RIAA question

[AmericanScience]

So I use Acquisition all the time to nab music peer to peer. Sometimes 40 songs in a sitting if I can think of them.

Thing is, about 90% of the time, I own the CD already, it's just not on my computer, and the physical CD is separated from the case. Or I own it on vinyl.. And in the cases where I don't own the flippin song, if I dig it, I buy it if I can find it...

So has the RIAA sued anyone that downloads craploads of songs, who can then produce physical ownership of the downloaded tunes? What happens then?

[tobedawg]

I think they have just sued people for sharing or uploading the files.. I believe that uploading or sharing is the ACTUAL copyright infringement.. ?!?

I might be wrong though???

[Pretend Girl]

i think you're sort of right tobedawg, but i think a lot of it is pure convenience. It's a little easier for them to catch uploaders because the riaa can just go on themselves and download all the music they want and grab IPs from the people supplying them with music. in this case the person could totally be sharing legal copies of their music (i.e. mp3s they ripped from their cds) but because they are supplying it to others, they are breaking the law.. the riaa could do the same for downloading I guess but then it's a lot of the waiting game, they'd actually have to PROVIDE files for people to download from them. and my guess is they'd have to be real files or the downloaders would slip through some legal loophole. so if you're trying to catch someone in the act you don't really want to give them what they are looking for. (edit: in this case that is, since while you are suing their ass, they could be uploading this file to many other people)

but anyway i used to wonder about this too, and no i think it is still illegal. you are allowed to make backups of your music. there are plenty of free (and fast, I must say, much faster than downloading) programs that will rip your cds to mp3s. if you're worried about it, you might just want to consider that. however don't quote me on this. i think if you could prove that every song you have on your computer is the SAME VERSION of the song you have in your cd collection, you might be able to get away with it. i'm no lawyer, i'm just guessing.

[Dirk]

Everyone they have sued has been for uploading, although I assume downloading isn;t out of the question. And I believe it is still illegal for you to download music even if you own the CD. There was a case similar to this where some company (I want to say it was MP3.com) was offering a service where they would verify you owned the CD (by them scanning it in your drive once) and then you could download/stream the music from them without you needing to rip the CD. This was found to be illegal because while you have the right to make a backup of your CD, you don't have the right to share your backup with others, even if they already own the CD.

[akip]

there's an interesting article by james surowiecki in the new yorker (may 16) about musicians realizing that a cd is now pretty much just a promotion for the tour, where they actually make money. now if the rest of the world (the suits) could just catch up. problem is, they're all still living in the 60s.

ALL POWER TO THE ARTISTS!!

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?050516ta_talk_surowiecki

FINANCIAL PAGE

HELLO, CLEVELAND
Issue of 2005-05-16
Posted 2005-05-09


In the summer of 1924, a Kansas City band called the Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawk Orchestra did something unusual: it went on tour. Popular as live music was, bands in those days tended to serve as house orchestras or to play long stands in local clubs; there was hardly even a road to go on. But Jules Stein, a booking agent from Chicago, convinced the Nighthawk Orchestra that it could make more money by playing a different town every night. The tour, which lasted five weeks, was a smash. Soon, bands all over the country were hitting the road to play ballrooms and dance halls.

Stein’s original vision hasn’t changed much, despite some modifications over the years—parking lots, hair spray, the disposable lighter. Consider Metallica, the Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawk Orchestra of our day. Though Metallica still sells a fair number of CDs from its back catalogue (it has made just one album in the past six years), it makes most of its money from concerts. Two years ago, the band brought in almost fifty million dollars with its Sanitarium tour. Last year, it brought in sixty million with its Madly in Anger with the World tour. God knows what it would take to make Metallica happy.

The music industry may be in crisis, what with illegal file-sharing, stagnant CD sales, and the decline of commercial rock radio, but the touring business is as sturdy as ever. In some ways, it is healthier than some of the mediums (radio, recorded music) that at one point or another were supposed to render it obsolete. Since 1998, annual concert-tour revenue has more than doubled, while CD sales have remained essentially flat. Last year, thirteen different artists grossed more than forty million dollars each at the box office. (Prince made eighty-seven million.) Consumers who seem reluctant to spend nineteen dollars for a CD apparently have few qualms about spending a hundred bucks or more to see a show.

There are still artists who make huge sums of money selling records, but they are the lucky few. A longtime recording-industry rule of thumb holds that just one in ten artists makes money from royalties. Today, it’s probably less than that. So the best model, if you’re in it for the money, may be the Grateful Dead. Although the Dead didn’t sell many records or get much airplay, they worked the big stadiums and arenas long enough and often enough to become one of the most profitable bands out there. As in politics and sales, nothing beats meeting the people face to face.

Most musicians, from a business perspective, at least, would wish it otherwise. Selling CDs is, as economists say, scalable: you make one recording, and you can sell it to an unlimited number of people for an unlimited amount of time, at very little cost. A tour, on the other hand, is work. You have to perform nearly every night, before a limited number of people, for hours at a time. You can knock a few seconds off each song, fire a percussionist, or sell more T-shirts, but in the end efficiencies are hard to come by.

The trick is that musicians get a much higher percentage of the money from concerts and merchandise than they do from the sale of their CDs. An artist, if he’s lucky, gets twelve per cent of the retail price of a CD. But he doesn’t get any royalties until everything is paid for—studio time, packaging costs, videos—which means that he can sell a million records and make almost nothing. On tour, though, he often gets more than half of the box-office, so even if he grosses less he can profit more.

Traditionally, tours were a means of promoting a record. Today, the record promotes the tour. The decline in record sales has shrunk the size of the pie for labels and artists to fight over, so they’ve had to find new ways to make money, and artists have come to see how lucrative touring can be, given what people will pay to see them live. (Ticket prices for the top hundred tours doubled between 1995 and 2003.) And, while high prices may be starting to put a dent in attendance, the dollars keep pouring in. Last summer’s concert season was considered a dismal one, yet, according to Pollstar, the industry’s trade magazine, concert revenues rose for the year.

Inevitably, touring rewards some artists better than others—graying superstars, for example, with their deep-pocketed baby-boomer fans and set lists full of sing-along hits. The economist Alan Krueger has estimated that the top one per cent of performers claim more than half of all concert revenues. But even indie rockers are reaping the benefits, with bands like Wilco and Modest Mouse selling out venues like Radio City Music Hall, at decidedly non-indie prices.

The upshot is that the fortunes of musicians and the fortunes of music labels have less and less to do with each other. This may be the first stage of what John Perry Barlow, a former lyricist for the Dead, once called the shift from “the music business” to “the musician business.” In the musician business, the assets that once made the major labels so important—promotion, distribution, shelf space—matter less than the assets that belong to the artists, such as their ability to perform live. As technology has grown more sophisticated, the ways in which artists make money have grown more old-fashioned. The value of songs falls, and the value of seeing an artist sing them rises, because that experience can’t really be reproduced. It’s funny that, in an era of file-sharing and iPod-stealing, the old troubadour may have the most lucrative gig of all. But then Metallica knew it all along. “Send me money, send me green,” the group sang in “Leper Messiah,” twenty years ago. “Make a contribution, and you’ll get a better seat.”

— James Surowiecki