Yup, CDs are quickly heading 'the way of the dinosaur' - along with the VHS market (I'm able to pick up a bunch of taped movies for pennies on the dollar - great until the day my player craps out). A major music chain store in our area closed a few months back - and I hadn't seen any significant # of young persons in it for a couple of years now. Funny how my '04 car still has both casette (remember those?) and CD players - talk of built-in short-term obsolescence.

Well, I hope it doesn't come down to just giving away for free. Nothing can be free. It has to be supported by something else.

Ad supported works need massive volume sales to be profitable. It's very bad for niche products, which would survive on small sales. You might not get fabulously wealthy selling a niche product, but so long as you make enough you can keep going. There's no room in ad supported products for that- because the people advertising will need masses of impressions.

The ultimate problem is the disconnect between the consumers and the producers. Once you're an advertising loss-leader (and that's true with tech deals as well- "buy our phone and get some free crap") then the producer's client is no longer the consumer. The product has to be honed to fit the advertiser's desire, not the consumer's desire. That's not good. Look at TV. Shows get cancelled for not having enough millions of viewers.

People complain about music, and the music industry. They listen to some mainstream station like Radio One, and say the music's all homogenised rubbish. But the reality is that from the 20th century to now we've had an unprecedented wealth of musical diversity. Go into a record store and the diversity of music available is astonishing. The industry must have been doing something right.

So maybe we're at the end of music. All we'll have in future is advertising jingles. Then people will complain about the corporations, or something. What one can guarantee is that they won't think that maybe it was their own fault for refusing to consider paying for something better.

I have a kind of parallel interest in this because I sell something digital. I sell a rude comic on the internet. I've heard all the arguments about how I should do it for free. But if I had to do it for free, I wouldn't do it. If I had to sell ads to support it, I probably woudn't bother either. What keeps me working nights to meet a deadline is terror of customers cancelling their subscriptions. What gives me the freedom to write and draw what I want is the direct connection to those customers. If I were just trying to make something honed to some advertiser's desires, I'd cast around for something less labour intensive to lure pageviews. Maybe lolcats or something. I wouldn't spend 80 hours a week hunched over Photoshop for it.

I'm sure there'd be barely a ripple of notice if my little website disappeared. But if everyone's stuck with the same dilemma, we'd see a lot less diversity of product.

I think this'll all backfire, anyway. People will look back at the Golden Age of music and wonder what happened to it. They probably won't consider it was down to their own fists being a wee bit too tight.

Just MHO, as usual.

So maybe we're at the end of music. All we'll have in future is advertising jingles.

No, we are not at the end of music, we are at the end of BIG music. Not the same thing at all. Music is not going to vanish, it is just going to all be 'long tail' now.

But you are right that advertising is not a good business model for very many things at all.

Am I a complete idiot? I just bought a CD.

I bought it on-line, and when it arrived next day I ripped it to my PC, which automatically synced it with my MP3 player.

Why a CD? I think because
- It was cheap - no more expensive than downloading it all from itunes
- It comes without any irritating DRM
- It can be transferred to any format and any type of player
- It has a nice booklet

I don't conclude from this that CDs have a long future ahead of them (no, of course they don't).

I *do* conclude that the music industry is *very* mixed up. Given that I actually want my music in digital form, how can it be that I still find it convenient to buy the CD?

Or maybe I am in idiot.

Car stereos with cassette players are, actually, still very useful. You can connect your MP3 player into a cassette player much more cheaply and with higher quality than messing around with those ridiculous FM transmitters.

Er, Perry, last I heard the "long tail" was one of those tech-utopian buzzword myth things :)

Anyway, the article didn't say long tail. If you can't sell your product, there isn't a tail of any length. If big eeeeeeeeeevil corporations can't sell music, small rural idyllic companies can't sell music, nor can individuals. There's no market, period.

And that, to all intents and purposes, is the end of music. Other than advertising jingles, that is.

Where is the good music that is being made?

I think Music is going the way of painting and other arts that went mostly flat. The end of high speed inventivness and trully new sounds is to be expected. That is normal, our senses are limited and high output human production since the West started to get healthy and could sustain thousand Music artists means that most of it was invented already, or maybe most of what is easy with current knowledge. There is probably a limited number of pratical variations. Like in Olympics records are more dificult to be beaten year after year.

Of course this is not the end of music. One interesting aspect of the decline of sales is the re-introduction of live music as a main revenue generator for bands.

In the sixties and seventies many bands used a single or album release to advertise a tour, where they made their money. In the 80s and 90s much of this was reversed with live tours in decline and sales driving revenue. This in turn seems to have reversed in the last year or so.

This is only anecdotal but I am now noticing that teenagers seem to be going to a lot more live events than they were 5 or 6 years ago. Smaller and more varied ones too.

People may just look back on this as being the beginning of a golden age of music, rather than the end.

One interesting aspect of the decline of sales is the re-introduction of live music as a main revenue generator for bands.

Tours are expensive, gruelling, and not suitable for all types of music. They're not much use to consumers in places the tours don't visit. They're not a replacement for recordings.

Anyway, the point we're talking about here is recorded music. If there's no money to be made, what's the point of recording it? I like recorded music. I don't want to hear it live, necessarily. I want to hear it while I'm doing the washing up. Where will the money come from to pay for that?

Did it ever cross these people's mind that what was on offer for nothing was complete and utter shite? I mean are they expecting teenagers to take any ole' crap merely because its free. I think that attitude is indicative of the type of contempt music execs have for their customers.

Tours are expensive, gruelling, and not suitable for all types of music. They're not much use to consumers in places the tours don't visit. They're not a replacement for recordings.

Absolutely, just like any other work.

Recordigs will still be made and revenue may still be generated from them. How? I am not sure, but half a dozen possibilities spring to mind, although none of them may be viable.

Don't forget tho, the wider a recording is spread the more people will hear of the artist. In fact, dumping a recording onto the net and letting it spread will be an effective and cheap form of marketing. So long as there is an appropriate means of identifying the artist.

What WILL happen, is that the recordings will market the artists live concerts. They will just have to spend more time on the road to get an income.

In fact, I suspect that in the medium term this will result in an explosion in varieties of form available to the consumer. Just as recording did in the first place.

What WILL happen, is that the recordings will market the artists live concerts. They will just have to spend more time on the road to get an income.

I wonder if anyone's ever done an actual economic analysis of this, or bothered to find and read one, before leaping in the air shouting "Everything must be free!"

Look. If the only use of a recording is to market a live tour, which will make far less money than selling records did, investment in the recorded artifact will drop. Drastically. You're down to advertising jingles with knobs on. Will anyone bother recording a Dark Side Of The Moon? Why bother? It's not going to make any money is it?

I'm sorry, but I think that this whole attitude is basically the same fallacy as socialist provision. It's demanding something for free, then handwaving away how it'll be paid for. Somebody else will pay, that's all that matters.

So what's being said here is you take away all the money form the industry that currently comes from sales, then somehow this vasty explosion of touring will make it back. Well, I don't believe that. How many more gigs are artists expected to do? Many are doing as much as they can already. There are only so many days in the year. A band can't do, practically, more than 365 gigs per year, and they'll probably collapse from exhaustion if they try that. You've got a finite limit on what money can be made.

Subtract from those days the number they have to spend in the studio recording music that they're, um, going to give away for free. It doesn't work out very well once you start to think about it. There isn't a great deal more money to be made from touring. You then take money away from that to pay for free music to promote the touring. This doesn't look like a good business model. But I don't think people arguing for it care about the economics. They just want this "free at the point of use" utopia, with the usual anti-corporate bollocks thrown in as extra justification.

