iPod, Zune, you name it—will be placed on a boat and sunken halfway into the ocean.
Anyone caught humming a tune or whistling melodically will be thrown into the nearest state prison. (That’s right, state prison, not the country clubs known as federal prison.)
This is the punishment for 10 years of the RIAA, its dunderhead henchmen and mollycoddled musicians. It pains me to do this, but it really does seem like these stupid issues will never go away. So it’s gone. Music is gone. Now nobody has to worry about “piracy” or “marketing” or any of that garbage. We’ll be a society completely devoid of music. No more lawsuits, no more rootkits, no more nothing.
It’s a perfect world. There’s no piracy, there’s no sons-of-bitches illegally listening to unauthorized 30-second sound clips—think of the lost revenue!—and no reason to sue single mothers because their dumb kids downloaded three Britney Spears songs in 2001.
You will all receive letters in the mail detailing our plans to ban music forever. I look forward to your cooperation, and I look forward to huge consultancy check from the RIAA. I literally just solved all its problems; pay me.
This may be my favorite article you’ve ever written Nick.
Seconded! This is great – It’s all getting just far too ridiculous.
thirded
amazingly well written :)
Fourthed! I love pretend words. And this article! What if you leave go a real good fart, and it sounds musical? maybe a fine.
Dear RIAA,
Go to Hell. You go to hell and you die. Hard.
Love,
Indiana
Made me think. Nice little rant and the base of a scifi film. ;)
“That, I think you’ll agree, is bullshit.”
That’s fire!
In other words:
“I told you kids, if you didn’t shut up, I was going to turn this car right around! And what did you do? You kept on slapping each other and screaming into the back of my head! Now, we’re going home, you’re both going in timeout, and daddy is going to drink beer until his headache goes away!”
Put another way:
“This is why we can’t have nice things.”
Nick wins for best article ever.
TJ wins for best comment.
Roger that!
Do it, lol.
The law gives guidelines for “fair use” of copyrighted materials including using brief extracts for the purposes of illustration. E.g., 30-second sound clips are the equivalent of a photograph on the box of a product. You wouldn’t by a boxed product without at least looking at a picture, would you?
“Fair use” also demands an assessment on “the effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work…” In the case of sound clips, the value is being *increased* since consumers know what they’re getting.
RIAA should be paying *us*!
Normally I’m quite sympathetic towards the music industry (Simon Cowell aside), however demanding money for 30 second sample clips is as you so succinctly put it – bullshit.
Hear hear!
I want to burn down the RIAA. Like, literally make sure all employees are inside the building and have it go completely up in smoke. Is that reasonable? Can I do that? Will that stop all of this nonsense sueing people for twice of what they will ever earn in their lifetimes? Will men in suits show up and haul me away to prison now for making this comment?
There’s no question this claim is overreach, but, fwiw, it’s a performance rights issue. The RIAA, representing labels, has nothing to do with it.
heh.. yeah.. the sony rootkit… They shouldn’t ever be allowed to live that down.
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2005/11/69601
a little dated here, but an interesting take on the music biz by courtney love:
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/
Personally, I think the prevalence of media blasting at people their entire lives from conception onward 24×7 via radios TVs and now internet explains the rise in cases of ADHD and autism…
I think this is right! Let the music industry do this. Right now I’m listening the new album of Pearl Jam in their myspace. So, bands like this will survive and be strong every day.. and they really don’t need all this rules from the music industry. This model will survive, and the all these big labels will fall down.
Maybe the word mu$ic should be also banned
2112.
No question, if the record companies want to charge for those 30 second clips, they really aren’t aware of what’s happening to them. Kind of like a big sad wounded animal. They want to punish people for still being interested in the crap they are selling. Screw it – I’ll only buy music direct from the musicians if that’s what they want to do.
Bad idea! But as I’m a solution oriented person, here’s my proposal: Creation and performance of music is accepted, and can be supported by donation. However, promotion of music for commercial purposes by anyone other than the performers themselves is banned and punishable by death.
Dear Socialist,
Go to Hell. You go to hell and you die. Hard.
Love,
Indiana
Not a good idea. Ever read “Fahrenheit 451″ by Ray Bradbury?
