Has the heat gone off illegally downloading music?

Woebot

Woebot

Well-known member
I dunno, but I maybe sense a slight sea-change in general attitudes towards this.

Perhaps the record companies feel (like they did after a while with c90s) that the fight isnt worth having.

Perhaps sales arent getting any worse in the face of its persistence (taking into consideration the general slump in industry fortunes)

I dunno, but maybe the whole language of "Podcasting" has deftly sidestepped the issues. I mean a Podcast seems to have this assumed aura of legitimacy, but it's just ileagel downloading rebranded isnt it?

Obv people will come forward with n examples of why I'm wrong to say this but.....
 
D

droid

Guest
There were a bunch of people In Ireland threatened with prosecution for the first time recently - all of whom settled out of court. On the other hand - the success of Apple's music store/Independent distribuition on the likes of Myspace etc, I think has proven the point that people' listening/buyings habits have changed significantly, and it make more sense to get on the bandwagon rather than try and derail it.

Im sure we'll see more draconian measures attempted - but in relation to visible distribution on websites - Podcasts/Internet radio (do they pay for playing tunes like a normal station?/MP3 + Mixing blogs, and the fact that some of them can legitimitely claim to be promoting rather than exploiting - theres just so many of them out there, that it would be nearly impossible to censure them all...

I havent recieved any complaints as of yet. The one Podcast Ive been involved in has been hassle free, and I havent heard any reports of trouble recently - so you might be right....
 
Grievous Angel

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
I've just done a big job on this.

The labels and their representatives are as keen as ever to stop downloading and are likely to continue to sue downloaders.

I presume you're referring to this? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/10/bpi_talks_ripping/
Which isn't quite the same as going soft on downloading.

And I guess you're talking about this? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/27/uk_p2pers_fined/ Which indicates a lull in prosecutions. The BPI cannot afford to mount these prosecutions constantly, but they reserve the right to return to this tactic.

Or maybe you're talking about the record companies' decision to accept the 99 cents a track Apple is offering? They wanted more. In many ways this decision is the clearest evidence in support of your contention that there's a seachange in attitudes. Essentially, most music company CEOs just don't like such rapid change in their business model, their distribution channels, and their control over their market. Hence it is notable that most digital downloads cost more than CDs do on a per track basis - just look at mobile music costs, which are enormous. The Apple decision indicates that a) younger voices in record company boradrooms are more comfortable with downloading are beginning to be heard, and b) the record companies totally fucked it and yielded control over legal music sales to Apple, so they had no choice anyway.

Podcasting is a red herring unless you're talking about the PRS digital DJing fees, IMO.
 
hint

hint

party record with a siren
I think the current trend is to look to some kind of subscription model in the future - i.e. you pay for a package from your ISP which allows unlimited (but monitored?) downloading of MP3s, with a set fee being paid to some kind of collection agency (MCPS, I presume).

More and more, I hear statements such as "if you're part of the music industry and you're not using P2P all the time, you obviously aren't into music enough"... clearly a controversial thing to say, but that kind of attitude certainly exists within the industry itself. This ties in with what 2StepFan wrote above - "younger voices in record company boardrooms are more comfortable with downloading".

Podcasting is officially covered by a new digital broadcasting license. I think there are / will be various price points, relating to audience size and income.

Of course, we also have the whole "leak" issue, where labels seem to be experimenting with filesharing as promotion. The new Tool single, for example, initially "leaked" as a direct link to a .wav, sitting unprotected on the Zomba server. Before you know it, the original file disappears, but the song is already making its way around the world as an MP3.
 
D

droid

Guest
hint said:
Podcasting is officially covered by a new digital broadcasting license. I think there are / will be various price points, relating to audience size and income.
.
Click to expand...

This is patently unworkable though. The preconditions are beyond a joke:

Podcaster shall:

obscure at least 10 (ten) seconds at the beginning and end of each individual track played in a podcast with speech or a station ID;

deliver podcasts only in their entirety, not individual tracks or portions of a podcast;


ensure that music constitutes no more than 80% of the total length of any Programme;
*

ensure that the podcast is at least 15 minutes in length; and
*

take all reasonable steps to ensure that individual tracks within a podcast are not capable of being ripped and that metadata or other information or data transmitted or downloaded by the podcaster is not used to identify recordings for download from unauthorised databases or sites.

Podcaster shall not:

produce podcasts that contain recordings from a single artist or that have more than 30% of the musical works written by the same composer or writing partnership;
*

play any individual track more than once in any single Programme;
*

provide an electronic guide to the podcast which contains tracks played and corresponding times;
*

insert any flags or other markers in the podcast which may directly indicate or which may be used to indirectly infer the start and end point of tracks or segments of copyright content;
*

incorporate repertoire works into advertising; or
*

use the Repertoire in such a way as may be taken to imply that any goods or services are endorsed, advertised or associated with the Repertoire or any artist whose performance is contained on the Repertoire or any other party who owns rights in connection with the Repertoire.
Click to expand...
 
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hint

hint

party record with a siren
droid said:
This is patently unworkable thought. The preconditions are beyond a joke:
Click to expand...

Indeed. I think that Podcasting is effectively covered in previous licensing arrangements as well. So the new license is both unworkable and unnecessary. If the plan was to make it easy for Podcasters to go "legit", it's obviously a failure. I was just pointing out that the issues have not been "sidestepped".

The Digital DJ license is also very messy.
 
F

Freakaholic

not just an addiction
maybe a bit of a side track, but, for those that dj in clubs, how many clubs do you think actually pay the licensing fee they are suppose to in order to have djs play licensed music?

ive worked in several, and djs in many, and have not once seen this in action.
 
Grievous Angel

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
My view on subscriptions is there a bag of shite.

The music biz tries this every few years on the premise that they'd like to paid something for nothing, which is what tends to happen with subs.

The major record labels as they currently exists are fucked. This is why they hate iTMS so much. They know that one day online stores will get massive market share, will sell music direct from artist to consumer, without the rip off contracts that currently are the norm, and cutting out the label's margin. Artists will get paid more for music than they ever have been. It'll be a while before this happens though.
 
S

shudder

Well-known member
I presume you're familiar with this, from last year? David Byrne got in trouble for his streaming radio off his website.

The RIAA issued me a warning based on a previous radio playlist that featured all Missy [Elliot], all the time.
...
In my case the law forbids streaming “radio” that features more than 4 tracks by any one artist in a three-hour period. My guess is that they may have confused streaming with downloading — in the same way that people often confuse downloading with file sharing. They are afraid that even if it’s not downloadable somehow if a fan knows there will be 3 Missy songs at a given time they can prepare their gear and tape them. The assumption being that sale is lost. [I’ve been informed that the fear is less sensible than that — it is that if you know you can hear a specific artist whenever you want, then the reasoning is you would never buy their records.
Click to expand...
 
N

Ness Rowlah

Norwegian Wood
Those podcasting terms are not too bad actually (in terms of show content),
as an occational podcaster (only free legal MP3s) I read through them.

The killer is the price though - if you have a bit
of success (or get a Chinese fanbase) you are going to get thousands of downloads
for each show.

Say you do 10 podcasts a year with ten tracks in each and each show gets
5000 downloads. 10x10x5000x£0.015=£7500.

No keen amateur with a bit of success is going to pay 7K a year.
A flat licence at a couple of hundred quid for amateurs would have been OK -
but at this price none of the amateur British podcasters are going to bite.
 
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