Our site tries to cover topics across the entertainment spectrum, but every interview we’ve done thus far has been game centered. Hey, wouldn’t it be a great idea to try to talk to someone starting out in another part of the entertainment industry, see what they think of the way things are and what they plan to do? If only such a person would just appear…
He seemed pretty outspoken in his comments, and that always tends to make for a more interesting conversation than attempting to discuss issues with a mime-like introvert, so I sent an introductory email to Pete Smith of Antiqcool.
I know, I know…Liam Gallagher voices opinion…SHOCKING! Still, this one was a bit different from what you might be expecting. It came up in an interview with ShortList.
Do illegal music downloaders bother you?
Downloading’s the same as what I used to do – I used to tape the charts of the songs I liked [off the radio]. I don’t mind it. I hate all these big, silly rock stars who moan – at least they’re f*ckin’ downloading your music, you c*nt, and paying attention, know what I mean? You should f*ckin’ appreciate that – what are you moaning about? You’ve got f*ckin’ five big houses, so shut up.
Now, I tend to find Liam Gallagher annoying. Hell, I think a large reason for the respect I have for his brother Noel is Noel’s insulting and beating up his brother last year. However, it’s always interesting to see a big name buck the usual trend and state that he has no problem with downloaders. I’m also in awe of his ability to drop that many obscenities in to such a small number of sentences and not having it seem to be ‘too much’.
Of course, Liam’s earnestness will soon be called in to question. According to TorrentFreak, the Oasis discography has become the most popular BitTorrent download since Liam’s comments went public.
Beyonce Knowles…go to her Youtube channel, and you’ll see a big label slapped across the top of it congratulating her for winning 6 Grammies with songs that she wrote. Most of those songs have associated videos. Those videos have been pulled from her channel. Why? They infringed upon copyright. Whose copyright?
That of Sony. Her record label.
Yes indeed, restricted from sharing the video for the song you wrote by your label because they own it. THAT’S how you know you’ve hit the big time, baby!
I’m going to include a screen shot of what is currently displayed when you try to view the video for her song ‘Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)’ in case Sony gains a clue in short order and allows access to return. Probably not necessary…we ARE talking about the music industry here…but I want to make sure that this ridiculousness is shared for group mockery.
And the music industry wonders why it’s falling hard. Why so many of the artists are turning their backs on the big labels and walking away, middle finger proudly raised in to the air. Why they are increasingly the butt of jokes everywhere.
Good show, music business…good show.
(Thanks to Motherboard for bringing this hilarity to my attention).
What? You’re skeptical? Why would you say that? Well of course you heard that line before. I mean as far back as 1979 they were saying that Video Killed the Radio Star.
And look at the state of radio music now. Its completely dead isn’t it?
Or maybe you heard about how home taping is killing music? I mean this was such a huge issue that Canada added a levy on all blank cassette tapes to pay artists for their ‘stolen’ work. They’ve recently expanded that to include MP3 players as well.
Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired wrote a book called Free: The Future of a Radical Price which is really the long for of an article he had previously written. The short and quick of it is that if a company offers something for free, they’ll make more money. Historically this has proven to be true. How is that you say? Well lets take a look at DirecTV. Currently on their front page is an offer for ‘2 free upgrades’, a an HD-DVR and an HD Receiver, plus it also has Starz & Showtime for free for 3 months. Why do they do this? Because this brings in more customers they charge a monthly fee on. This is how they make money. You need to give people a reason to buy or they’re just going to find somewhere else to buy from.
Check out Chris Anderson explaining this using a number of different example from different markets: (its 37 minutes long, but well worth the watch.)
Now Cliff wrote an article just the other day detailing how Universal Music Group is slashing prices and hoping to bring in more sales. Now its not free but, this is pretty smart for a music industry company, because as a whole they’ve been fighting changing pricing and technology for years. In January Kathy wrote an article talking about Trent Reznor and how he offers cheap access to his music, but also more expensive packages of things his fans want, and he’s doing well with it. The music industry has some lessons to learn.
They are still years away from the video game industry that embraced the changing technology and went full force into digital distribution. For the video game industry this means far lower costs and far higher profits, basically the distribution portal takes a 30% cut and the publisher takes home 70%. The only sticking point, and going against Chris Anderson’s premise, is that pricing has not gone down. A game released at $60 in a retail store is $60 digitally as well. This is besides the fact that both Steam and GamersGate have proven that lowering prices actually bring in more revenue. This last year PC retail sales were only 20% of PC game sales, which may have publishers start thinking about their target market and concentrating their effort there. Reducing costs of digital sales would go a long way to selling more games and an increase in profits.
Now a midlist publisher sent a letter to Chris Anderson explaining how they used his ideas and how they worked. They offered a free ebook, the first in a series, on Amazon, and not only was it the #1 download on Amazon for the entire month of February, but it also increased sales of books two and three by rate of 20-1. They also saw an increase in print sales as well.
Free, or nearly so, does work to create higher profits, not only are companies doing this today, but all the way back to Gillette and Jell-O (You did watch the video didn’t you?). Its time the Music, Video Game, Movie and Book industries start to take notice.
