No secret here, the music business is in trouble. One of the biggest reasons is that its product, being digital, is easy to steal, and for many it appears that there is no good reason not to.
I think I have the solution. But to be honest, though I did think of it independently, with a little bit of research I was able to establish that none other than Bill Gates himself proposed a similar concept in his 1995 book, The Road Ahead.
That said, this is 2008, and based on my discussions with folks in the record business, the idea is really not one being looked at, but there don’t appear to be any good reasons why. And so I am proposing it here to try to get the conversation going.
The idea is fairly straightforward. We should not be buying bits when we buy songs, or for that matter, digital content in general. We should be buying lifetime rights to access. So when you buy a song, or album, you can freely re-download it from the cloud, you may stream it to yourself, you can load it on any device you have with full privileges, for the rest of your life.
In this scenario, the cloud manages your ownership. So if you lose your iPod, the cloud knows what songs you own and is ready to re-download them to you. If you don’t have your iPod with you, you can still go to any PC and stream music from your library to yourself.
The point of this is to give long-term value to the purchase of a song. Right now, if you steal a song, once you have stolen it there is not much value difference between having stolen it and having purchased the real thing, other than, perhaps, a clear conscience, which it appears is not enough.
As I see it, a set of managed relationships between artists and labels on the one side, and fans on the other, has great value, to both sides of the equation. As a consumer, this would allow you to opt-in to relationships with artists, fan clubs, discount tickets, notification of concerts you might like in your area etc. It is a way for fans, without going out of their way, to establish a deeper relationship with their favorite artists.
The interesting aspect of this is the politics of it. Who controls what? And there, I think I have a solution that works both technologically and politically.
There would need to be one, or several rights societies, kind of like ASCAP and BMI. They would be non-profit organizations that do one thing. They manage the database that stores the relationships between users and songs. But they would not be responsible for selling anything.
The idea is that all the types of businesses that exist today would service customers including traditional digital music stores, as well as streaming on demand vendors, and online music lockers. So, for example, Rhapsody would still offer an on-demand streaming service as well as the right to play purchased music with the additional privileges that would afford. When you log in, it would ask the central database what songs you have played recently. Essentially, your streamed play history is in the cloud, just the way it is with Rhapsody today.
But what is interesting with this new model is that you can switch from Rhapsody to Napster, and retain all of your purchases and play history. Or you could go to iTunes and re-download a purchased song you lost. In each case there is probably a service fee of some sort for allowing you to re-download music, perhaps on an annual basis, but those fees would be up to the service provider, and would presumably be driven by competition.
To touch on the details for a bit, the database would be exceedingly simple. It would store two tables. I have outlined them below, and I am sure there are other fields that I have missed. But it does, at least, suggest the framework.
User Table
user ID
last access date/time
Transaction Table
The Song ID or Album ID
user ID
Password or OpenID
the seller ID
transaction date/Time
Unit Type (e.g. single stream or full purchase)
Both the service providers and the record labels would have access to the database. The service providers would have write access, and would only have read access to a given customers history if the customer gave permission for that, which might allow the service provider to use collaborative filtering to make listening suggestions, as well as allowing the user to see what they have played or purchased and when.
The record labels would have access to the database for tallying purchases in order to bill service providers. The labels would not have permission to access individual purchase records, but could pay service providers to send messages to fans of a given artist, presuming the fans have opted in to receiving such messages.
With regard to identity, the central database would have no knowledge of who anyone actually is. Credit card information is held by the service provider, but that information, and actual identity information such as name or address is only kept as needed by the service provider for facilitating transactions, and not in the central database.
Finally, the idea of this is that accounts are not transferable and become inactive after death. But since we don’t know who people really are, we have to guess, and to make it unattractive to use someone else’s account. For this, we employ several tactics.
First, we set time limits. An account may not exist longer than the average human life. This would discourage someone from using an account since it will cut off after a certain time and then all of your personal songs go away.
Second, we say if an account is not used for several years – I am not yet suggesting a particular time frame – it becomes invalid. But most importantly, service providers create such personalized experiences and suggestions that you don’t want to use someone else’s account any more than anyone wants to share a Last.fm account.
From an economic perspective, the rights society would operate based on membership fees from labels and service providers, and it probably would make sense to have several competing rights societies for the consumer to choose from. It probably also makes sense for there to be some nominal annual fee to the consumer, but since I haven’t done any modeling around this I am not sure. The main point is that the organization needs to make enough money to operate successfully given demand.
And so, the reason I am writing this is because I want to see it happen. I have no economic incentive to do so, and am pretty busy doing my own business. But I have begun exploring this as an idea with interested parties to see what people thought.
From what I hear on the label side, they would likely be receptive to such an idea, given the state of things, but the impetus from this must come from the tech side first. This is because the labels are not capable of creating the infrastructure, and without the service providers it won’t work.
