Entries Tagged 'Music' ↓

Trent Reznor was critical of the Radiohead “bait and switch” release of In Rainbows when he talked to triple j this week. He felt that that it was just marketing for their traditional release and sale of the album, with a low-quality version being made available for a limited time before the CD was released. This is in contrast with NIN’s own Ghosts, which is offered in high-quality lossless formats (although only the first volume is free, which might account for the fact that currently the third result is a link to the full album on The Pirate Bay when you do a search for “Ghosts NIN” on Google).

It’s interesting that he also mentions the high cost of paying for the distribution (including website, bandwidth, payment options, support) of Ghosts. This does make it seem very attractive - especially for less-established bands - to use the distribution methods already in place to release an album. NIN could just as easily have made Ghosts available on P2P networks, although they would of course have had to ask that their fans choose to support them. Perhaps they would have done just as well with that approach, and they would have avoided “all the things that have nothing to do with music”. But it’s certainly true that NIN have offered a very fair deal with Ghosts, one which was undoubtedly influenced by Reznor’s feelings towards the behaviour of record labels. His reaction last year to finding that his own label was overcharging was to tell his fans to “steal it”.

Reznor had even harsher words for the record industry:

They lent me money. When I paid that money back they owned the record. They made the largest share of the profits from the sale of that record. I will never shed a tear to see that dynasty crumble. It’s long overdue. The level of ineptitude that I’ve seen displayed at major labels is stunning. The people in charge of a lot of the digital technologies and the aspects that are decimating their business … are people that seem to not even be on the internet … for them to, right now, in 2008, be considering brokering deals with download sites … you’re five years too late.

You can hear the full interview here

WIRED reports that he RIAA is “seriously considering a file sharing surcharge that internet service providers would collect from users” in order to profit from piracy.

While the idea of an extra $5 a month being added to broadband bills and paid to artists isn’t without its merits in an ideal world, there are a number of problems. The RIAA will be collecting the money on behalf of artists, who must then, I assume, join whatever organisation they set up to disburse the collected funds (with a certain amount deducted for “administration”). You could argue that it sounds very much like a protection racket. They collect the money by threatening legal action, then charge artists to receive their share. Can the RIAA be trusted not to enforce restrictions on the free expression of the artists? And to be fair in their division of the spoils? It sounds like they might at least distribute based on popularity on file-sharing networks, but who will collect these results? And will they disqualify some networks - such as the Pirate Bay - because of legal reasons and decide that only “authorised” networks count?

Ars Technica has another good point: “if $5 on your ISP bill gets you access to music, can the day be far off when another fee appears for movies? For e-books? For cross-stitch patterns?”. It could be a very long list. Will broadband access become a luxury which only some can afford?

It seems like such an inelegant solution. Out-of-date. An industry has a problem so they call for taxes to be levied to subsidize their business. The thought of $5 (or €5 over here, as they would no doubt round it up) on my bill every month being used to support the latest industry-manufactured band doesn’t make me very enthusiastic about the idea. I, for one, would prefer to choose which artists to support.

There is a big difference in what Radiohead did and what Reznor is doing in terms of experimenting with music distribution on the Internet.

Radiohead allowed fans to download their music for free and kept the option open to receive voluntary payments. In doing so, Radiohead realised that music distributes itself and it is hard to control its distribution. What they did was to open a new channel through which fans could support them - voluntary payments. The side effect of voluntary payments was that there was no cost associated with attaining the piece of digitized music. Fans were showing their appreciation by making voluntary payments and not just “buying music.”

What Reznor has done instead is to force people to pay before they can download the music. The first volume of Ghosts is available for free, but the rest of the album does cost money - even if it is a very reasonable $5. This changes the relationship between NIN and their fans into a transaction, so that the fans again feel that they are “buying music”.

The Register points out that

the downloads from Reznor’s official site were trickling out at 10kbit/s. From the Torrent swarm, you get the music at between 450kbit/s and 550kbit/s, or fifty times faster. The high quality bitrate version takes just 15 minutes to acquire.

So Reznor’s site is unable (which NIN did admit) to keep up with the “sales.” What do desperate fans do? They borrow from their friends - on peer to peer networks. And it’s worth pointing out that a lot of those fans would continue to seed the tracks, effectively acting as distribution channels for the album. Now only if they could just make a simple voluntary payment to Reznor - no matter where they got their music from. Would that bring more money to NIN for future works?

Apart from all these practicalities I believe there are differences in perception too. Maybe people respond differently to a price tag on works of art that can be digitally distributed? Maybe they like to decide what they’d like to give back, as appreciation, as patronage?

Free distribution and voluntary payments - with the two channels completely divorced. That is what we at Karmafan believe - and so do many musicians on MySpace and bloggers all over the Internet.

NIN is giving their fans a few options when it comes to their latest album. The first volume has been made available for free on torrent networks, with the complete album available in packages ranging from a $5 download (in a range of formats - including high-quality MP3 and FLAC) to a $300 Ultra-Deluxe Limited Edition.

Trent Reznor continues to show that he’s willing to experiment with this release. The album also sounds like it will be part of a continuing series, with the promise that “more volumes of Ghosts are likely to appear in the future”.

