Here’s a quote to start us off:
Griffin’s idea is to collect a fee from internet service providers — something like $5 per user per month — and put it into a pool that would be used to compensate songwriters, performers, publishers and music labels. A collecting agency would divvy up the money according to artists’ popularity on P2P sites, just as ASCAP and BMI pay songwriters for broadcasts and live performances of their work.
That’s from Wired.com’s story Music Industry Proposes a Piracy Surcharge on ISPs.
At first, I was against the idea of paying what amounts to a “music tax”, because I don’t think that it should be my responsibility to help a business that is slowly killing itself. I really don’t want to give extra money to a business that uses every dirty tactic they can in order to make a dollar. To see how deep their heads are up their asses, read Don Reisinger’s interview with Cara Duckworth, the spokesperson for the RIAA titled The RIAA speaks–and it gets worse. But now my opinion has changed.
Why the change in heart over this $5 tax on my cable bill? Because the moment that it goes into place, I see this as a removal of the line between iTunes and The Pirate Bay. Once I’m paying monthly for pirated music on the internet, it’s okay for me to download whatever I want online because according to Jim Griffin who is a “Digital Strategist” (quotes are my emphasis, not his) this is “monetizing the anarchy.” So if the monetization begins, let the anarchy rule.
With all of my heart I am against making the provider of a utility (my cable company) responsible for the use of that utility. Here are a few unfair analogies that I came up with:
- Blaming the water company if person A drowns person B in the bathtub using their water
- Blaming the electric company for person A being electrocuted when sticking a fork in a light socket
But if they flip the switch on this, you can be damn sure that my music collection will expand to no end.
Kevin Kelly’s got a post up on his site called 1,000 True Fans. I found this to be especially true when it was posted the same week that Nine Inch Nails released their first album without a major label.
Ghosts was released on Monday morning with a few different options for purchase. Options include free, $5, $10, $75 and $300. The $300 release includes all kinds of fancy pants stuff like raw tracks for remixing, four LPs of the album, a Blu-Ray high definition audio version, an autograph and some prints. There was a limited run of 2,500 of these and it sold out with 36 hours. This was a genius move of Trent Reznor’s part.
$300 x 2,500 fans = $750,000 up front
The album is complete, but the physical discs will not ship for another month at the minimum. The regular CDs packages start shipping beginning of April, the deluxe edition doesn’t ship until May and I can’t recall when the ultra-deluxe edition ships. With the pre-ordering (especially the ultra-deluxe edition), he’s covered the costs of pressing all the discs and made money back as well. He’s been forthcoming about numbers in the past (see Techdirt’s Dear Trent Reznor: Don’t Be Disheartened Yet) and I’m sure we’ll see some numbers from him this time around too.
Jeph from http://questionablecontent.net/ does something similar regarding the t-shirts he sells. All the shirts are available as pre-order only, which cuts the cost off making extras and storing extras completely.
Background info is to be found in the previous post to this one.
I was thinking about the situation between the band and the magazine from the point of view of the magazine today and came to a conclusion that I’m not sure I like. By reviewing the CD that they never heard, Maxim could be making a very dramatic statement to other bands releasing discs that are deemed important. Check out the statement from the magazine:
‘Of course, we always prefer to (sic) hearing music, but sometimes there are big albums that we don’t want to ignore that aren’t available to hear, which is what happened with the Crowes. It’s either an educated guess preview or no coverage at all, so in this case we chose the former.’”
Can you read the subtext in that statement? Give us your CDs or we will review them anyway. For the musicians, this means including Maxim in their future review copy lists or they risk having their CD unfairly reviewed based on their career, which might not be a good thing.
I have a feeling this is the last we’ll hear of Maxim’s music reviews for a long, long time. Not because they’ve learned their lesson publicly, but because it’s music reviews in MAXIM fer christsake…
Apparently this actually happened and the review was printed in this month’s Maxim magazine. Gawker has the coverage of the review, the band’s’ response and the magazine’s response to the band’s response. After a few months in the publishing industry I understand how frustrating trying to get review copies of big releases can be, but this is kind humorous. They reviewed the record as being of moderately good quality but less than excellent (my definition of 2.5 out of 5).
I wonder if they would have given a shit if Maxim reviewed it with a four out of five or a five out of five.
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