For this reason, the labels really need buy-in from Microsoft, Amazon, or some other big player or players. I don’t even suggest Apple here, though they would be the obvious choice, since the concept is a direct threat to iTunes hegemony. This threat, however, is a great reason for every other tech business in consumer facing content delivery to love this idea. It radically changes the status quo.
And so really, at the end of the day, this is a request to the big tech guys to reach out to talk about this idea. Though it may be a bit presumptuous, if I can serve as a midwife in this situation, it would be my pleasure. Because of the competitive interests involved here I do think some kind of neutral third party will be required to grease the wheels.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
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36 comments:
It sounds like a pretty compelling idea from a consumer and label standpoint, but I'm wondering about how the service provider fares.
Apple, for example, would be put in a position of being a broker of a fungible commodity instead of a file that can only be played on an iPod and sold only through their store. Given that they've sold billions of these, they're probably pretty wedded to the status quo. If they could be forced to opt in to the system you've outlined, then they've got a huge initial hit as people re-download their entire music libraries in non-DRM format. Or perhaps this system would force them to retain the DRM versions unless they buy anew the free version--and then you're back to the problem that your solution is intended to solve.
From a technical perspective, I can only see one glaring problem: association by the service provider between a user in the database and the user of the provider. You say that the central database doesn't store any PII (and your table certainly suggests that), so how can a service provider query the database in order to associate user joecool@example.com with user ID 5634534701396? If you're locked into a service provider (who maintains that joecool@example.com is associated with user ID 5634534701396 in the central database) then I can see the connection, but your scenario explicitly allows for joecool@example.com to go from Apple to Rhapsody. Seemingly, Rhapsody will know nothing about user ID 5634534701396.
Other than those issues, I can see the utility and benefits.
Bill,
You are right that apple wont like this. But everyone else will. I dont think there is a solution for getting things out of apple's DRM, but at least on a go forward basis, people are free.
For the second part of your question, the idea is that the user knows their ID and log into rhapsody with it. So when you set up your rhapsody account you give it your music cloud ID.
Interesting idea for sure Hank. My first thought is that it might be complicated both technically and from an organizational standpoint to get everyone on the same page. I know you aren't saying it can happen over night but to get everyone working together might be the hardest part. Obviously with some sort of API the system outlined could work with any type of service.
I am very interested to see if anything like this can come to fruition as I have been involved with Technology and similar services for a few years and I'm also a new drummer interested in the music industry. I would love to see something developed for both sides for obvious reasons. Thanks for the post, lets see where it can go :) Cheers!
Adrian
Adrian,
Indeed, I dont think the tech is hard, but the getting people on the same page (i.e. the politics) will certainly be a challenge.
The tech side is never hard... until we start working on it :) lol If you ever generate a group to work on this let me know... I'd be interested.
It seems to me that you're arguing for a bug-compatible reproduction of what was a temporary, and far from ideal, system - as if you added scratches and jumps to CDs to make them sound more like LPs. (There's more to your idea than that - cloud storage and identity management are cool - but being the person I am I prefer to talk about the bit I disagree with)
The cost of the reproduction of bit patterns amortizes to zero. That's the essential fact. Yes, people should get paid for their work - but turn that around - people should do work where the effort/reward ratio suits their interests and talents. Nobody went out of their way to safeguard the incomes of portrait painters. Rather, with the availability of cameras etc, that just became a far less attractive profession. The market changed. Rather than protect business models founded on pre-digital technology, let the market adjust. (One of the effects of music piracy may well be an increase in live performance – no bad thing.)
New technology can really screw with people's plans - sorry you guys whose decision to become rock stars was predicated on a particular recording technology and IP law (those who did it for the drugs and sex should still be fine) - but there are victims more deserving of our sympathy - I still shed a tear for the poor slide-rule industry.
The economist John Kay once said that Oxford University should not be given more government support on the grounds that if your name was "Oxford University" and you couldn't turn that fact into cash, then clearly you had no idea how to manage money. Similarly, if you have a hit band and you can't make money out of that then your problem is not digital rights management.
Of course a healthy reward for talented and creative people is important – but if no one ever makes a dime from selling bit patterns human culture will not collapse. In fact the more access, the more free stuff, the more culture. Soros said somewhere that he suspected human culture could not be self-sustaining without a certain amount of free-loading. If you just want to make money then become a banker.
Hank, a great way forward.
It is definitely something that I want to see happen, and with an hour afterthought, I still cannot see any valid arguments against the economics of an environment like this.
If anybody is starting the non-profit to do this, I’m applying for a job.
Nice try, but it will never work. There is no one to sue.
It’s sad to hear that the music business needs to be saved but at least the ways to save it have been stated here. All these methods of how to download and how to use music are important, but maybe it’s best to get artists more media attention. This leads to public interest, and therefore consumers listen and buy their music. The right thing to do now is for artists to start hiring PR firms like 5W Public Relations that has a good roster of popular musicians such as Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, Pretty Ricky, and Young Jeezy.