Ian B,
You're way to pessimistic. I seem to recall hearing that the music industry was at first sceptical about radio! The folks here who are predicting a golden age are right. You can bang together a music video for next to nothing and distribute it for peanuts. I could do it this weekend and the only thing stopping me is that I have no musical talent whatsoever.

And the net is great for niche markets. Now, gay hobbit porn is probably a tough sell any other way but introduce the 'net and it's different. What I'm saying is that if 1/10000 is into what you have to offer be it GHP or some real niche folk music or whatever then it's not a player to have a bricks and mortar store... but online that 1/10000 means potentially a very large market, globally.

My really big hope for developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. is that people are I think, due to the 'net, becoming more individualistic because their highly niche desires can now be economically catered for and as well as that they realize they're not alone. Example: I hadn't even heard of libertarianism until I happened across Samizdata and there's thousands of you here, every day. The net makes minority interests accessible and (and this is important too) provides a level of anonmity because a lot of minority pursuits and opinions are a bit embarrassing to 'fess up to down the pub. This isn't just weird sexual kinks but stuff like live RPGs or some of the odder stuff people collect. It means for instance that I learned how to handle a virtual F-86 by reading the original's manual. Hardly something you're likely to find in even a very well-stocked Borders... But it was on the net as a pdf. It also meant I could have informative chats with a bloke who was a crew-chief on 'em in the 50s. Not someone I was likely to bump into in the local boozer. Well, not round here, anyway. And how would I know what he used to do?

I'm in a similar position to botogol. I buy CDs so I can rip them to a lossless compression format and play them from a headless Mini-ITX Linux box in the corner of my lounge, using MPD and selecting the tracks with the browser on my phone. But I suppose I'm a niche market.

Ian B wrote: "I sell a rude comic on the internet." If you're holding back out of politeness to your hosts, please don't. We need links!

Actually it was the other way round Eamon. Bands toured to promote the album not to make money from the gigs.
All that has happened is that record companies have lost the monopoly of the means of distributing music.
Musicians are quite capable of recording and distributing their own music for next to nothing and put it out on the net.
The free download will act like airplay has always done, raise the awareness of the band or group.
And yes they will have to tour more to earn their money.
But they will be able to negotiate a bigger slice of the house than the record companies ever gave them.

Er, Perry, last I heard the "long tail" was one of those tech-utopian buzzword myth things :)

I think that is profoundly incorrect. In fact I think the long tail is truly The Future in oh so many ways, not just music. I am reminded how just a few short years ago, blogs were 'just a fad'. And now most major newspapers have one. How does it go again? 'Ignored - Ridiculed - Denounced - Good Idea'.

Anyway, the article didn't say long tail. If you can't sell your product, there isn't a tail of any length.

And they are (partially) wrong. Sure, certain products will disappear (music is not one of them). Other products will mutate (or at least the types of companies who produce them will). If a few pennies per track is what the market will pay (and the success of safe and cheap Russian mp3 sites indicates people will pay a little for convenience and safety) , then that really is the market rate for music in a digital age. People who can live with that will make music, and those who cannot will not. People will make music for different reasons and with different expectations (which means it may be a different kind of person who makes the music), but people will still make music.

Ian B,
Nonsense. The top bands make a bloody fortune touring and I guess the rest are kept in beer and skittles. Also, lets say you want a particular song... You have too options: pay for a download or torrent it. OK, the latter is "free" but my understanding is that iTunes is 70p in the UK now and frankly it's a time/money thing. It's the same reason people buy boxed sets of The Simpsons. I once torrented the entire Tom & Jerry canon and it's utterly useless because it isn't divided into episodes or indexed or anything. It's languishing on my HD in the form of 10 CD images of 50 odd episodes and while in principle I could retreat to the shed and spend a gruelling day getting it into a properly watchable form, burning it to DVD and all the rest I might as well have bought the bloody thing. I think I will if I ever see it for sale. There's another thing with the torrent - it takes bloody ages. Downloading a movie a 1Kb/s is like that geezer in Spain who is (I think still) building his own cathedral.

The reason for MP3 catching on big-time is it's so bloody convenient and I also believe that's why CDs did in the 80s. Remember selecting tracks on an LP? Or the endless FF/Rewind with tapes? If it's priced low enough and it's more convenient than searching through the bowels of the torrent sites only to find they've only got a video version with the bloody MTV logo still in the corner that some moron taped off a dubious NTSC feed in 1988 then yes, people will pay. I bet you have in the last few years bought out of copyright books. These are available online free and legal, right? Yet how come book stores still consider stocking Jane Austen or Shakespeare? The mode of delivery of information is critical. And people will pay for stuff if paying means it's more convenient or in a more usable form.

Nonsense. The top bands make a bloody fortune touring and I guess the rest are kept in beer and skittles.

I'm really not sure you even generalise that about the top hot beat combos, and anyway it's that "the rest" I'm talking about. Touring is really not a pot of gold. And as I've said on this subject before; what about music that can't be toured? What of a musical project that isn't "a band" at all?

As to the rest; the limitations on illegal downloads are steadily reducing. It normally takes me a couple of hours to download a movie from bittorrent. I'm quite a fan of Battlestar Galactica. I got the whole lot off torrent, I get the new episodes off torrent, they haven't made a red cent off me in either advertising or direct sales. Which is great for me, not much use to the people spending all the money to make the TV show. The legal market can't rely on piracy being awkward. It just keeps getting better and better.

The piracy issue, DRM etc interests me a lot as i have a business interest in digital media as mentioned above. The only system I've really used was quite a while back with a site that streamed movies and TV shows. Sadly after signing up I discovered most of their good stuff was blocked to non-US IPs for rights reasons (yawn) so all I could watch was their second rate stuff, direct to video rubbish and the like. And the porn section, and after a couple of months evaluating every movie in that to be sure it wasn't my cup of tea I cancelled.

Anyway, the DRM was irksome, only working with windows crappy media player, it had to phone home for licenses and things, PITA. I do demand that when I pay for something, it should be mine forever. So if DRM is to work, I think it needs a lot of refinement. I don't think anyone has come up with a good answer. As a libertarian, I shouldn't even be in favour of statist solutions like copyright, which is the one thing holding the piracy back just a little bit (I've used copyright threats to get pirate copies of my stuff removed from some download sites). I don't know what the answer is, but ultimately creators need to get paid for what they do somehow. If they don't, they have no business. But what the best model is, I have no idea. I'm just firmly convinced that it shouldn't involve a disconnect between producers and consumers, for reasons I discussed above. Advertising supported services etc effectively have all the same problems as statist socilaism; the market doesn't work. Ramble ramble...

Tom and Jerry has canon?

End of music? Nonsense. The income stream is clear.

Gigs and live performances.

Let us not forget, if someone is not spending £10 on a CD, but 10p on a download, then that is £9.90 they have left over to spend. I think that much of that will be spent on more music, and more music related events and products. For those who really love music, a drop in price simply means that they can afford to buy more. The problem will be for the more casual listener, who would rather spend the difference in price on something else.

There is a chance that good music will survive, and crap music will be screwed. (Again, offering an optimistic prediction).

I almost said the same thing Lee. I think you're right.

End of music? Nonsense. The income stream is clear.

Gigs and live performances.

Yes, and while we're at it, we can make movies free and finance them with theatrical performances by the actors.

