More idiocy from the music industry

Just a little legal terror campaign to scare the rest of us into buying from Napster like good boys and girls. (Vanilla Ice? My god...) And, really, I'd be on the music industry's side if they hadn't bought American radio and turned it into a worthless, steaming pile of homogenous, commercial strewn crap.

Something about the handwritten note just cracks me up

Me too.. of course, I'd hate to be that man.

I think it's pathetic scaremongering too, but it shan't work. I know that, after the 12-year-old being sued for nursery rhymes and being forced to make an apology, such measures will only cause more people to hit out against the capitalists...

I strikes me that their legal department has a lousy research department.

In any event, some of these defendants (they'll have to win in court) may be able to make claims for frivolous lawsuits. Enough of those and the scare part of these scare tactics will go away, and the music industry will be left looking even more foolish.

It's sad, really. The medium is overpriced and pays for all sort of exotic and lavish nonsense. Cut the prices of CDs and people will not pirate them. And put in more value - things that are a lot harder to download and pirate - and there will be far less pirating. There's something to be said for pretty packaging. Y'know, the music industry was up in arms when cassette tapes became popular, but they survived and got stronger afterwards. Same thing here, if the music industry handles this intelligently, rather than leading with what are turning out to be increasingly nonsensical lawsuits.

PS Imagine how it'll be when there's finally anti-Spam legislation, and the first lawsuits under it. I predict similar scenarios.

Thankfully, I live in Canada, a proper country, and am therefore immune to prosecution of this sort, should I decide to illegally download music. To address patiodog, yeah, Vanilla Ice, what up with dat?

My thoughts exactly, jespah... who would pay £4 ($5/6) for three songs (two of those being B-sides put together in about ten minutes) when one can get them for free? It's like giving the offer between paying to get a bus and walking, or getting a lift. Even if a few people are stopped from getting a lift, people will still choose it over walking.

Also, there's thirty people being sued out of millions. If one does the math, what are the chances of stopping pirating? It's stupid, but there you go. People will do anything to line their pockets.

Spam is way too large to combat; don't those fake 'undelivered mail' things with viruses annoy you. They do me.

The music industry, in a bid to stem pirating, convinced the retailers to reduce the price of CDs in Canada. The average CD price fell from $20 to $15 dollars. In other words they had been gouging the public for years and in attempt to win back customers, the blatent price cut only confirmed their past greediness.

Kazaa has been downloaded more than any other single interface in history. I use a satellite connection that is lightning fast and appears to have me located 1,000 miles from where I am. Lucky for them, I've already got all the CDs I want. Soon, I'll be moving to Costa Rica and I still won't even have to tell my IP I moved. They are shouting at the rain.

Yep. With spam, though, there's at least one known big-time spammer. I forgot his name; he was profiled on the NY Times a few months ago.

As for the music industry, they'd be better served by going after the biggest fish (e. g. the most downloads), but they may be going after smaller, weirder types (I was only downloading "Happy Birthday" for my great-grandma's 87th birthday celebration) in order to try to really scare people. E. g. some might think they can get away with 1 or 2 downloads here and there, or that they'll be safe if they keep switching identities. The idea here is that the industry is trying to strike the fear of God in everyone, regardless of guilt level.

However, as said above, chances are good that the main effect this'll have will be to make people work that much harder to get around the system (such as it is). Napster was targeted because it was a real company and could be sued. Other downloading services are more fly by night so are tougher to serve with a subpoena.

But this barely scratches the surface. In chat rooms around the world, as we speak, there are people trading music. These are ephemeral connections and no one uses their real name if they've got a lick of sense. So the industry, which is really being hit by these trades, doesn't even notice them or, if it does, doesn't have a way to do anything meaningful about it. When it comes to desired contraband (think Prohibition in the US), the market will just head further and further underground.

IMHO, some things the industry could do are:
(1) Lower the prices on packaged music, big time. Currently, CDs cost $9 - $25 or more, depending on whether they're double CDs or are desirable and a million other marketing factors. This figure is close to what it was when CDs first came on the market. In contrast, cassette tapes came down in price after a few years of availability. So CDs are at an artificially high price and probably should be closer to $5 - $10.
(2) Offer incentives for repeat buyers. This would be stuff like buy 10, get 1 free, or get a free poster or be entered in a contest or something like that. Make repeat purchasers feel special, instead of giving them a "what have you done for me lately?" type of attitude.
(3) Add more to CDs, so that it's less desirable to go outside the mainstream to purchase music. What more? I dunno, I'm not in marketing, but again raffles, posters, stuff like that, would be nice. How about offering a discount on concert tickets?
(4) Since the above 3 items will cost $$, the next step is - quit paying the talent so damned much. Struggling artists, well, that's one thing. Pay them a minimum, like in the NBA, where even the least-competent benchwarmer gets something like $100k/year. But the benchwarmer has to work hard and prove himself. If he doesn't, he's cut. If he does, he has the opportunity to make a lot more dough. And on the high end, negotiate better. There aren't a lot of choices for high-level talent. They might create their own labels, but that's already going on, so what do the record companies have to lose? They blew BIG money on Mariah Carey to have her break her contract. Everyone walked away happy, but in the meantime the cost of that divorce comes out of the consumer's pocket. Lavish lifestyles are all well and good, and they add to glamor that is translated into more sales, but just how many Lear jets do people need? $1 million/album is a lot of money. So's $10 million/album. Some high-level talent might deserve the latter, but I believe more of it deserves the lower amount.

Or give them a piece of the sales, which is what's done in the movies when a star wants more than the producer has in the budget. It's a calculated risk. If you get a piece of Mission Impossible or ET, you're sitting pretty. If you get a piece of Gigli or Ishtar, you've been suckered. If talent has to wait to be paid through sales, they might work harder to (a) release better stuff and not go through the motions, so that they have a better chance of peddling their merchandise and (b) promote sales through appearances at press conferences, interviews, awards shows and the like. Yes, they'll also be touring to support their releases, and I realize this may be a lot to ask, but these people are being paid a mint. And some of them really mess around in the recording studio before releasing anything. Perfectionism is fine, but if the meter is running, that kind of pressure can sometimes lead to breakthroughs in creativity. They don't need to be hustled out of the recording studio in a week, but a year should be a sufficient amount of time for getting an album out, and a year after that should be enough time to tour and otherwise support the effort.
(5) Finally, they should ask what people want, and perhaps go incognito into chat rooms and the like and ask why people are downloading. They may have other reasons. Items may not be readily available in their area. If so, that's a distribution issue, for example.