Hank,
I'm not exactly sure how this is going to compete with "free" music. Unless there's some way to stop the BitTorrents of the world, how will your idea compete?
Perhaps your idea coupled with much, much better DRM might be feasible. Pretty much all devices in the future will connect with the Internet. So maybe checking codes will be possible.
There's also the possible problem of people sharing an ID to download multiple copies of a song. That might be a smaller problem because sharers would have to agree on how to share costs which can become a hassle. Still, for families I could easily see sharing happening.
This offers me less value than I got from the music industry just 10 years ago when I bought a CD. A CD is infinitely transferable to any device, permanently owned by the customer, and able to be re-sold or given to another person. Why is giving people less than they got just a few years ago supposed to be an incentive for them to pay more?
You are on to something, but it isn't new and it isn't quite right. The way to get paid as a musician is to provide something of greater value. At this point, hundreds of people have been echoing this for a few years now, and musicians across the planet are experimenting with offerings that do just that.
Why do we need to "save music industry"? The entire "industry" was a byproduct of inventing a way to record sound. Someone with money and equipment (the aforementioned "industry") suddenly was able to record something and make a profit on those who could not.
Soon, however, we invented ways to record sound cheaply, thus one didn't have to spend as much on recording/reproducing hardware, giving people ability to do it themselves, and the "industry" started to bitch about VCRs and cassette recorders.
Now we've come up with even cheaper way to record, copy and even manipulate (!) sound. And a way to distribute it for free.
The "industry" is clearly not needed anymore, there is no "product" behind it, just a bunch of useless "distributors" and "promoters". Why would we want to save THAT?
Nothing is going to happen to music, the music has been around for thousands of years, long before all these inventions took place, and the best musical creations happened without any help from the "industry".
We (engineers) gave them (the industry) an exclusive monopoly to charge for a short-lived privilege of storing and transporting sound, now we're taking it back. In that sense everything goes back to normal: nothing to be saved here.
Eugueny,
In other words, you do not agree with supporting the arts since they can all be digitized. Artists shouldnt get paid for making music. They have no reason or right to sell it. But you have the right to consume it, and to enjoy its pleasures without providing compensation.
You, and all those like you with such thoughts are without any care or concern for your fellow man, but more importantly you would leave us with nothing but art created by the dilettante.
That notwithstanding, you make your money by being paid by people who pay you for your creative efforts. If you are, as I presume you are from you blog, a programmer you are not only totally illogical and immoral, but you are a hypocrite who makes money from creative work, a right which you would deny the musician. Shame on you and all of you greedy, selfish, hypocritical stallmanite faux socialists. At least Stallman has the decency to live like a pauper in support of his world view. I doubt you have the same commitment to your convictions.
I wonder if there is a comparison between selling music and selling software?
Software has licensing tools and music has DRM (both of which get cracked). I know there is a difference in the scale of the product, but I think there are some useful similarities. Think of programmers as artists, companies as bands or labels, programs as songs, users as listeners, etc. A large portion of the software community has moved to different pricing and distribution models to make money without licensing tools. Some involve still selling software, others involve selling other services. One could compare fan clubs and live concerts to selling support contracts. Anyway, the point is that no one has ever suggested that we should pay a one-off fee for a programme that gave us access to that programme on every computer... Actually, thinking about it, the software industry is going this way with cloud computing. Companies are making money with web-based software through advertising or subscription. So the question is: would you fund a company that was planning to charge a one-off fee to use of its cloud-based product forever?
Another useful comparison would be to ask: can you foresee a situation where you would have to pay a one-off fee to Sun for using MySQL before being able to use it at any service provider?
Just like the software industry I think the music industry will diversify its pricing and distribution models. Some companies will survive on the old models due to momentum and lock-in (Microsoft) and other companies will hit on the right combination of user experience and monetisation to really take advantage of the Internet (Google).
Just some random thoughts. Interesting article.
PS
The CAPTCHA shows up blank if you have cookies from www.blogger.com blocked...
Took me a couple minutes to figure out.
Dear Hank,
*In other words, you do not agree with supporting the arts since they can all be digitized.*
This is not at all what I said. I am openly questioning the relation between records sales and artists' well-being. The relation isn't nearly as strong as your comment implies. Moreover, I am openly questioning the VALUE provided by obsolete companies like BMG. What is it, that they do, that I should pay them for? Where's the beef?
Perhaps I should have reminded about how labels work, how they treat young and aspiring artists, how they basically steal their rights to their own music, and how they kill certain bands on purpose (by signing a contract only to shelf the songs and preventing poor souls from going anywhere else). Why do they do that? Because those bands cause unfortunate competition to their own portfolio of musicians. Look it up, Hank. Also, see if you can find a typical outcome of signing a deal with a label, how album sales get split up, who pays for promotion, how tours are organized, etc. It's fascinating and sad.
