File sharing and is Lilly Allen right?

if a person download's music they were more than likely not going to buy it anyway so they havn't lost a sale i buy all my cd's legally this just sound's like their throwing their toy's out of their pram cause people won't pay good money for ****ty music.

[SoulKiss]

If musicians want to earn a living from music they should get off their backsides and perform for their money.

Spending a week in the studio (hopelessly simplified I know) every year or so then expecting to live off it for a year in a luxurious manner is just deluded.

And I am not talking about £100/ticket arena gigs either.

Lets have the option of a dozen "top names" available in any city in the country every week, playing to a couple of thousand fans, for tickets that only cost the equivilent of a few pints.

Let CDs/Digital download be about promoting the band, get people into your music then into a venue to see you perform live, make money off them wanting to buy things with your name/picture on them.

But then they would have to actually work for a living, and who would keep the execs in cocaine and ferarris ?

Seems like it, doesn't it? I watch some of the more obscure music channels on Sky like Flaunt (dance music) and Scuzz and Channel AKA (used to be Channel U, they show the hip hop videos where the girls is nekkid) to hear stuff beyond the top 40 crapola that you hear on the radio.

[maviczap]

Originally Posted by SoulKiss

If musicians want to earn a living from music they should get off their backsides and perform for their money.

Spending a week in the studio (hopelessly simplified I know) every year or so then expecting to live off it for a year in a luxurious manner is just deluded.

And I am not talking about £100/ticket arena gigs either.

Lets have the option of a dozen "top names" available in any city in the country every week, playing to a couple of thousand fans, for tickets that only cost the equivilent of a few pints.

Let CDs/Digital download be about promoting the band, get people into your music then into a venue to see you perform live, make money off them wanting to buy things with your name/picture on them.

But then they would have to actually work for a living, and who would keep the execs in cocaine and ferarris ?

+1 you've just hit the nail on the head. All the artist's I listen to cut made a name for themselves 'by workin their asses off' on the small venues when they were starting out.

They're still around today because they have a big fan base, and can still fill the stadiums, which Miss Allan will never do. Although you could fit a stadium in her gob

Ah, a subject close to my heart...

OK, lets get this straight, there's two types of downloaded music (or video for that matter). There's legal, and there's illegal.

In the legal bracket, you have things like YouTube (they pay the label for every play from their advertising revenue - this is why they recently pulled a load of videos, then re-allowed them - contract negotiations) and any other service that streams them (so long as they pay like YouTube do). You also have a number of sites that will let you download songs for a nominal fee, Coke Music being one such site.

In the illegal bracket, you have mostly Peer to Peer applications (bit-torrent etc). For these, the label (and more importantly, the artist) receive nothing. As some have rightly said, that's not fair to the artist, views on how fair it is to the label differ, but it is basically the same as stealing a CD from a highstreet shop. In fact, usually, theft from a shop would be covered by the shop, and the label/artist would still get paid. So in a way, it's better for the label/artist if you walk out of, say HMV, with a "freebie."

Before I go into my views on the state of the industry, perhaps a little background is required.

I'm currently running a server (the hosting side of things - and I designed the site too) for a record label. That website streams music videos (and a little audio, but not much) to anyone that wants to view it - it's sort of like YouTube. Only the record label employees are allowed to store videos on the website, but anyone can watch them. That server is currently ticking over at roughly 1.5TB data actually transferred per month. To put that into perspective, BBC iPlayer manages just short of 10TB/month.

For that streamed content, the consumer pays nothing. There's no adverts. All funding is put up for by the record label. For that reason, and it being a friend of mine that helped get me the contract, I earn £20/month - and it costs me £5/month. But then, I also have to do very little for it, and earnt money desiging the site. Can video's be stolen from it? Yes. But I have tried to minimise that as much as possible.

Originally Posted by Viney

if the wanted us to stop copying CD's then as sure as god made little apples, they could write unbreakable encryption on all CD's to stop us doing it.

CD's no, but other medium's...

Originally Posted by the_lone_wolf

TBH I don't think they could, certainly not while making it something a regular consumer would stomach

Every single bit of technology designed to stop people pirating things has failed, usually within a few days or weeks of it being released, simply because there's a lot more people working to break such technologies, and they're far smarter than the record companies / software industry / film studios when it comes to computers

I'm actually working on a "bleeding edge" project to do just that. Essentially, a paid for Peer-to-Peer system, but it also works under traditional server-client topologies. It's something that has been brewing in my mind for the last 13 years approximately.

That project, if it takes off on even a small scale (by small, I mean 1000 users worldwide), the costs for the system will be in the region of 10p/month for unlimited transfer. Then it's up to the record label negotiations as to what they want to earn.

Will consumers use the project? Why not? It also works for free (subject to the bandwidth costs). You don't HAVE to pay anything, but to get legal content, you will have to pay - but if it's £10/month for unlimited content...

So now to my thoughts on the industry...

The comments about them not wanting to change business models is actually quite true. But it's simply due to a lack of education. I mentionned Peer-to-peer to a couple of industry contacts in relation to the server I talked about, and they were horrified. They simply can't see how it could be put to use for them because of the media attention it's had.