...

Nick M-

You can bang together a music video for next to nothing and distribute it for peanuts. I could do it this weekend and the only thing stopping me is that I have no musical talent whatsoever.

Some other things you don't have--

Director
Camera Crew
Lighting Crew
Grip, Gaffer, Best Boy
Sound Crew
Makeup Artists
Lighting
Power/Generator etc
Transportation costs
Site catering

...and that doesn't take into account all the time recording the song professionally in the first place. Big stack of peanuts, if this video's more than you miming to Kylie into a hairbrush.

Recordigs will still be made and revenue may still be generated from them. How?

Broadcast. There is still an enormous and profitable radio (including satellite radio) industry.

Download. I have noticed any reduction in paid downloading, but I don't really follow it.

"Hardcopies." I expect there will still be a pretty sizable market for hardcopies for some time to come, especially for recordings that are longer than a few minutes (entire concerts, that sort of thing).

And, of course, every city is full of musicians making a living from live performances without any appreciable income from recordings.

Did it ever cross these people's mind that what was on offer for nothing was complete and utter shite? I mean are they expecting teenagers to take any ole' crap merely because its free. I think that attitude is indicative of the type of contempt music execs have for their customers.

I think Andrew has it bang on. In all likelihood they refused the CD's since they were most likely the sort of giveaway freebie garbage that was destined to be included in next weekend's Mail on Sunday. If I go to EMI's operational HQ in Brook Green I'm pretty sure I can pick up a giveaway promotional CD of EMI's current release schedule - I would hazard that maybe that was the CD being offered.

On a lighter note I was amused to read that EMI's new CEO, Guy Hands, apparently told the International Federation of Phonographic Institutes (Britain's RIAA) that he wanted to remove EMI's membership since he could find no record of EMI having produced phonographs in the past 20 years.

Oops. Should be "I have not noticed any reduction in paid downloading. . . .

Seems likely as music becomes cheaper, easier to distribute and easier to get hold of, we're going to see more diversity and more chances for acts on a lower budget to make a bit of a breakthrough.

On the other hand without big money backing bands are we really going to see any truly global "greats" any more? Personally, I can't see the next Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Madonna, U2 or whatever appearing through the internet.

Think it's more likely we'll see more and more one-hit wonders and flashes in the pan, as internet fans are probably more fickle. Look at the arctic monkeys - an absoluteley massive album based on internet buzz, hugely famous for a while, already started to fade away with the second album.

More to the point does it really matter?

There was something along these lines in the Sunday Times a couple of weeks back, can't claim this as my idea.

Ian B:

Yes, and while we're at it, we can make movies free and finance them with theatrical performances by the actors.

A particularly specious corollary. CDs will continue to be produced because, surprise, surprise, people want to listen to music. The EMI chap quoted above wasn't talking particularly about CDs, more about young people's attitudes to the pile of CDs; that they either didn't want what the record label was peddling (a radical new idea) or that they had already downloaded said CDs. By "the game was completely up", I would read "we really have no idea what these kids want".

Piracy flourished, and continues to flourish, because the industries involved (music, TV, film) do not offer the product the consumer wants through legitimate channels, so they get it elsewhere. Why should I have to submit to a higher authority to get permission to play something I've already paid for? Why can't I buy a movie's DVD when I'm leaving the cinema? I'm really not going to pay to go back in, so I come home and download it. The idea that its harder for a multi-billion-dollar company to pull off something I can do with a domestic broadband connection and a £20 DVD burner is ridiculous.

I think there is space for musicians to make a living without record companies. You easily decry gigs and touring, but when CDs are sold at these concerts, who gets the lion's share of the profit? Usually, its the band, instead of HMV and the label taking their respective cuts.

The internet allows many more avenues for home-grown marketing than ever before; the labels are being cut out of the equation in every way they used to justify their cuts. Distribution; done. Marketing; done. Fansite; done. T-shirts; done.

Recording is cheap. I've checked out the equipment on eBay and it is possible to get the computer, mics, digital converter and everything for $1000 and still be able to record pretty good quality.

Touring is astonishingly expensive. Just getting together the equipment for a traveling club act (amps, lights, transport, housing, etc) is tens of thousands and you need to get an entire band together and dedicated to a single schedule for a prolonged period of time.

So if recorded product is 'free' and the money is in touring, then you've eliminated anybody who can't generate enough interest to fund a tour from recording for an income.

And has it dawned on anybody that recorded music and tour music are two entirely different things. Has anybody here (besides RAB) heard of the Wrecking Crew. While it is true that Glenn Campbell and Dr. John went on to make money touring, the rest of these guys made almost all their money in the studio. They didn't get rich, but they fed their families. And before you think we can live without studio work, maybe you better look at the recordings they gave us. It turns out that much of my favorite Beach Boys guitar work was in fact Glenn Campbell working as a studio musician. And the band itself basically recorded nothing but the vocals. Carol Kaye and Hal Blaine each were on so many thousands of studio recordings that nobody really knows any more. During the window of time that they were operating, they were the source of a huge amount of what was sold to us (old enough to have been around) as the work of those guys on stage.

RAB is right. Those tours sold albums.

You can argue all you want about whether we need studio recordings, but any claim that touring bands will pay studio musicians to make top quality recordings is nuts. For the most part, the studio guys didn't and couldn't tour. But I would really miss their work. And to eliminate the studio-only musicians of the future would be a huge loss to music.

I am confident that as long as we protect the right of contract, and that means enforcing contracts, then everything will be all right. But there are an awful lot of people here advocating that the government should not enforce contracts between private parties (the producer and the purchaser of the recording) because well, they haven't really come up with a good reason for invalidating the contracts. They just skip that part or rationalize it away.

I'm with Ian. If I want to stipulate terms when I sell you my product, I don't want you to use the power of the government to invalidate that contract.

Did everyone see David Byrne's remarks on all this a couple of weeks ago?

There is an interesting piece in the January Wired in which David Byrne talks about strategies for musicians to make money in the new environment. (He gives six different ones). There used to only be one way, which was sign with a large record company.

The CD model was based on the idea that recording music and distributing music to consumers was expensive, and that storing and managing a personal music collection was difficult and space consuming. This situation led to it making sense for purchased music to have a high unit cost.

With the change in technology and the advent of large (in capacity) and small (in size) hard drives, and music management software such as iTunes (the program, not the store), qnd the internet, and the collapse of the cost of distributing music, it suddenly made sense for people to have much larger music collections. This wasn't inherently bad for the music industry or musicians (If there are ten thousand artists in the music ecosystem and the marginal cost of distribution is close to zero, it doesn't make a lot of difference if your average consumer has a collection of 500 songs for which he paid $1 each or a collection of 10000 songs for which he paid 5 cents each - the total money coming to all those musicians is the same). However, the music industry had a business model and distribution system in place that was based on songs being expensive and having high value per unit. They were unable to abandon this model - they still haven't abandoned it.

I personally think that if the music industry's response to the advent of Napster had been to put all its product online at five cents a song, its total revenues would not have dropped much, and most of the people who are now downloading music for free would be paying five cents a song for it instead. I can't prove this, but I am certain the music companies would be better off than they are now. As it is, for good or for bad, we have a generation that doesn't see recorded music as something that you pay for. This is entirely the music companies' fault. They did not give their customers what they wanted, so the customers went elsewhere. The world changed, and the companies could not adapt quickly enough. That is their problem and their fault, and they deserve to die because of it.