There is a big difference between selling music and selling recorded sound, this is why I carefully phrased my previous comment around this "sound" thing. I've spent a fair bit of money on music I like, yes you've guessed it: concerts, t-shirts, silly souvenirs, and let me assure you that amount far surpasses what I've spent on actual records. Artists should be selling music, not digitized sound files. And since you seem to like analogy with software, yes, open source is a perfect one. And while we're at it, why not look into literature? Nothing has been easier than copying books, computers are good at text, yet it does not prevent people who're good at writing from making a comfortable living.
And by the way, if you took time to look me up, you should have found my company's site [I won't be advertising it here] where you can download the browser for children ages 3-9, absolutely free of charge, and we'll be releasing the source code to the public in a near future as well.
Keep up the good blog. I hope you aren't mad at me for not paying for your writing.
Eugene,
You argument is silly since this has nothing to do with BMG. There are big labels and small labels. Artists are, by and large not equipped to sell their own music. That requires business skills most don't have, so in order to make money they distribute through labels.
This whole issue is about one thing. Should people pay for music. Artists have a right to decide if they want to reduce their risk by taking big advance checks from labels, or if they want to slug it out themselves. Most prefer the advance, and that is their right.
For you to decide it is wrong for them to do that and so you will steal it is unethical.
The "big labels are evil" is a bullshit argument for justifying theft. Walmart is *far* more evil than BMG, Universal et al. I dare you to run into there and steal a cart full of stuff. If you are not willing to steal hard goods in support of your fight against evil, then you shouldn't steal from artists. And yes when you steal a song you are stealing from the artist because they have already been paid in advance and it just means they will not get the next advance for the next record because they will be dropped if no one buys their music.
And again, if you are so against paying people for their artistic work, you should do what Stallman does and commit yourself to poverty as does he. But as far as I can tell you are a capitalist who just doesn't like the idea of musicians making money. And the fact that you go to a few concerts does not justify stealing music. Just like giving to goodwill doesnt mitigate stealing from walmart.
* Artists are, by and large not equipped to sell their own music. That requires business skills most don't have, so in order to make money they distribute through labels. *
This is where the major disagreement between you and me lies. I believe that artists ARE equipped with everything they need to sell their own music, and I don't believe that in most cases labels help them to make money. In fact labels are the reason why I can't download a $1 MP3 directly from my artist's web site. Seriously, why do we need a label between an artist and iTunes?
And the business skills, the lack of which you're citing as an excuse for labels' existence, I view as a reason behind why this "industry" produced so much junk in most of the 90s. And Internet is already changing that - it's harder to make people listen to your "genetically engineered boy bands".
I would also want to point out your misfiring analogies. Instead of poor Richard Stallman you could have used millionaire Torvalds who made his money writing free software: it's a question of finding a new business model. And I fail to see how's WallMart relevant in this context: we're talking about music labels, and there are much better examples of dying middlemen whose "services" aren't needed anymore thanks to technological advances. How many "industries" do we have to save? If you want to save labels, go ahead and propose the plan to keep real estate agents around. They have families to feed too.
Eugene,
The point is simple. Stop justifying theft.
Its illegal, and more importantly, its unethical. And your uneducated assessment of what is or isn't in an artists best interest is irrelevant. The fact that you think you are smarter than artists and you know better than them is no justification for *STEALING* their work. If you don't feel music is worth paying what artists want to charge, then don't listen. Sit in a quiet room.
As for Linus, he does not preach that people should steal music and artists shouldn't charge for it as you and Stallman do, so please leave him out of the discussion.
I'm in! I've been thinking about exactly the same type of thing recently, although I certainly couldn't have written so eloquently about it. The impetus of my thoughts was the observation that I and other users are using (warning: shameless plug) musedot.com as a sort of primitive prototype interface for this 'music collection in the cloud', which essentially treats myspace as a vast music library in a way that myspace doesn't do itself.
We're not the only ones doing it, sites like songza.com, hype machine, seeqpod etc. are basically doing the same thing, albeit with very different strategies. I think that the general trajectory of the technology will lead things inexorably in this direction. In fact the biggest impediment is not technology, customer habits, or piracy, but is the legal regime constructed by the major-label recording industry. But even this will be overcome eventually.
Personally, I don't think the current music business needs to be saved at all, but rather mercilessly killed in order for a business that actually empowers artists and fans can take its place. I not only think your vision is right on the money but I'm actively working on it.
There are clearly two ways of looking at this: copying music illegally is unethical, just as illegally copying software is unethical; the business model for music publishers and for software publishers is that they recoup the significant R&D cost (writing and recording in the case of musicians) by selling in volume or at a high unit price (the per-unit costs of duplication and distribution are fairly small, but need to be recovered too).
The problem is that the physical medium (and the data on it) has little value to many people, now that it's so easy to copy and distribute music and data for free.
It's unfair on the publishers, and it's illegal, but it is happening whether they like it or not.
