Stand up and be counted!
Yesterday the umbrella organization for the record labels, IFPI made an announcement that they have made charges towards filesharers that use or maintain DC++ hubs. Some vague statement was also made that the hubs were run with partial economic interests. We are looking forward to see how these economic interests look, since we actually have no clue how you make money out of hubs. Well, it was yet another day in the war against filesharing.
Anyway, since we are members of SOM, the umrella organization for indiependent labels, and therefore indirect members of IFPI. We feel the need to speak.
It is time, once and for all, to stand up and be counted. Charging filesharers and dragging them to court is a dead-end. It's alienating music fans from exploring exciting new alternatives to explore music in a new way. It's actually contraproductive in the process of constructing new business models for music on the Internet.
The carrot a consumer needs for buying/spending money for music on the Internet is not the risk of getting caught if he/she don't pay up. The Demokles sword thing just isn't working. It is an insult towards people and hindering all reasonable debate or progress we might make in developing services that music consumers actually want.
We acknowledge filesharing as the greatest cultural impact since the invention of the grammophone. Filesharing demands a new world. That world is not a world where the music industry and music fans are entangled in a war with each other. That only leads to the overwhelming badwill and disgust most consumers feel towards record labels(the majors in particular) today.
The cultural world have been changing for some time now. It is time for record labels to take the leap of faith, not clinging on to the old safe world, towards a new risky business. It's not easy, but it has to be done.
Stand up and be counted!
Anyway, since we are members of SOM, the umrella organization for indiependent labels, and therefore indirect members of IFPI. We feel the need to speak.
It is time, once and for all, to stand up and be counted. Charging filesharers and dragging them to court is a dead-end. It's alienating music fans from exploring exciting new alternatives to explore music in a new way. It's actually contraproductive in the process of constructing new business models for music on the Internet.
The carrot a consumer needs for buying/spending money for music on the Internet is not the risk of getting caught if he/she don't pay up. The Demokles sword thing just isn't working. It is an insult towards people and hindering all reasonable debate or progress we might make in developing services that music consumers actually want.
We acknowledge filesharing as the greatest cultural impact since the invention of the grammophone. Filesharing demands a new world. That world is not a world where the music industry and music fans are entangled in a war with each other. That only leads to the overwhelming badwill and disgust most consumers feel towards record labels(the majors in particular) today.
The cultural world have been changing for some time now. It is time for record labels to take the leap of faith, not clinging on to the old safe world, towards a new risky business. It's not easy, but it has to be done.
Stand up and be counted!
posted by HYBRIS STHLM at 14:52
8 Comments:
Ni är bäst.
Ok, I think that was one of the most reasonable things ive heard from a record company in like forever.
Very good initiative, it's only too bad that the major companies are too stalwart and set in their ways to embrace a new form of business model. A good artist doesn't need millions of millions
in promotion. Word of mouth works just aswell, even more so since most major companies spit out more and more "artist" that are just cookie cutter replicas of themselves. Just my two cents to you.
-Z-
It is not the consumers that whould adapt, it's the business's, THAT is the basic concept of marketing. If the record label can't find clever marketers then they can blame themselves for declining sales. I wonder how many people have yet to see beyond the present and realized that the unavoidable future is a world without physical storage devices for music, other than hard disk drives and flash memmory cards.
Come one musciancs out there, did you not initially start makign music out of a hunger for fame rather than money? Don't give me that "I just wanted to make good music" crap. So if fame or recognizion and validation was your goal, then why do you go on about how youre being stolen from when people recognize you? It is the RECORD COMPANIES that are greedy, compare the production cost of a CD with an item from IKEA the RND+Material+Distribution-to-price ratio is SO much lower. Sell your records in exclusive packaging that means something, like art and historical value. Then let there be a nice coloured vinyl instead of a boring massproduced CD. Then sell them for just slightly lower than then euros.
Book your artists on tours frequently if they wish and take marketing researched price for the ticket. If you still don't get adequate pay, then get another job.
Budding musician >> I guess you are pretty much right. Musicians need to change the way they work and labels as well. They don't rule out each other I think. The world has a place for all that has the ability to change and adapt for a new world.
I don't really see if your answer agrees with what we wrote above though. I think we pretty much wrote what you wrote. But in sligtly other words.
As for the costs of CDs - there are also the cost of producing the music and getting the word out there - PR etc. Also big costs.
Pretty much all our artists tour a lot and have booking agencys doing the booking for them and as a record label we don't see any money coming from that direction.
Still unsure if you are critisizing us or not, just want to point out that we are not complaining about anything other complaining about other labels complaining. We're having the time of our life and are loving each passing moment that goes on in this biz where everythings changing by the minute. Amen.
Agreed. You do represent the future. I basically endorse what you do, the comment was meant to vent my built up rage at slimy record company cartells (those who's been kicking up a fuss) not you. Just colour your vinyls, green, yello red w/e (don't know if you do or not) but its a wonderful feature!
Sweet...absolut det vettigaste som kommit från producenternas/bolagens sida i debatten. Om ert synsätt ändå kunde smitta av sig på era mindre genomtänkta kollegor runt om i världen...
Ah Yes. That’s exactly the attitude I want from ..well..corporations in general actually.
The key to be successful in the end, is to prepare early on. Most companies (connected (loosely) to IT) agrees that the world has changed quite a bit the last decade, but they somehow missed that their business models isn’t exactly “tuned” or “in sync” with the future of the media industry.
A new business climate demands new business models, there nothing strange or incompahansible about that, except (perhaps) in the mind of the stereotypical record label VP with his black-tainted sunglasses that permit him to see all the glorious fiber-optics.
//Jim
Jag ler av lycka. Sitter och gör research inför ett föredrag jag ska hålla om fildelning i morgon.
Det känns så enkelt och naturligt för mig att ett modernt skivbolag måste dela era åsikter. Ni kommer absolut att nämnas i morgon. Även "It is not the consumers that whould adapt, it's the business's" kommer att finnas med. Tack Budding Muscian för den.
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