Websites offering MP3s for download are easy to control (at POS). DRM was brought in to stop one person buying an MP3 then transferring it to someone else, undercutting the label. But DRM was a very poor implimentation of actually very sound theory.

I know that this was also the case when DVD's were being developed. The movie industry wanted to give more content to consumers (so they could charge more for it, cost/profit ), but they were scared to invest in a technology that could give away so many things for free. Two companies stood up & took the risk, which is why we ended up with the DVD+/- arguments. The same was probably true of VHS vs BetaMax.

All it takes, is the right person to convince the industry that the risk is worth the benefit. If my project doesn't do that, someone else will at some stage. And then we'll all be on fibreoptic connections downloading unlimited music for next to no cost to the consumer.

[keith_d]

Back in the "good old days" the music industry needed huge investment. They had to fund:

* Finding artists
* Recording studios
* Publicising bands
* Producing vinyl records in vast numbers
* Shipping records around the country on a weekly basis
* Losing money on band tours

These days the internet and 'talent' shows on TV have reduced the finding and publicity costs to almost nothing. Distribution costs have pretty much vanished with digital downloads and tours are frequently sold out.

So, the only real costs left are recording studios and publicity. The rest of the £5+ you pay for a downloaded album seems to go on fat salaries and attempts to defend a doomed business model.

There might be a better option for bands. Make the downloads almost free, just covering the cost of the recording studio. Then get together with the promoters to make money from live performances. IMO, much more sustainable than the current top heavy music industry.

Just my thoughts,

Keith.

My biggest problem is that as this is civil and not criminal, there is no defence when you get disconnected because you are wrongly accused of downloading.

Even with security, wireless routers are not invulnerable, nor are computers or even physical phone lines.
Also what's to stop people spoofing random IP's?
The "Evidence" the record lables have put forward has often been very poor or even wrong with time stamps being off meaning the ISPS finger the wrong person.

Not only is there no real evidence required, there is also no defence, and you have to keep paying for the length of your contract with your ISP even though you get no service!

And all for dubious reasons, give me a break please!
The ISPs know full well that if this goes ahead and they have to start banning people based on an "we said so" list from the music industry who suffer no direct kick back, they will be sued to oblivion and have to pray the government do their thing and step in to slap all the actions down but then they will just go to Europe who will be a bit more supportive.
Not that a ruling for Europe will have any effect on this shower *sigh*.

With games and music alike I've often tried before I buy and bought a lot more albums, or even more importantly, gone to more live gigs and festivals based on what I've heard, that I would have otherwise.
True this is easier to do "legally" now with stuff like spotify and Lastfm but hey, sometimes I want to listen to something and I'm just not going to have the money, so I can either DL it, or not listen to it, either way the industry loose nothing as I wasn't going to buy anyway.

The artists certainly don't loose anything, and tbh, they really need to start finding a way to change the industry if they are to get a fair deal!,not that it's going to happen.

They really need a new business model, so millions of people are downloading?
Well here's an Idea off the top of my head, I've purchased a number of albums multiple times as they get damaged or lost, and several tracks I own across a number of albums repeated.

So why not have an online ID you can register and buy tracks for a few pennies or albums for a few £ instead of the obscene prices in the shops, and there you have an online store that doesn't get lost or misplaced or duplicated that you can always access and download to whatever device you want.
Charge people a token amount like a few £ a month for the account, in return you get a few free tracks to DL, I'm sure you'll get a few Million globally sign up for the deal that will give a constant income for membership, income through sales, more than enough to pay for hosting and infrastructure and add in a little advertising for gigs etc, nothing ott mind, and you have a business that fits today and people will likely use.

None of this you can only DL something you paid for 3 times BS, no expiry time on purchases.
Sure people will still pirate or maybe only sign up for a month to DL their collection, then can the membership again until they need to DL again but hey, it's better than the system they have!.

*for gamers it's like steam, i've moved house a lot in the last couple of years and as a result lost a number of my Game disks and keys, but I can still get them through steam as I registered them, great!
If I could do this with my music it would have saved me £100's!

[the_lone_wolf]

Originally Posted by PsychoCannon

Even with security, wireless routers are not invulnerable, nor are computers or even physical phone lines.
Also what's to stop people spoofing random IP's?
The "Evidence" the record lables have put forward has often been very poor or even wrong with time stamps being off meaning the ISPS finger the wrong person.

You never know, it might be your Laser Printer downloading copyrighted material

It might even be your little old granny and grandad downloading hardcore german gay porn

[Viney]

Originally Posted by metalangel

Spluh? I bought Kate Nash's album after seeing her on Jools Holland.

You were the one!

Well there you go 13 notices against 3 devices, that's the universities internet connection banned!

That's the other thing, they want to put into law that it's 3 ACCUSATIONS!, not 3 convictions.
Why not just make that law for everything and be done with it like the old Shiraia, I divorce you, I devorce you, I devorce you.
How about I accuse you of muder, I accuse you of murder, I accuse you of murder, Done!

Good grief.