However, in the software industry, many developers (the "artists") have been able to distribute their product for free because they can earn money from support and consultancy, or by offering additional (more valuable) features at extra cost. They positively encourage copying/sharing, because they've figured out that's not where the money is. The base product is more of a promo or loss-leader so that people pay for extras.
In the music world for comparison, some artists (Radiohead, The Charlatans, Nine Inch Nails) have realised that they can give away the music (in basic form) to promote gigs and special-edition box-sets.
They've recognised that the business model has to change. The recording has no value, but the music does; so focus on the music and not on the recording.
There are still areas where this digital devaluation cannot (yet) reach: there's no way to copy the atmosphere of a live performance; the P2P networks can't distribute a box-set with booklets and posters.
Recorded music is a relatively recent phenomenon. For thousands of years until only around 120 years ago, the way for musicians to make money was by playing music in front of people, not by flogging records, tapes or CDs.
"They've recognised that the business model has to change. The recording has no value, but the music does; so focus on the music and not on the recording."
Promoting this way of thinking means there will only be art from people that can tour. No techno. No hip-hop (which you may no know makes essentially nothing from live performances), etc. No old people with families. Just young kids making rock music that are willing to throw their lives away since *very* few artists, particularly unsigned ones can make a living at it. Most cant even support the *cost* of the tour. You are essentially, with one statement, eliminating the creation of most genres of recorded music, which are not and cannot be in any way supported my tours, and most musicians, who do not have the intestinal fortitude to tour even if they are making tour friendly music.
I do wish programmers who know nothing about the economics of the music business would stop spewing falsehoods about the dynamics of the market. Its all wrong.
"Recorded music is a relatively recent phenomenon. For thousands of years until only around 120 years ago, the way for musicians to make money was by playing music in front of people, not by flogging records, tapes or CDs."
Computers are relatively new too. Are you offering to give yours up? If you think how things were 120 years ago was so great you can easily demonstrate how its no big deal by giving everything up yourself. Since you seem to think artists should freely give up the modernity that you doubtless would not, this logic is highly hypocritical.
My argument is simple. Stop justifying theft. It is immoral, unethical, and really inconsiderate to your fellow man.
Technology obsoletes business models all the time. This is a good thing. To try to use the law to hold back change is understandable, but probably doomed, and morally just wrong. You're arguing for an artificially created scarcity in order to maintain a revenue stream based on a physical scarcity. I don't understand how that makes sense except as a way of allowing the existing industry to continue to collect rent.
Not everything that used to make money continues to make money. The new highway bankrupts the old gas station, the bridge puts the ferryman out of business. The answer is not to legislate support for the obsolete business, the answer is that people will eventually stop going in to obsolete businesses.
The point about the relative newness of the recording industry is not that anyone wants to return to that time (not sure how you got to that), but that music will be just fine. The business will change, and the winners will be the people who figure out the new revenue stream (clothing, sponsorship, etc etc - some hip hop artists do pretty well there) rather than those trying to prevent change. Maybe fewer people will go in to it solely for the money, but that would hardly be a tragedy.
It's also really hard to ignore the hideous record of the recording industry - the payola, the blatant price-fixing over CDs (when software was available on both CD and floppy disk, the CD version was cheaper if there was any difference – with music the CD was more expensive. This is prima fascia evidence of collusion) the outright theft, fraud and exploitation of artists - the RIAA were busted for failing to pass on royalties to artists while they were suing children and grandparents for downloading music. It makes your moral high ground pretty shaky.
"Intellectual Property is Theft"(c) all rights reserved.
"Technology obsoletes business models all the time."
Technology isn't the problem. Ethics is. You are defending theft. You are selectively choosing what laws you will obey. Shame on you. Come to think of it, I'd really like your shoes. Don't want to give them to me. Too bad, I don't believe in *any* property rights.
Hank,
Most people don't want to steal music. A few of us love stealing stuff for the stealing pleasure (something for nothing), but most of us feel much more comfortable with buying things.
In my view, the problem is this huge, because the legal, official, descent way of getting music is too complicated. I mean, that downloading music is easy. Fast, and you have everything in one "service". A bittorent client, and you're done. You have full, unlimited access to the world's music. Plus software. Plus games. Plus movies. If a torrent client would be simpler, faster and more reliable, it would put an end on almost all legal purchases. We're almost there.
When it used to be easier to buy a CD than stealing it, most people bought the CD. If watching MTV would be as difficult as registering on music stores and dealing with that entire crap, (almost) nobody would watch it. If you put up mp3 files for download on a website, it's easy. People follow. If you have to register with databases, and hassle with drm, and stuff like that, people won't follow.
The official, legal, descent way of doing it should be: even faster, a lot more reliable, and even a lot more complete than using a torrent client. This is what would change things.
It should be subscription based. We are comfortable with subscription for electronic content. Most of us like paying for a complete cable TV package. We happily subscribe to content, but would not pay a cent for any single TV show, especially not parts of them.