[via TorrentFreak]

The Register doesn’t think much of the idea of paying filesharers for distributing music, but filesharers are contributing a valuable resource to artists. Bandwidth costs money, and people who share music are giving artists a slice of their upload speed. Now, it does seem a bit odd as an idea, but sometimes a person who decides to continue to seed is doing so because they’re a real fan of the artist, and they’re making it possible for others to gain access to the music. This doesn’t help much in the current system - where piracy means less sales - but for artists who embrace the ideals of Karmafan it means that their work is being distributed for free. So maybe it’s not such a crazy idea that filesharers will eventually get something back for sharing the things they like.

Music execs claim that we need them to separate the wheat from the chaff:

Ted Mico, the head of digital strategy at Interscope, defended the majors by saying that “anyone who has spent an hour or a day listening to demos understands the labels’ place in the food chain”; that is, labels provide both filtering and then marketing of music. Without their help, promising artists would be lost in a sea of noise and would be almost impossible for music lovers to discover. [from Ars Technica]

It’s nice to know the labels are there to make sure that we only get to listen to the very best music…

US copyright judges began hearing arguments last week in a case over just how small a slice can be given to the people who actually create music. Incredibly, the music industry wants to pay less to artists:

New-media players as Yahoo, Apple and Napster and major record labels agree with one another and want the royalty they pay to the publishers and songwriters to be lowered.

The companies that distribute digitally are pushing to pass on to the artist and publisher about 4% of the cost of a digital download, while the traditional labels are being generous in that they’re willing to give 8%. The publisher and artist then have to split this again, usually 50-50.

When it comes to streaming music, some contend that nothing at all should be paid to the creator. Fast internet connections (and the potential for wirelessly connected mobile devices in the near future which stream all their music) mean that streaming is no longer reserved for tinny internet radio. So it could be possible for a company to only stream music, make money on advertising and pay nothing to the creator of the songs.

On the other side, the National Music Publishers Association is asking for “12.5 cents per song for CDs and 15 cents for digital recordings”, which the other two sides claim will “impose a royalty that kills the proverbial goose and deprives songwriters and publishers of their golden egg”.

Seems to me that the smartest thing for musicians to do is simply turn their backs on the whole thing and do it themselves. It’s no longer that difficult to record and distribute. It might be easier to just sit back and let others take care of the business side of making music, but then it just stands to reason that they’ll take advantage of that. In fact, it’s worth rereading an old article on just how badly labels sometimes like to treat artists: The Problem With Music by Steve Albini

It’s always encouraging to see artists throwing off the shackles of CDs and traditional distribution, and Benn Jordan (The Flashbulb) has chosen to distribute via methods usually seen as the territory of piracy. You can get his latest album here, for instance:

The Pirate Bay

Included with the files is a request that fans donate online:

Who knows if my little business plan here will work to fund new releases, but even failure is better than the crappy label/distributor/retailer system musicians have suffered from for over 50 years.

Check out http://www.alphabasic.com and http://www.theflashbulb.net/

David Byrne looks at the different ways artists can deal with a world in which “recording costs have declined to almost zero” and “manufacturing and distribution costs are approaching zero”.

The most relevant section for the artist who wants to let fans choose to give voluntary payments concerns the DIY model:

Finally, at the far end of the scale, is the self-distribution model, where the music is self-produced, self-written, self-played, and self-marketed. CDs are sold at gigs and through a Web site. Promotion is a MySpace page. The band buys or leases a server to handle download sales. Within the limits of what they can afford, the artists have complete creative control. In practice, especially for emerging artists, that can mean freedom without resources — a pretty abstract sort of independence. For those who plan to take their material on the road and play it live, the financial constraints cut even deeper. Backup orchestras, massive video screens and sets, and weird high tech lights don’t come cheap.

Radiohead adopted this DIY model to sell In Rainbows online — and then went a step further by letting fans name their own price for the download. They weren’t the first to do this — Issa (formerly known as Jane Siberry) pioneered the pay-what-you-will model a few years ago — but Radiohead’s move was much higher profile. It may be less risky for them, but it’s a clear sign of real changes afoot. As one of Radiohead’s managers, Bryce Edge, told me, “The industry reacted like the end was nigh. They’ve devalued music, giving it away for nothing.’ Which wasn’t true: We asked people to value it, which is very different semantics to me.”

The article ends with some very inspiring words:

For existing and emerging artists — who read about the music business going down the drain — this is actually a great time, full of options and possibilities. The future of music as a career is wide open.

Here it is - QTrax, an application that lets fans download music for free. Rumours have it that some of the top labels have signed up for the service, though some labels have come forward and denied their association with QTrax.

QTrax says it provides

1. Free peer to peer downloads for fans
2. They insert ads between songs so fans end up downloading ads into their iPods (urgh)
3. Revenue for labels comes from the ads
4. Revenue for artists? The same old less than five per cent of the revenue for the label.

So there, labels are being forced to think of allowing peer to peer downloads for fans, for free. Good for the artists who are tied to labels, but what about independent artists? Can they distribute their music on peer to peer networks such that their fans have access to the works for free?

We at Karmafan want to encourage free availability of arts by independent artists. This is one sure way that fans will “give something back” if they like the artist’s works. We are also convinced that some artists want to give away their music, especially in the wake of Radiohead’s “In Rainbows.” The question is can we provide a service to such artists so they can distribute their works to fans for free? Would be nice to see hands up from artists who would appreciate such a service. Maybe you can help us define such a service with your suggestions and comments.