On a different tangent, and for whatever reason, big rock and roll tours today are making truly astonishingly large amounts of money for certain acts. The most interesting thing seems to be that it is yesterday's bands rather than today's that are making the most money. Bands whose fans are in their 40s and 50s and 60s can charge much more for tickets than bands with younger fans, on the basis that older people have more money. So we see such things as the Police and Led Zepplin, and lots of other bands who have not performed together in years or decades reforming. I am told that Sting and Stewart Copeland don't get along very well. However, when what you are being offered is "Work with someone you don't really get on with for a year, and you will make $20 million each" or some such, then people will work together. But that's a bit of a digression.

As a third digression, people who want to read a discussion in which people seriously start arguing that the lack of good music these days is George Bush's fault should go to this discussion. (Page five, mostly).

Rab

Actually it was the other way round Eamon. Bands toured to promote the album not to make money from the gigs.

Depended on the band. Bands like Slade and Thin Lizzy, and completely different artists like Gloria Gaynor had a decent profile from singles success (low profit), but didn't sell enough albums to stop touring. Hence their touring schedules were pretty much constant.

Even today this bears out. Artists who nowadays sell a lot less than they used to, even those as different as Billy Bragg and Rick Wakeman still base their income around regular tours, not record sales.

Bear in mind though that this is not the only outlet. Marrillion, for example, kept their career going long after record company interest faded by using their website to attract recording finance directly from their fans via pre-paying for proposed new albums.

Eamon

RAB: free download is very different from radio airplay, because you cannot keep airplay and play it over and over, not to mention give a copy to other people.

Martin:

Why should I have to submit to a higher authority to get permission to play something I've already paid for?

Tom and Jerry has canon?

Billy: two minds with a single thought there.

This is entirely the music companies' fault. They did not give their customers what they wanted, so the customers went elsewhere. The world changed, and the companies could not adapt quickly enough. That is their problem and their fault, and they deserve to die because of it.

Yes, it is "entirely" the music companies' fault that criminals did not respect the legal contract they entered into when buying music, and that law enforcement authorities were either unable or unwilling to stop or punish those criminals. Those terrible music companies'.

Go into a record store and the diversity of music available is astonishing.

You're easily pleased Ian B.

Yes, it is "entirely" the music companies' fault that criminals did not respect the legal contract they entered into when buying music, and that law enforcement authorities were either unable or unwilling to stop or punish those criminals.

Holy Christ I can't believe that I'm still awake.

What contract? About a year ago, I bought a CD. The Don Henley that had "Heart of the Matter" on it.

I don't recall signing any contracts. I dropped a picture of Andrew Jackson on the counter, pocketed my change, and left.

I'm sure that I'd remember signing one if I did. Unless someone is actually presented with the terms and a chance to accept or refuse, it's not a contract.

Alisa, my point was the raising of awareness factor, but you are wrong about radio being different.
My first tape recorder was reel to reel and I recorded Pick of the Pops every sunday. No different to a free download and we would pass them round to friends.
Really Eamon, people toured to promote a high cost product (the record) as Michael says.The Record company organised the tours and had cosy deals with the venues and promoters, very little of which got down to the Band. Now they can negotiate for themselves.
The Grateful Dead were pioneers of giving away their music. The record company did a crappy job of marketing them so they let anyone in the audience plug into the mixing desk for free.
The gigs were always sold out, and they were the only band to my knowledge who kept a road crew on perminent salary.
The Music business is a people business not just a product and cost of production business.The cost of producing a cd is the same for a record co whether they have signed Iggy Pop or Iggy Hughes. But they should be aware which will sell more. That is the expertese they should have, but since the amalgamations and the Accountants taking over, they have lost.
Ian B has a point for some artists though. Those who Andy Kershaw likes so much. They arn't going to make a living from downloads as it stands and they are probably performing as much as they can in Mali or Nigeria or wherever, but will never get the bread together to finace a tour of the West without big financial backing.
Yes Ian B giss a link! I am a bit of a cartoonist myself. Show us yer graphics!
Tom and Jerry!! The Fred Quimby produced ones only. The sixties ones were rubbish. Rolling background less frames per sec and no shading. Ian knows this of course.

Well, obviously, Mid it's horses for courses and if I only want people wearing green top-hats to listen to the Nick M Band (me on the kazoo) then that should be allowed. The "I bought it, I should be able to do what I want with it" line has never had much legal traction with me.

But, it does with the consumer, including me. Hence Sony pissing people off wholesale with their DRM schtick was a serious own goal.

Touring is expensive but it's scaleable. Obviously when U2 or Madonna embark on a World tour it's practically a military operation (though last time Maddy was in Manchester a ticket was GBP175!!!) but it can also be four blokes in a van charging a few quid to see them. I don't exactly see your point here but you do raise a very interesting one as to what this means for studio session musicians. On that score, I don't really know. What I do know though is practically every bugger on this planet enjoys music, making good music requires a lot of talent and something in demand but rare always seems to command decent pay. Musicians will have to find a way here and I'm sure they will.

This, though, is not exactly a new issue. I remember computer games circulating my primary school yard on third generation copied C-15 audio cassettes. Still, the games industry survived and indeed grew. I appreciate your point as to upholding the law but using the law against piracy of intellectual material makes the War on Drugs look winnable. The price and the value added has to be right to prevent piracy. For a very long time a chart CD in the UK cost about 15 quid (yup 30 bucks) - are you surprised people taped 'em? I could be suffering false memory here but I seem to recall seeing a pretty big band like Iron Maiden cost pretty much the same as one of their CDs in the mid 80s. Ain't that changed!

I am more interested in software piracy... And well, frankly, every sodding thing on the planet gets cracked and ripped off. Now there are two ways to tackle this... You can stick the very small proportion of miscreants you convict in the oubliette or the software companies can (and they increasingly do this) offer added value such as upgrades, tech support and whatnot. As someone who has dealt with some seriously shonky set-ups in my time, well, I appreciate that now. Say a piece of 'ware is a few hundred quid and you use it professionally then the tech support is worth it. I am not entirely sure how to generalize this approach to music but... I'm fairly sure it can be done.

And this is how... I'm amazed Ian B hasn't thought of it already. You use the same model porn sites do - a subscription service. There's all sorts of stuff there, a forum, "exclusives", "free" downloads, interviews etc. Now, obviously a committed, though criminal or potless, fan could accrue these by hanging out at Pirates Bay or whatever but... Let's say it's a fiver a month, is it worth the hassle and the time? The UK minimum hourly wage is more than that!

Here's another point along the same lines. I used to live in a rough(ish) part of town and a lot of folk were potless and would "acquire" (I never asked) computer stuff without manuals, drivers etc and ask me to set it up. Because one woman insisted I charged her 25 quid call-out to set-up a scanner from Noah's sodding Ark. Also a couple of notes for a parallel cable... I knew full-well that at the time Morgan's just up the road were banging out much newer and better HP scanners for 20 quid + VAT. This relic was not worth her expense. So I downloaded the drivers and bish-bash-bosh she was scanning soon enough. I'd told her about the Morgan's deal but she seemed dementedly fixated on this piece of kit and my point is this nutcasery doesn't happen too often. There is a value to convenience and most people will pay it if they perceive they're getting value for money. If the music and 'ware business does that their problems with piracy will fade.

My whole point is that people selling ones and zeroes can protect themselves by making the piracy game not worth the candle to most people.

But in anycase Bill Gates is worth $38 real big 'uns and he did this by producing the most pirated products of all time. I'm not condoning this... but... Well, this is the world's smallest violin playing for the ripped off producers of intellectual property on this point.