As for the digital content, we're already paying for it. We subscribe to it, it's called the internet. 238 million, only in the US are paying $10-100 per month. The world pays a lot for digital content. When the internet was some special means of communications between computers, nobody, except some (tech) university folks were interested. It became big, because of the content. Services, music, articles.
Ok, we do pay the $10-100 partly for the infrastructure. The TV cable company is paying for the infrastructure too, but they are also paying the channels. And channels pay their people who produce the content.
This really is the problem. People feel ok to subscribe to the internet, and then don't want to pay more for content. They feel, they're already paying (for the internet = content in their view). And when they do decide, that they pay for an extra music subscription, the last thing they want, is another incomplete catalog of music, with new annoying limitations. So, your solution, to bring all these existing music services under one umbrella makes sense. But I don't think it would save the music business.
I think the solution to save the music business really is a new internet subscription model. In which there's a cut for the people / companies who produce the content for the Internet.
In this scenario, the association should be not for managing your lifetime access rights. But for managing the worlds' music downloads. Collecting ISP music subsciption monies, and distributing them to labels, artist based on number of monthly downloads.
Having said that, your proposal does make sense. If we are talking about "buying" music, it should be about life-time (or so) access rights, and these rights should really be portable across services.
What I doubt is, that it will save the music business. Because, it will still involve a lot of work to buy music this way. It's not easy, the average internet user won't understand, and care doing so. For most people music is not that important. We subcribe to cable tv, we sometimes watch MTV, that's it. And if we really want something, the easy way is stealing, the difficult is buying. And what you propose doesn't turn it the other way around.
If musicians' money would be collected by the ISP's (through subscription packages), I would simply have access to band sites on a domain not otherwise available. Let's say, .music domain. Ordinary internet subscriber don't see pages on the .music domain. But if I subscribe to it (either with limited or unlimited access), I can see www.countingcrows.music and download whatever I wish. No hassle at all. No database, no registration, no nothing. I can just arrive from Google to a clean html page, with clean links to mp3 files. Download, done. Legal, fast, reliable.
Could you still steal? Of course. You could still risk prison, and download / distribute illegal torrents on the normal web, for 'friend' who don't have a .music subscription. But would you really do that? No. The same way you don't "share" content of websites to people who don't have an access to it. When it becomes affordable, and easy to get, you'll tell your friends to go and subscribe themselves. You just won't waste your time.
Other commenters also said how impossible it could be to bring everybody to the same page in the entire industry. This however could be one generic solution to all sorts of content headaches. Not only for the music, but movies, and even premium generic website content and services too. And once it's up an running, adding all the content could happen within a few years. Because it's nothing more than registering with an authority, and uploading mp3 files. The rest is taken care of at the ISP level. As an artist or label, all I would do is that I register an upload my stuff anywhere, and start collecting my share from the world's music subscription money.
It would be good for the ISP's, good for the artists, labels, it would be good for the consumer, and it would even be good for music services too. They could find their way in this environment too (such as cataloging the world's music and directing people to direct downloads for a share from the artists' money.
I want better services, better websites, better blogs, a complete catalog of music, a complete catalog of movies, a complete catalog of books - all based on subscription money. I want to subscribe to a new internet, that drives money to the producers / owners of the content I want to consume. Promoters of the wonderful free economy, shut up. Net neutrality freaks, you too.
"I think the solution to save the music business really is a new internet subscription model. In which there's a cut for the people / companies who produce the content for the Internet."
This is of course not a bad idea, and they are doing it in europe, but the other folks on this thread *dont* want to pay. I understand you are willing but they are not. And they are fighting hard against your proposal. They are essentially socialists. They do not believe musicians have any rights or deserve to be paid. It is truly a heinous world view.
*Technology isn't the problem. Ethics is. You are defending theft.*
No it isn't. Copying a file is NOT a theft. And it's NOT unethical. Now it your blatant statement against mine. How's that helping anybody?
Someone here needs to realize that there won't be any more bill gates making billions on selling "file in a box" products, or next Metallicas selling "file on a CD" products.
That time has GONE, Hank. It existed for a very short time, so short that actually it wasn't even enough to change our ethics towards "stealing air" (or "selling air"), it lasted only about 1.5 generations. Selling "digital goods" is a stinky GIANT BULLSHIT, my friend - the odor has always been there: one couldn't return a CD if a music (or software) was crap, unlike normal merchandise, not to mention the fact that one had to buy the same goddamn song over and over for different mediums (cassette/CD/iTunes). How ethical is that?
Don't redefine "ethics" to fit your business model, Hank. Change the model. Change your thinking. Evolve. And the sooner you (and other people who seem to be stuck in the past) realize this, everything will start to suck less.
*They do not believe musicians have any rights or deserve to be paid. It is truly a heinous world view.*
And this is another one: NOBODY here ever said what you're quoting. Judging by your previous posts, I would think you wouldn't retreat to such a cheap way of handling a debate: distorting other people's words. Essentially you're arguing with non-existent opponents, since nobody ever said things you're so passionately objecting to.