I do prefer the solution proposed by Mika and would like to get it a little higher. How about: Usage of money is banned and punishable by death?
It’s not the fact that people want free stuff that cause the issue. It’s not the fact that people want a reward for doing that cause the issue. It’s the fact that people NEED a reward to live.
Anyone follew the Macross/Robotech series? If music was banned and was sacred, we would start fighting aliens with our robot jets! I say do it!
If I can’t listen to preview clips of songs before I buy them… well I guess I will be going back to bit torrent. Sorry RIAA but you have forced my hand.
All this is gooey and fine, but the problem is that people, a large number, WANT to hear that 30 sec clip. Enough that if it stops, they will throw a tantrum. The criticism of the RIAA forgets that this is desire driven industry, not reason, and rational thinking will be very difficult to bring to the table. That is, the criticisms are valid, but they won’t matter; in the end, people just love to hear the new Jonas Brothers song.
Remember the lock that the music industry developed in the 50’s: contracted radio stations, pay per play of songs, sanctioned DJ’s, and TV to push the buttons. What is gained by this commentary will be undone by the tabloids, or by MTV, or by some movie or TV show with the songs. ITunes is in no position to push RIAA too much. It is the outlet, but not the message. The message is what brings ITunes money, and what people buy the devices for. ITunes has no copyrights on the music itself (that I know of), and is at the mercy, ultimately, of those who do.
This is the world we live in. Banning music is a fun idea; but to succeed, you have to control the viral nature of traditional media, frivolous teenage desire to hear shitty music 300 times per week, and the willingness of parents to foot the bill. Or, maybe, it means that you have to stop listening to the new digital release of Beatles songs that you have been listening to for the last 20 years.
Can you stop our love of fads (he asked, posting it as the comment of a blog)?
Im not paying for the 30 second clip and i wont buy the song without the 30 second clip so…
Does anyone know how we go about getting Nicholas Deleon on the 2012 ballot for president of the United States? We need someone with common sense in the white house.
favourite article ever read on tech crunch.
Ive played guitar for 10 years but Ill chuck those fuckers away too. I’ve seriously had enough of this. You know it’s bad when the music industry is starting to remind you of the insurance industry.
Well written Nicolas, and to quote Lily Allen:
Fuck you, fuck you very, very much.
Cause we hate what you do
And we hate your whole crew
So please don’t stay in touch,
While the ‘music industry’ (and what I mean is the major labels who used to rule the business with their A & R departments and their ‘record deals’) rant and rave and sue and whine, the business of music is clicking along apace, with artists who have any get-up-and-go adapting to the new rules, or just playing by the new rules because they’re too young to know what the hell a ‘record deal’ even is. I just got back from a short European tour with a singer who has very small distribution deals in North America and Europe. She encourages people to download her material. Partly as a result, even though she’s a niche performer, she can actually tour because everywhere she goes a small but growing number of people have heard of her and come out to hear her. The point, though, is that she sells tons of CD’s off stage. The record industry morons who say that people won’t buy CD’s or other physical media are incompetent. They just don’t know how to market product in the new world because they’ve been used to having a kind of monopoly. The internet smashed that monopoly into tiny little bits. My buddy has a kid who buys CDs regularly. I asked him why he buys CDs when he could just download the tunes. ‘Because I like the album art’, he said.
This latest is the most pathetic thing I’ve heard yet. It just shows how fully they misunderstand the new world. It’s exactly the opposite of what they should be doing.
I’m a content creator and I believe that people should get paid for their work. I believe in copyright protection for intellectual property. However, the industry has been sticking it’s head in the sand for a decade, believing that by suing they can control the behaviour of computer guys who know how to get around any control they care to try to impose. In France this week, they’ve passed laws making downloading illegal. This will spread to other countries, and some kind of balance will eventually be achieved. In the meantime, the industry should take a page from the playbook of the new indie artists.
I’m intrigued by the new Zune HD (I’m in the market since some piece of shit stole my iPod Touch, s/n: 1D745B0NW4N in case you bought it for $20 from some scumbag). Of all the things I read in this article, I am bothered by the fact that it’s browser is based on IE6. Not because I’m a MS fan or an Apple fan, but because support for IE6 is being discontinued by more and more websites every day and I don’t believe it would have taken much of an effort to morph IE7 into a moble browser for the Zune.