RAB: of course we passed it on to friends, but we did not pass it to millions other people with a click. Again, it is similar to books.

Yes, the 60ies T&J are crap of course.

Speaking of cartoons: 80 hours a week, Ian? You either enjoy drawing them very much, or there are very many other people who enjoy reading (is that the correct term?) them:-)

I'm a fair bit younger than RAB and I taped stuff off the radio too. The Fred Quimby T&Js are obviously the only ones. I used the word "canon" deliberately partly for that reason (I don't regard the later ones as cannonical) and partly because to me they are as profound a part of Western culture as Bach or the Rokeby Venus or Shakespeare or Sherlock Holmes. For me there is no distinction between high and low culture. I am as sure there are several hundred years of music professors who have written symphonies which were rightly hastily forgotten as I am that people will still be listening to the Sex Pistol's "Pretty Vacant" 500 years from now.

Alisa,
At the risk of sounding puerile (Wot me?!) or frankly libelous I suspect Ian takes so long over his cartoons because (due to their nature) he's doing a lot of off-hand mousing in Photoshop if you know what I mean.

Give us a link Ian. I'm really curious 'cos my only experience of naughty 'toons is Japanese stuff.

The CD with ten songs on it that sells for $25 (where this is the principal means of music distribution) is an obsolete product. New technologies mean that there are much better (or at least much cheaper) alternatives to the music companies' vertically integrated business model. That is the core of the matter. If there was no music piracy because people chose not to do it out of ethical qualms, or there was no music piracy because law enforcement was ultra-successful, this would still be the case. The music companies would still not be providing thie customers with what they want, and the customers would still be going somewhere else, namely to music produced outside the music companies' system. They are doing this anyway, but in such a case it would have happened even faster, and the only choice for the music companies would be to change their business model.

Failing to notice that the product they sell and the business model that goes with it is obsolete is the music companies' great failing. The fact that they have spent the last five to ten years whining about how their decline was the fault of somebody else (ie the pirates) when they should have been noticing that the world has changed is precisely why the fault is theirs.

Sunfish,

So let me see if I get this right. Either you left out something from your chain of logic or try this for size.

Let's say I own a gas station. I'm next to the interstate and my customers like to drive off without paying. So I won't turn the pumps until I have their cash in hand. At that point, I signed no contract so I tell them to FO without the gas 'cause "I never signed nuthin'. There must be at least a few situations were a signature is unnecessary to make a contract binding.

So let's take a different sort of case. I take people's money and let them into my theater to watch movies. The movie is over, I want them to leave. They say "No. I paid to be here." And I say "Yes. For a designated number of viewings. One." And they say, "I never signed anything. You took my money and let me in."

I think this "I never signed a contract" crap is one reason we are such a litiginous society where I practically have to sign a contract to get a cup of coffee.

Do you really want to sign a contract for every interaction you ever have? There is a little thing called copyright. And it is as clearly established in the law as the property lines around your lot. Do you want to, instead of accepting standard property law, require a contract to make people leave if you ever let them on your property? We have this thing called 'ownership' that currently entitles you to order them to leave whether they signed a contract saying they would or not.

I also presume that based on the logic of your argument when you have to click "I accept" to purchase songs in the future, that you'll drop the entire argument about anything you please with CDs because you never signed anything.

People have a right to set up idiotic business models and fail spectacularly when they place too high of demands on their intended market. There are a lot of people here who, whether they realize it or not, are basing their case on the idea that government should decide what kinds of contracts people may enter into. But only in this one narrow case. And I find the argument that we shouldn't protect art producer's rights because record companies are stupid to require substantial intellectual contortions.

Remember that great scene in Stallone's "Demolition Man" where he's riding around with Sandra Bullock and her partner and they're listening to an oldie radio station and singing the Armour hotdog song?

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3e4vl_demolition-man-love-commercials_shortfilms

Nick,

I just read your comment again. What it amounts to is social engineering. It is this oft debated idea that "the market is broken, I have a good idea how to fix it."

No. The market is not broken. All we have to do is permit and protect the right of people to enter into contracts. The market will fix itself.

Has anybody basing their arguments on "but it isn't enforcible" given any thought to where that kind of 'reasoning' eventually leads.

It leads to bureaucrats deciding what is best for us. After all, we need people to decide what rights are worth trying to enforce and what rights should better be abandoned.

In the begining there was live music,the artist and the gig,thence camest the technology to record the music.Soon didst people covet to magic new facsimiles of the performance.And lo,the smart realised that owning the technology to reproduce music and distribute it amongst the joyous populace would'st bring them in a bundle.

There was joy amongst the accountants and stockholders and they waxthest rich for they could owneth the copyright of the artist's work and and bungeth them a groat or two. For yea verily,the artist signed a contract limiting the artists rights.

In the fullness of time didst a vast legion of record pushers,DJs invest the radio stations,eager to partake of the wondrous new thrifty option to playeth records and saveth money on the band.
And it came to pass that a lack of record sales would screweth the artist and the record was the word,and thus it came to pass the record company createth the artist,sending him forth to perform a Runcorn Municipal Baths or the Poughkeepsie Abbatoir Workers Union social club,lo even unto the same night.Until ,as kine grinding the corn he falleth by the wayside.

As the technology droppeth like the gentle rain from heaven trickling down unto even the most lowly,the artist could recreate his own image and still dealeth with the record companies.Who were most pleased since they had a monopoly on distribution,and for a few points of the monkey could save on recording costs.

Now as it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man,so it is for the artist to collect payment from the record companies.Who waxed fat and employed more accountants,who sayeth cut down thy back catalogue and dismisseth those artists who produceth not the big percentage profits.

And lo,this was done,and Artist and Repertoire trawleth no longer the pubs and clubs for new talent,henceforth shall talent emerge from an advertisement in the Stage.

Thence came forth the computer and the meek could henceforth inherit the earth.
There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst the record companies,there was a flash of light and once more there was live music,the artist and the the gig

Midwesterner -

I basically agree with your argument, but I think you might be taking it a step too far in the case of CDs. When someone hands me physical property which I purchased, I assume that the right to dispose of the purchased property has passed to me (by "implied contract," as you say). To continue you with your gas station analogy, once the gas is purchased and in my car, I think you the station owner lose any right to say what I do with it from that point on (unless this was made explicit in the transfer, of course). So - absent a sign that says "all purchased gasoline must remain in the vehicles into which it was pumped," I am free to siphon purchased gas out of one car and transfer it to another (put it in a boat, burn it for heating, experiment with it, take a bath in it, whatever), right?

Likewise, if the music company is going to say how you use a CD once purchased, I think this goes over and above the "implied contract" that I entered into at the point of sale. It needs to be very specific about the fact that in purchasing the CD, I am agreeing not to upload it, or copy it, or whatever else it is that they don't want me doing with it. At the very least, this would seem to require a highly visible label on the CD. Absent this kind of a more enumerated, explicit contract, I apply the default "implied contract" of property ownership which is, "I bought it, now it's mine to do with what I want."

Vinegar Joe. You have a very apt handle for this thread!
I saw you (your namesakes) in 1971 in a Catholic Educational College in Nottingham around 1972.
The audience consisted of us four guys who had driven over from the Uni. 6 Nuns and three lumpen Irish ladies who were well up for it, but we wern't.
It must rank as one of the least populated and appreciated gigs Robert Palmer and Elkie Brooks ever played.
But they had an album to promote...