Musicians are not the "industry" that your original post is calling to save. We're all in agreement here that new business models need to evolve that allows Katie Melua to get paid. I, for one, am really puzzled by the fact that I can't just buy all of her albums right there, on her site.
Something will evolve. And whatever that will be, the labels, the "industry", will not be a part of the future, my friend, so there is no point to having conversations with them - that's all I'm saying.
"And this is another one: NOBODY here ever said what you're quoting."
WRONG.
Read grahamsw. He believes all intellectual property is wrong. If there is no IP there is nothing to steal, because by law it would be free to take.
And as far as the music "industry" I never said anything about who that is. I am not arguing for specific companies. I am arguing for protecting the business of selling music in whatever form that takes. The point is artist don't want, for the most part, to sell their records, because its hard. Business is different from art. Think what you want, it is absolutely true. Promotion is hard, dealing with customers is hard, etc. The concept that there can be business without business people is just foolish. Neither artists, not musicians, nor actors, nor authors, etc , want to be in the business of selling their stuff. They are artists.
And even if I am entirely wrong (which I am not) and most do want to sell their own stuff, it is incredibly arrogant to suggest that those that don't shouldn't have the right to let others do so for them.
You seem to want to take the freedom away from artists to sell their material in the way that best suits them, and in the process you are defending theft. Let artist be free to do business in whatever manner they chose. And don't steal their stuff because you don't like their partner. Its unethical. If you don't like their partner and it upsets you so much, then deprive yourself of the privilege of listening to their music.
I see, they should just be ignored. There's no excuse for killing content, saying that makers of content deserve nothing, they should just accept the fact, that the internet made the world communist, where intellectual property should not be respected any more, musicians, go touring and start something "real" with your life such as programming... They're rudely off topic. This topic is not about *if* the music business should be saved, but how.
And there, I think a *global solution* is the only way. (Sorry for being again slightly off topic myself).
Global, because these borders cannot be artificially forced on the internet. If they really are doing it over here in Europe, there will be nothing to stop this new subscription only content to leak to the US. If it won't be available legally, it will become available illegally. Managing rights by county-to-county, region to region is obsolate in the internet era.
And global, because it should save all sorts of content, including music, but also movies, and even premium quality website content. Music is in the worst shape, but it does affect everything else.
Finally, global, because something new should be implemented at the highest level. Like new worldwide top level domains. (.music, .movies, .books) Otherwise it's just not global enough. It should be dealt with, where the money is payed. At the ISP's. They're are already collecting internet money, they should be collecting more, and give back to people who produce the internet (in terms of uploading music, movies, and high quality writings such as yours). Collecting musicians' money via several authorities in the radio and TV era was so-so. Did work to to some extent. But it's not going to work for the internet, mostly because it's so international, it's impossible to create the legal background. For ISP subscription money though, it's very possible. It's very possible to sell access to a new top level domain, and transfer the money to *one* association, that pays it out to whoever provided the content.
Now, on topic.
Although I don't have high hopes, that your proposal to the music business could really *save* them, but it's certainly at least something, they should absolutely do. If you're selling music in this digital era, you should be selling (lifetime) access rights, not files. And these rights should work across services, because they belong to people, not services. This is a must do, until we have something better.
I hope you'll have more intelligent comments about how to implement something like that, rather than arguing if a musician deserves *some* money, somehow for the (digital) distribution of the music he/she created. No, nobody *should* work free. Not even musicians.
Maybe I have a personal reason, why I like being able to pay for whatever I want to. It's because I was born, and still live in a country that used to be communist. In 1989 I could only *hope* that I will once be free to buy things. So, I'm not a buyer to the ideology, that a subscription based internet service is no-no, because the poor won't be able to pay for it, and so, it should be free, no matter content producers are not getting payed this way.
I've lived that kind of free world folks. Not that long ago, in 1989. That kind of ideology leads to a world in which only the crap survives, and even if it's free, you don't want any of it. And you just dream of a better world, where good stuff at least exists, you just have to afford (work for) it. I don't think you will understand, but before 1989 there were no car dealers here for example. Communism thought, cars should be free (cheap, affordable to the poor). What they acieved was, that you could choose from 3-4 brands, all total crap, and wait 10 years to get one. (And, because they could not produce enough, they weren't even cheap). Living in such a world would make you beg for the existence of good cars, being able to afford it or not would become so unimportant. :)
This applies to content too. You can neglect the fact, that the music business is dying, but you *will* live in a world without the good music. You can kill the rock stars you hate for being millionaires, but you'll live in a world without rock stars.
Free economy is bullshit. I tell you folks, who say it's ok to steal music for free. I've been there, and don't want to go back.
Wow.
Thank you Ben. English may not be your native language, but it was beautifully said. And your perspective is incredibly important given your history.