In a bold move that will no doubt shake up the entire music industry, Universal Music Group has said that they will be bringing in a new CD pricing structure, with $10 being the new high water mark for standard CDs.
Clearly, this is a massive move that will shake up the entire…err…what’s that? Wait, WHAT? It’s the year 2010?! Are you sure?
Oh. Well in that case, it’s a move that could best be described as quaint, almost to the point of being cute. Seriously, did UMG’s executives just awaken from some sort of cryo-sleep state they were put in to fifteen years ago? I’m sure they’re a little annoyed at the total lack of flying cars by now.
Is this a bad move? No. It just seems odd, considering the current landscape of music and music sales. And yet, their rivals aren’t exactly thrilled.
On March 16, executives at the other majors were nervous about the UMG move, calling around to accounts for information on the move. Privately, some appeared annoyed by the move. "Why does Universal feel the need to get below $10?" a senior distribution executive at a competing major asked.
There is no confirmation of the claim that after saying this, the executive in question lit a cigar with a one hundred dollar bill and then laughed while stomping a ‘common man’ to death.
The truth is, CD’s always were grossly overpriced. Physical format music has ALWAYS been grossly overpriced. So this is a nice move, even if it seems to have come from someone using the ol’ wayback machine and forgetting about that whole ‘digital music’ thing.
Australian ISP/digital product provider Bigpond has sold music from its website for some time now. As of April 1st (amusing date choice), they will no longer offer any tracks purchased in .wma format from their store. They haven’t sold tracks in that format since early 2009, but this time they will be permanently removed from their download servers.
Want to have your songs? Better download them now. Want to back them up? Better be copying the DRM files too, or your music isn’t going anywhere.
Every track has a corresponding DRM key, and without that key you can’t move those tracks to another device or burn them to a disc. If somewhere down the line you lose those keys for any of your songs, those songs are basically going to be permanently stuck on whatever device you have them on at that time. And since the tracks are being wiped from the Bigpond servers, there won’t be a backup.
As long as you keep using the same computer and operating system, you shouldn’t have any trouble playing your WMA music files. However, if you try to move your WMA files onto a new computer or operating system in the future, they will cease to work if you don’t transfer their DRM keys as well.
The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage (boy, I bet their parties are WILD) met today and passed a motion to expand the private copying levy to cover portable music players. In English, that means you will now see a levy tax thrown on top of the purchase price of MP3 players, because everyone knows you’re going to play a bunch of pirated music on them.
That the Committee recommends that the government amend Part VIII of the Copyright Act so that the definition of “audio recording medium” extends to devices with internal memory, so that the levy on copying music will apply to digital music recorders as well, thereby entitling music creators to some compensation for the copies made of their work.
So, even if you’re loading up your portable player with music that you’ve legitimately purchased, you’re still compensating music creators for not buying it for your computer AND your MP3 player. Brilliant.
Can anyone remind me why the music industry is in a tailspin?
Meet Charlie Angus! I’m sure many of you are about to become BIG fans of his work.
Canada has long had in place a levy on various forms of blank media…blank cassette tapes and CD and DVD discs for example…as a sort of tax on expected acts of copyright infringement and media transfer to be committed with that media. Well, Charlie would like to extend that to include MP3 players.
Currently blank CDs, for example, have a levy of $0.29 per unit. MP3 players, or digital audio recorders, have been the subject of debate before, with the Canadian Private Copying Collective, which represents Canadian music publishers, seeking a levy of between $5 and $75 per MP3 player.
Yes, potentially as much as $75 surcharge thrown down on the purchase price of an MP3 player, a device which is incapable of actually committing or being responsible for loading itself down with potentially pirated music or illegally ripped CD tracks. That functionality is likely on the way in the form of Apple’s upcoming iLive unit. If you believed that previous sentence, and it made you happy, you really need to start looking for an evil lair and some dumb but loyal henchmen.
Now, this isn’t the first time that such a change has been attempted. A previous effort led by the Copyright Board to have the levy include MP3 players was shot down in 2008 by the courts. What’s changed since then to make Mr. Angus believe that now is the time for such an effort to succeed is beyond me.
Last year, France passed 3 strikes ‘Hadopi’ laws which would allow French music labels to track pirates and legal authorities to fine them or shut down their Internet access for repeated copyright violations. This was supposed to magically convince pirates to buy products. SHOCKINGLY, it hasn’t quite worked.
As written on TorrentFreak, and according to a study published by the University of Rennes (available here…if you read French), the piracy rate has actually RISEN by 3 percent since the new laws were enacted.
Another remarkable statistic uncovered by the researchers is that half of all P2P users who download copyrighted content also buy digital content online. This means that if these users were disconnected from the Internet under the new law, the music industry would lose customers and thus revenue.
So…what now? What ‘brilliant’ program will be suggested next that will use mystical properties to change the thinking of illegal downloaders?
And to close, is anyone really surprised? In the battle between pirates and France, who would you bet on?
April 24th, 2010 
Cliff Riseborough 
Posted in 
Tags: 