On the other hand without big money backing bands are we really going to see any truly global "greats" any more? [...] Think it's more likely we'll see more and more one-hit wonders and flashes in the pan [...] More to the point does it really matter?

Not to me.

1971, 1972? Well the times were hazy cold and full of powercuts three times a week ;-)

I would maintain that the bulk of people buy music because they associate with the image of the artiste(s). Most of the value derived from music sales comes from image and brand, not the music itself. This is almost entirely produced by record companies which are largely marketing companies, not CD manufacturers. I don't see demand for this brand association diminishing much in the near future. They will probably just tie their 'products' into tighter contracts so that they collect from all the revenue streams associated to that brand - it could go like the designer clothing industry with fashion houses who make money from selling perfumed water at inflated prices.

Content does not equal container. When buying 'rights reserved' cds, one is only purchasing the container. The content is rented.

If people want to say that this is not being adequately conveyed at the time of purchase, then make that case.

But many here sound like they intend to forbid producers and consumers from agreeing to that sort of transaction. Or that the government should refuse to enforce those contracts, which is effectively the same thing.

We must permit and enforce those contracts and if there are not customers (do I really need to say this here?) the market will inform the producers of their mistake. Other forms of contracts will prevail. But telling consenting adults what kinds of contracts/relationships they may mutually consent to?

RAB

Don't mind me, I have only discussed this subject with Lizzy's erstwhile manager Terry Neill, whom I spent and evening with in the early 80s, Billy Bragg, who is a client of mine, Rick Wakeman, whom I once won an evening with at a charity ball, Gloria Gaynor's tour manager, on the occasion that I backed her playing a house band in a crappy club in Dublin and Gary Moore, who is a casual acquaintance.

I'm sure you know best.

Mid,
I wasn't advocating any kinda social engineering. What I was saying was closer to an idea that fitting window locks and a burgular alarm is more likely to protect your property in certain circumstances than more money or powers for the cops. What I was saying is that the music industry is not helping itself. I was not saying they are within their rights to persue pirates legally but, fundamentally this would not be a business-buster or even a significant threat if they hadn't been idiots for decades.

The market isn't broken in general but in recorded music it's in utter turmoil because the record company execs frequently have no idea how to deal with the technological changes which are altering their industry. They are like 1950s airline heads who insist "You'll never beat the airscrew". Within my lifetime the British motor industry was one of the biggest on the planet. A couple of years ago BMW (their last "saviour") sold the whole shebang for GBP10. A tenner! The market for cars is bigger than ever but because the abysmal nationalized UK car industry didn't change over the years it ended-up being sold for the price of a couple of bottles of mediocre wine.

Point is Honda are still going, so's GM, so's Tata (which just unveiled a USD2500 car, by far the cheapest in the World) and they're going because their products have something going for them which BL, Austin-Rover, MG Rover or whatever the hell they called themselves didn't. Well that's part of it but what I really mean is that clearly there is a dramatic change going on in the retail music business and that not everyone in it will survive. The British car industry faced competition from better cars made abroad and it went under because they couldn't compete with them. The music industry has a similar problem now because Internet killed the video-star and just as some non-Japanese car-makers are still with us some music businesses won't be either.

It's adapt or die and if that ain't a market-driven thing I don't know what is. If Dell had carried on selling 486s for over a grand a they'd be history. If EMI et al continue to sell audio recordings for over market-rates then they're finished too. It's as simple as that. I fix PCs for a living. I might greatly prefer fixing Difference Engines but I'd be whistling for a living.

Should the law protect these people - yes. Should they be reasonably expected to protect themselves? Obviously yes as well. Workable business models change over time and let's face it DMR doesn't work in exactly the same way that Ford wouldn't even consider making a car that on purchase is permanently biometrically IDed to a single driver. I'm not, and wasn't saying they don't have the right I'm just saying the product would sink like a sodding stone in exactly the same way the consumers went light over Sony DRM or any number of utterly silly or outdated ideas like charging more than about a fiver for a CD or restricting it's use in ways customers hate.

I was not saying they are within their rights to persue pirates

turn that 180, me cock up bad.

Mid,
Your point in principle is perfectly right - I've read enough EULAs in my time... But it's just a crap, useless, out of date business model and if you restrict that content too serverely people will jump ship. I recall software which was licensed in ways that prevented backing up the floppies (and you know how dodgy they were) it came on and whilst the companies had the right to do that it was despised by the customers. If you want to know a prime example of digital content protection that back-fired awfully just google Lenslock.

Content does not equal container. When buying 'rights reserved' cds, one is only purchasing the container. The content is rented.

Except that in this case the content is the container. The physical CD I purchase is physically molded in such a way that any number of machines the producer knows I may own read out of it the music I want to hear.

If people want to say that this is not being adequately conveyed at the time of purchase, then make that case.

Yes, I agree this is the case they should make.

It is indeed my impression that the nature of the purchase doesn't adequately convey these conditions. Purchasing a CD is different from attending a movie showing in a number of ways - most notably that the whole point of a CD is that the listening privileges it grants you are not a "one-time" (or even a "one-listener") event. CDs exist to allow me to recreate the event as many times as I like, possibly in different settings and with different equipment and different listening companions each time. It would be patently absurd for a music company to claim that the nature of the sale carried with it the implication I was prohibited me from, for example, playing it in my car because other passengers might hear it. They may, of course, impose this condition on my purchase if they like, but it needs to be made explicit since it is in no way implied in the transaction. Likewise, I don't see anything about the transaction itself that implies I can't upload or copy the CD. Music companies are aware when they sell CDs that the nature of the player means others may hear music they haven't paid for (at parties, etc.). They presumably allow this to continue because it is free advertising. But my right to play the CDs I purchase on an open stereo is not something that I deduced from the seller's advertising interest, but rather just from the fact that I own the CD and also own a sound system with speakers capable of playing it. If they don't want me copying it on my computer and sharing it with people I meet on the web, then these are conditions that they need to expressly impose.

We must permit and enforce those contracts and if there are not customers (do I really need to say this here?) the market will inform the producers of their mistake. Other forms of contracts will prevail. But telling consenting adults what kinds of contracts/relationships they may mutually consent to?

Completely agree. A sale is an implied contract, and sellers have the right to impose conditions on use after sales as part of the terms of the sale. I am just concerned that we not take this principle of "implied contract" too far. The provisions of implied contracts shouldn't be things we have to work too hard at reasoning out, and they obviously shouldn't afford the seller arbitrary powers of interpretation, such that he can ex post facto include all kinds of esoteric clauses that were not clear at the point of sale. To me, this means keeping at the level of "physical thing sold = full transfer of disposal rights to purchaser unless outside conditions are made clear." When I buy a physical object such as a CD, therefore, the seller needs to make clear that certain uses of that physical thing are prohibited.

I regularly burn copies of CDs I've purchased for friends and receive similar copies from them. I do not generally upload music for public redistribution - mostly because the music industry has made clear (in wholly inappropriate, threatening ways, I must add) that they impose the condition that I may not do so. Nothing in my buying of a CD implied to me that it was a "container" and that the content was "rented." This was something that only became fully clear once the RIAA got the police to start knocking heads for them.

Part of the problem is the recording industry has been trying to change the rules. No one cared if I copied my old tapes or made tapes off the radio. Now they want to toss people in jail for the same thing. They are not bargining in good faith, therefor, not contract with them, implied or otherwise, has any meaning.