Again, thank you.
er, Hank, did you notice the copyright symbol on "intellectual property is theft"? I've been claiming copyright on that since 2001. (but feel free to use it)
Life is complicated.
Copying bit patterns is free, but creating interesting bit patterns is not. We all agree that this is a problem.
We've met, by the way. At the Semantic Web Hakia meeting, I was at the Linked Data conference, and we shall doubtless meet again. There's no reason we can't have a civilized disagreement.
Grahamsw,
I am not sure I understand your position when you say "We all agree this is a problem." You, and others here seem to be arguing that stealing music is OK. Your tag line certainly reflects that. And if you think that, I feel it is bad. Horrifically bad. And to me it just isnt that complicated. The ethics are pretty simple.
I love music and I understand the business of it and I know and have known many artists, both famous and not so famous. And I care deeply that the arts are important and we need to support them financially. If you agree with that then instead of arguing against them, you should be offering support for the idea that people should pay for the music they enjoy, and not steal it.
In my mind this concept that it is wrong to charge for music or anything that can be digitized is a horrible affront to what I want out of life which is in part to enjoy great art. I want there to be great musicians who can support themselves and even become potentially wealthy if they are really great (creates incentive). This is vitally important to our planet I believe.
And regarding having met, I promise you I would speak no differently were we in person. This is serious stuff. The view promoted by Richard Stallman regarding the idea there should be no legal protection for content is horribly destructive. Next time we meet we can have this discussion in person and I will still tell you I think such ideas are heinous, unethical, and dangerous. I cannot be silent about it. There is too much at stake. I am sorry if these words offend but it is my honest view of the the anti-copyright agenda.
Hank, I'm not saying it's wrong to charge for something that can be reproduced at no cost, I'm saying it's probably a bad business model, and it's possibly bad for culture as a whole.
I assume we all want as much music, as widely available as possible. These goals are hard to reconcile. Disagreeing about how to do it is not "heinous" or "horrifically bad" or a "horrible affront".
I've posted a blog post here:
http://blog.ambisonia.com/2008/07/19/heres-a-solution-to-music-piracy/
which discusses one way to enforce "natural" DRM. It is basically a personalised 'binaural' rendering of music. What does that mean? ... that means that a digital file sounds good to the person it is intended for, but sounds not so good to the person it was not intended for. You can coopy it as many times as you like ... it only sounds decent for the intended listener.
This is, however, somewhat impractical (right now) because you need measurements of individuals heads + ears. ... but you get the idea.
Otherwise, concerning artists and income... to me, the REAL ISSUE is ... how can we ensure that artists earn fair revenue for their work.
Copyright is irrelevant if an artist can earn fair revenue for their work.
My postulation, and the business model I am in the process of implementing on Ambisonia.com ... is that even if everyone can download tunes for free, many will still want to pay something to the artist. The 'real world' solution to making this happen, in my opinion, is to make it as easy as possible for that 'donation' transaction to take place.
Put an other way, positive user experience in 'opportunity to donate' is what, I believe, will start to allow artists to earn money irrespective of digital copyright violations.
Hank, WRT to your idea of a kind of "permanent rental" of music sourced from the cloud... what you are actually selling is 'access'. I think something like that may work ... since access is about user experience and user experience is everything. However, I question how much people would be willing to pay for that 'access', given that cloud computing could easily offer services of 'access' to already pirated music.
Make think back to the development of vinyl and radio, then television. With on exception, it was near impossible to bootleg content so early in their developement!
The music industry will evolve as it has since the Book of Psalms. The industry, minus, King David, went for scribes, ink producers and ancient writing utensils, alon with the animal husbandry, slaughter and tanning that produced velum, including the paprus planting, harvest and production and the delivery of all these products and the people involved to Gutenberg. Oversimplified, but you get my point. Music is not only still here, but that ancient Christian tradition married with the folkways of musical heritage ot the peoples it embraced is why we can have this conversation. Thievery and bootlegging will always be with us and is not right. And music will too. The industry will change though. Not die. But change. No record company wants to go out of business. NJo musician wants to go unheard. The record companies will divest itself of the business models that no loner work and musicians will no enter into contractual agreements that use models that do not work for them. The industry has reached a higher level of refinement. The musician has the abilit to remain independent or not or any combination thereof and record companies will no longer be burdered with blindly investing artist who may not allow them to recoup their investement based on increased access created bythe internet. I saw this day coming when I bought my first 8-track bootleg, purchased one of the first dual cassette recorders and any other tool to ease and enhance my listening pleasure. Today, I believe bootlegging, burning and bootlegging is no different that walking into a store and stealing and LP. But I had to arrive at that point. This new digital age makes music available like a money bag that has dropped off a Brinks truck. And we know how the story ends in most cases when that happens.
My hope is that the musical artist finds a model that can reduce the number of people who needlessly, I repeat, needlessly has his hand in their pocket, or take more than what they are entitled. If this new age and any new models can better reward to producer of the actual content I am all for it.
Wkenneth M.
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