Oooops, wrong thread. Too many windows open again. I’ll never learn. My bad.
39CentStamp, so you are only saying that you are in the minority, you are not the music market, and that no one in the music industry cares about your opinion. The majority is not even aware that this conversation is taking place.
Nik, the idea that small artists and tours as a real counter to the music INDUSTRY is fallacious. This has always existed – my best friend in high school made a meager living off his gigs, but really supported himself because his parents owned a house, paid his truck note, and bought his guitars. It did not and never will allow him to sell 10,000 albums, much less 100,000. THAT is industry. That is the powerhouses that are able to push these money issues, sue people, force out all other sounds except their current artists, etc.
You must think much bigger – and possibly BE much bigger – to combat this Hydra.
Hm. Consumers won’t pay to hear a 30-second preview, obviously. So the RIAA is really telling Apple it wants royalties, out of Jobs’ pocket, on every preview click.
Now, I’m no big fan of iTunes at the best of times – it’s a long way from being the best way to reward an artist/band for their music, since Apple takes a big slice, and then the label, and the few cents leftover goes towards paying off the artists’ debts with their label – but it seems fairly obvious to me that most preview clicks DON’T lead to purchases. A lot do, sure some people go: “is this the one I heard that goes… yeah, cool, I’ll buy it”, but more often than not, people who use iTunes will use the 30-secs as a “do I want this unknown piece of music?” and more often than not, the answer will be no, since if they really wanted it, they’d already know what it sounded like and not need the preview.
So really, the RIAA is asking Apple to pay a fee to cover its customers NOT buying recordings. If it’s a flat fee, then fine, I’m sure Apple can stump up their preview rental costs. But if it’s pay-per-click/play, surely Apple can’t take that risk? They have no control over people previewing tracks: teams of people could spend all day previewing songs, buying nothing, and bankrupt Apple in a couple of months. It’s a retarded idea.
No.I think this is really bad for the economy.The music must be paid and every person who not just sing , humming a tune or whistling melodically must get charged but even if you ever think of a song.
Well this is not really possible at this moment but after RFID chips will get implanted after 2012 it will be fairly easy.They will read your thoughts and there will be no way around.
The faster this happens the better. After all everything is money.This is what life is all about!
I agree with much of what has been said, but Please Don’t blame the musicians/artist!
The mongers wanting a bigger slice of pie is the problem. $aying & Doing anything to make whatever the outcome $eem rational.
Laying schemes out as though it’s for the Artist, when it’s just to stuff in their own bellies.
Trust me, I’m an Independent Artist & I know what it’s like being a little fish, surrounded by sharks!
“The Economic Reality”
“Gross” Businesss
(it’s been a while, so my % figures may be a little off.)
Band Members: Salary or Royalty
Video Producer/Record Producer: Fees & Royalties
PM: 10-15%
Independent Record Promoter: Fee
Agent: 10-15%
Sub Agents: (touring outside U.S. & Canada: 10-15%
BM: 5-15% or Hours
Salaries:
Tour Accountant
Road Manager
Road Crew
Security
Costumer
Lighting Designer
Set Designer
Sound & Lights
Recording Engineer: Fee
Lawyers: 5-10% or Hours
Airplane Charter & Busses for Tours
Publicist: Salary/Flat Fee
Artist Gross Less “Team” Compensation
Then Pays: Food and Other Basic Necessities of Life.
Now with a Major record company, you have:
A&R
Promotion
Marketing
Artist Development
Production
Product Management
Finance
International
Business Affairs/Legal
Sales
hmmmmm can you see the crumbs where Pie should be.
Music Business…. Bahhhhh
Music is the good part….
Stuff the Money Mongers & cook em over a nice hot fire!
Hope to see ya out there, yeah I’ll be playin, but not for the Mongers;)
YEAH, YEAH, BAN THE STUPID THING
Music is a lure to criminal activity. “To a first approximation, every PC owner under the age of 35 is now a felon” due to their filesharing activities, wrote Clay Shirky.
We have to save the children from a life of crime. Ban music now!!
Won’t someone please think of the children?