It is the same with EULAs, you are suppose to click that you "understand and agree" with it. The are written in leagalise nonsense, NO ONE who isnt a lawyer understands them.

I guess my point is getting lost.

First, the content is not the container. Whether the content is fused to it or not does not alter the fact that what is being purchased is not a CD, but information conveyed on a CD. And CDs are like movies in the way that matters. You do not own a movie after you see it. You purchase an entertainment experience. The same applies to the CD. You are purchasing the entertainment experience. How many times you may repeat that experience under the terms of the contract doesn't change the basic nature of the transaction.

As more and more sales of entertainment and other IP are being made over the internet, we have to click on those heinous (but philosophically supportable) "I agree" contracts. In the past these contracts were standardized as fair use. But now, with everybody suing for everything and saying "just try and stop me" we will see these in every transaction. I personally preferred the old way where the terms where pretty well understood to mean you couldn't make any money off of your use of a recording or do anything to infringe the owner's ability to make money with it, but other than that you could pretty much enjoy it as you like.

But I guess the time has come that there has to be a written and agreed to contract for everything. I don't much like it but I don't see an alternative.

Nick,

I'm hearing all these (not just yours) plans to 'save music' and I'm kind of fogging. It is like listening to Mitt and Hillary debate what is the best health care plan. And I just want to throw something at the screen and yell at them It's none of your ^#$!)*_%^* business!

There is no place for anybody but the producers of the music to be deciding how to market their product. Yes, I agree the companies are greedy, stupid, blind, ripping off artists, blah, blah, blah. So what? NMP. NYP.

But I energetically reject the idea that we should use selective enforcement by the state to compel people to stop engaging in certain sorts of transactions. The idea that certain rights are too expensive to protect is an incredibly dangerous precedent to set. I do not want the government putting a price tag on any of my rights and then using that unilateral decision to decide whether I merit its protection. I do not believe the government (hence, taxpayers) need to go looking for contract violators, but when a violation is reported and evidence is presented, then the sole responsibility of the government is make its verdict in that particular case and on the terms of that particular contract. I do not want society imposing its 'better judgment' on whether it was a sensible contract.

Vivictius,

Not totally true. The companies did not get upset if I rerecorded Muswell Hillbillies onto a more convenient (for me) media. But they have always blown a gasket if I started mass producing those copies. It is because everyone on the internet can distribute gazillions of copies of a song that they went nuts.

I agree about EULAs, but they are a consequence of people ripping off product. It's like picking someone's pocket and then getting self righteous when they move their wallet to their front pocket.

I think a lot of record companies are completely losing at the idea of deciphering what people do and don't want. Looking at an average day, where most of the music I listen to is either on my MP3 player, my satellite radio, or on the Internet on web sites/ Youtube, it's no wonder that I don't much care for the major pop acts.

Handing me a CD, unless it's by someone I really like and want to take home and rip to MP3, is like handing me a plastic drink coaster, at this point. I'd just as soon find a USB or SD port, plug in my stick, and download a song in seconds. In an age where a whole CD can be downloaded at breakneck speed, I want the option to pick and choose the songs I'd like to listen to, instead of paying fifteen bucks for a CD with maybe one decent track on it. And if your product is going to carry so much DRM I can't even watch a legitimately purchased Family Guy DVD on my computer- well, you're shooting yourself in the foot when that happens.

I don't think there's a lot of computer gamers here, so I'll point to GalCiv2's experience with DRM. People who not only treat their customers maturely, but put out kickass product, are going to profit. As people tune out FM radio and go searching for their own musical preferences, the record companies are just acting like they have a death wish.

Oh, and I've noticed how quick they are to resort to government/judicial pressure to try and crush the new wave of innovation, rather than ride it. It's honestly made me much less likely to purchase a lot of music in general.

The idea that certain rights are too expensive to protect is an incredibly dangerous precedent to set. I do not want the government putting a price tag on any of my rights and then using that unilateral decision to decide whether I merit its protection.

Though this exact precedent has never been set, similar precedents have long been accepted. See, for example, Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. Ct. of Ap., 1981), which states that the police are not required to respond to all complaints, only to provide "general protection." In addition, the Justice Department regularly directs federal authorities to selectively enforce some laws and drop enforcement of others. This was, for example, the reason that marijuana possession and pornography arrests dropped significantly during the Clinton years (medical marijuana arrests were as good as nonexistent). Bush I instructed federal authorities to aggressively enforce pornography restrictions, Clinton decided the feds had better things to do. It has been working this way for some time.

Just to be clear, it's not the same as saying that the government may decide to completely ignore certain laws. But if they decided to generally ignore RIAA complaints, it wouldn't be the first time they had been less lackadaisical in their approach to certain select regulations.

Well... That seem to pretty much support the idea that we really don't want government to have that degree of discretion, doesn't it?

Personally, I don't even think we should have taxpayer funded police but that is a whole separate topic.

And no, I don't think it is good that Clinton chose not to enforce laws we disapprove of. Selective enforcement simply gives the power trippers more weapons to selectively enforce against their enemies and opponents.

Eamon dont be like that!
I rather like you. But I have written for Sounds, NME and Melody Maker in my time, and have seen EVERYBODY.
The fact is back in the old days, a support bands management would pay a headliners management to be the support. Just for the exposure. This helped defray the costs to the headliners and get vital exposure for the newcomers. The pay off was when they started to get radio plays off their own bat and therefore people buying their records.
This is how it worked. Spotty oiks, desperate for sex and riches spend a little time in their bedrooms learning a few chords. They find a snappy name and tour the local toilets for peanuts. Their mates tell other mates and pretty soon they have a bit of a following.
Then they coerse the likes of me, music journalists along to see them.
They get a favorable review (maybe. I am tough but fair!) and that gets them to play slightly better toilets cos they have something to show the promoters. Nobody wants to play to an empty room. See the Vinegar Joe anecdote above, and that leads to the magical record contract and everyone lives happily ever after. Except they dont. The million pound advance pays for everything. It is not free money unless you are the Sex Pistols and manage to collect the cash without doing any work for it. Just getting fired for being controversial (nice work if you can get it!) Wages, travel, recording costs, gig hire the lot. All that expenditure came from the record sales not the Gig take, and if you dont sell records you were dropped sharpish.
Bands dont need to do that anymore.
They can do it for themselves.
My regards to Billy. Another nice man, if of the opposite end of the spectrum to Joe Jackson, who we discussed on a previous thread.

Say Al Gore had not invented the Internet, and so we could rip bought CDs to computers, and burn them to blank CDs, but there was no way to distribute them digitally from one computer to another. Would it be OK if I bought a CD, riped it, burned millions of copies, and gave them away for free? Yes, it does sound like too much trouble, but just because Al Gore made it so much easier and simpler, does not make it right. Imagine the above scenario applied to books in the old days. Would it be right for me to print millions of copies of the latest best seller I just bought, and give them away for free? I don't think so. Mid is right: you own the "container", i.e. the plastic disk/bunch of paper, but you don't own the content (music/novel). You are free to use it for your enjoyment or education, but you don't own it. And no, strictly speaking, it is not OK to let a few friends borrow the CD/book, but the financial damage to the /author/artist/publisher/producer is too minuscule to bother with something that cannot even be enforced. Now, none of this is obvious: if someone told me 20 years ago that distributing music without the need for a physical medium would be possible, I would have said "SciFi". So yes, the record companies would be wise to put a sticker on explaining it.

