The Poor Recording Industry is Going Hungry
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I’m very interested in some of the comments since I posted File Sharing is Not to Blame for Falling Album Sales. The one that really caught my attention was the comment by StevioB.
“The industry tries to guilt people out of file sharing (”You wouldn’t steal a car… You wouldn’t steal a purse…”) How guilty do most of us feel when we see “artists” with over-the-top bling, cars, houses, diamond studded dog collars, and MULTI MILLION dollar contracts that record companies willingly pay. Are they telling me that these folks will suffer from not receiving my .99¢ ?”
This comment made me think of just how much the RIAA cries about the behavior of its own customers. You almost get the feeling that if you do anything digitally with music, the RIAA will take you to court. In contrast to this, I found a site that handled piracy in a very interesting and in my opinion, a more effective way. At Rifftrax, where Mike Nelson sells hilarious tracks you can listen to while watching bad movies, he takes a completely different approach. Check it out here. I find it hilarious the way he pokes fun at becoming a bum if you pirate his work. The main page links to this page with a graphic that says “Didn’t pay for that riff? Make it right!”
Rifftrax gets it! They understand piracy happens, and without making their fans feel like criminals, they say “Hey, if you didn’t pay for that, would you mind paying?” instead of showing a picture of a police officer pointing the finger at you. I have to admit that a friend of mine made CD’s for me with several RiffTrax on them. When I saw that link I realized that I hadn’t paid for any of them. I clicked on it and dropped $20 via PayPal.
Every artist should have one of these “make it right” pages on their web site. The recording industry should have one too. They should embrace the fact that piracy is just going to happen, and simply try to reach out to the honest customers out there that are fully willing to buy a good product from them.
3 Comments
electrolosys
January 7th, 2008
at 8:19pm
I think that piracy isn’t going to happen too much longer, the recording industry is more fed up with all of these digital audio standards and who gets what under what circumstances, that I’m sure before too long they will either back out of the RIAA and do buisiness themselves marketing MP3s a la Radiohead, or push the RIAA into producing a new device that everyone would have to buy that could only play it’s own standardized format and *nothing else* - say a stereo system running off of encrypted data on SD cards which is getting to be more cost effective. They did this once with vinyl records and the equalization curve mechanism. Different situation, but same methodology behind it.
CDs aren’t selling anymore, well that’s great. Digital forms aren’t selling because of piracy since they’re not a physical medium. Artists aren’t getting paid, well that’s true. Artists also can’t seem to sell their stuff online or be discovered by anyone because you have to sift through all the junk just to find something worth listening to.
So yeah, I believe it won’t be a problem that will last too long.
univiction
April 22nd, 2008
at 6:13am
The RIAA and the MPAA are trying to enforce flawed US laws of tyrrany upon the peoples of all nations, and it hasn’t worked yet!
You can’t restrain a billion people in China, or in India, so, it is overdue that the idiot moguls of content management and DRM get on the bandwagon of new technology, or simply go bankrupt!
More and more artists are freelancing and getting well paid, on the web!
Exothermic Reaction
August 6th, 2008
at 4:11pm
The equalization curve used on Vinyl was not a copy prevention device, it was there to reduce surface noise and get rid of the tinny sound that results from the mechanical recording process. Just recall how the original Edison recordings sound.
I still buy all my music on CD, and then convert to what ever format that I need for my listening pleasure. Many people feel the same way. Short of them introducing a new uncompressed 96 kHz sampling format with multi-channel features, A CD is still the best format to purchase. Just look at all the Digital Download sites that have had their own DRM schemes, that have gone to the way side. Buying anything with DRM is just too risky.
It will be nice once a consistent hack for the blue-ray DRM comes out, Once I’m reasonably assured this has been accomplished, I will consider purchasing a blue-ray capable player and content, but not until then.
Exo