RAB,
Back in the Real Old Days,you couldn't get anyone in the music business to travel north of Watford Gap.Headliners were strange alien beings from America who wafted across the newsreels as they landed at Heathrow.Even after Larry Parne's stable made it nationally the oiks on the other side of the Great Wall of Watford could only Brylcreme their hair in the hope of blagging a chick.Gigs were strictly youth clubs,pubs social clubs and the odd jazz club if you played skiffle.
There were recording studios on the other side of the wall,they were used to cut directly to disc songs for girl friends and parents .But basically,if you didn't have an in you didn't perform South of Watford Junction.
Yes a few managers A&R,music journalists promised to come and see us play but,the seemed to have so many sick friends they had to visit in hospital
Wasn't until the Liverpool sound broke that the music business to note of bads outside the London area.

They sell lettuces at the supermarket. It's perfectly possible for me to produce lettuces of similar (or even better) quality at my own home for a significantly lower price than the supermarket sells for. Yet still I will choose to buy lettuces at he supermarket. There's a lesson for the so-called "intellectual property" industry there.

Actually, quite a lot of people do grow their own lettuces and yet still a thriving lettuce industry exists without having to induce the government to persecute those who do grow their own. Another lesson there too.

I hate that I got in towards the end of this discussion, but as a lawyer I have to say that the commenters who suggest that purchasing a CD creates an implied contract, particularly a rights reserved sort of contract, you are absolutely and unequivocally wrong.

This issue has been hashed out extensively, primarily in the arena of post-purchase sales contracts, such as EULAs accompanying software. It has been incorporated into the UCC and other international treatises.

But the gist of the matter is that for a contract to be formed, both parties have to realize that the contract exists, that they are agreeing to it, what the terms are, what the price is, etc. This can occur by posting some sort of warning on the packaging that there are additional terms to be agreed to post-purchase, but by law if the consumer doesn't want to agree, he is entitled to a full refund. That would probably be worse for the record companies than the status quo, because consumer could take the product home, open it, rip it, and take it back. The physical nature of the object would prevent there from being any evidence as to whether the disc was played or not. Notably, record companies haven't tried this approach.

Further, the idea that consumers are purchasing content licenses is problematic because once you own the license, you have a right in the content, not in the item and media format. Under this sort of regime a license-holder could purchase movies at a discount on vinyl, cassette, VHS, or Betamax, and have a license for the content in whatever format they wish. Notably, record companies haven't pursued this approach either.

They can't have it one way or the other. Media companies can't assert they are selling a product, which you have to buy individually on VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray, or whatever else, and simultaneously assert that they are selling you a license and not an object.

I hate to hear people assert their opinions about the law as if they were fact. If you are a content producer and wish that the nature of contract law inured to your benefit, your mere desire doesn't make it so.

Alisa,
You underestimate the power that sneakernet had. The number of computer games copied at my school was phenomenal and well, say everyone who gets a copy, copies it for two mates...

Mid,
But it's not a genuinely enforceable law. Not without internet censorship... Now, I appreciate that I have no right to tell EMI et al how to run their business but I kinda thought the whole point of this thread was to discuss the music biz...

It's not the music business that is over. It's the music distribution business.

Rihrd,

Pick up your crayons and go to bed. You shouldn't be playing with the computer.

Ben,

There was a time when the copyright symbol, which was and is clearly displayed on the outside of all of the packaging, meant something.

There was a time when purchasing a package with the copyright symbol on it meant you were buying something protected by the copyright laws.

I have no doubt from your insistence that the property boundaries defined by copyright law are meaningless without written contracts, lawyer approved warnings on the packaging must go into every detail, and claims that people are legally entitled to purchase a copyrighted CD, take it home, rip off the contents, and return the packaging because it didn't have the right lawyer approved, fully detailed contract on the wrapper, ... that you are in fact a lawyer. And that you may claim credit for being one of the profiteers that have turned us into this society of contracts and waivers of liability to buy a cup of coffee and lawn mowers that have labels on them saying "don't use this lawn mower to trim hedges".

This is the way that the John Edwards of the world want it to be. And this is the way that they (and presumably you) have made it. That doesn't mean it is morally or rationally sound.

My dad bought a farm on a handshake and a promise. Twenty years later he sold part of it with clever lawyers sitting at long tables making sure that all the things you describe were properly done so a clever lawyer couldn't use tortuous legal constructions to rip somebody off. Are you proud?

Used to be a list of lot lines or a lot number and a bill of sale was enough. The last house he sold had a contract running probably ten to fifteen closely printed legal pages with several attached legal documents. All to the service of repeating the obvious.

I said it before and Ben here has affirmed, property means nothing when there are lawyers around.

Nick,

Sneaker net was a very short lived phenomenon in the course of copyright history. The market hardly discovered what the word meant before it had been replaced by internet.

All the enforcement requires is for courts to render the verdicts that reflect the contracts when suits are brought. As our friend Ben makes clear above, the obvious ain't good enough, we now need to require people to sign lawyer approved contracts before we let them handle a copy.

Although if you follow his 'reasoning' to its logical conclusion it will be possible for renters to sell their landlords houses unless they have, in every case, signed a contract saying they won't sell his house. That is why IP needs to be treated as surveyed property but we live in a world of lawyers. Sigh.

Midwesterner:

All the enforcement requires is for courts to render the verdicts that reflect the contracts when suits are brought. As our friend Ben makes clear above, the obvious ain't good enough, we now need to require people to sign lawyer approved contracts before we let them handle a copy.

Except for one thing: it's NOT OBVIOUS.

I'm looking at a CD case right now: Los Lobos "Just Another Band from East L.A." The label does not include a contract anywhere. The closest I can find is "All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable laws." "All rights reserved" says nothing about which rights these are. I guess you could read it as an attempt to incorporate rights written into law somewhere, but where? And the label also doesn't say what constitute "applicable laws."[1]

When I bought it, I bought two plastic discs with certain data stored on them. I didn't see anything, other than the above expressing any claims by the copyright owner. If he wanted to claim something, he should have actually explained what he wanted to claim rather than throwing out a vague reference to undefined laws and hoping that people who believe in property rights rally around him.

Think about the farm sale that you reference above. I'd be willing to bet that your father and the guy who sold it to him at least had a common understanding of where the property lines were located, before that handshake. Not to mention a common understanding of whether the previous owner would continue to have any right to the property after the money changed hands.

Do you really want to sign a contract for every interaction you ever have? There is a little thing called copyright. And it is as clearly established in the law as the property lines around your lot. Do you want to, instead of accepting standard property law, require a contract to make people leave if you ever let them on your property? We have this thing called 'ownership' that currently entitles you to order them to leave whether they signed a contract saying they would or not.

If the terms of any given deal aren't obvious, then fine. The existence of a property line governs how close someone can come to my door pretty clearly.[2] However, I think the boundaries of my lot and my stuff are a lot more explicit than some vague reference to "all applicable laws" printed in 4-point black type on a brown label.

I also presume that based on the logic of your argument when you have to click "I accept" to purchase songs in the future, that you'll drop the entire argument about anything you please with CDs because you never signed anything.

That's when I pocket my money and tell the salesman that he can roll up the CD and see where it fits. When the terms become unacceptable I don't perform the transaction. Just like when I walked out of Great Clips a month ago because they claimed that they couldn't cut my hair without my home address. The problem is, the copyright owner so far seems to be claiming the existence of terms that he hasn't disclosed, after money changes hands.

[1]Bear in mind that the Constitutional provision authorizing copyright laws explicitly says something other than forever and ever, also. Somehow, I don't think that spec