From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V8 #44 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Tuesday, February 9 1999 Volume 08 : Number 044 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re:cently Discussed [Bayard ] Re: Re:cently Discussed ["JH3" ] Re:cently Discussed [Capuchin ] Re: death of the record companies [Capuchin ] Nifty news [Michael Wolfe ] Fegbooks [Natalie Jacobs ] Re: cently Discussed [MARKEEFE@aol.com] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1999 13:58:21 -0500 (EST) From: Bayard Subject: Re:cently Discussed Music companies look at Web options By Richard Katz NEW YORK (Variety) - IBM and the five biggest record companies will soon sell albums directly to consumers via the Internet on a trial basis. But the venture's success is dependent on something the six giants cannot control: how quickly cable companies deploy the high-speed cable modems that are necessary to sell music over the Web. Executives from IBM, BMG, EMI, Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Music said Monday they will experiment with allowing computer users to download music albums for a fee. Later this year, 1,000 homes in San Diego will be able to download albums with CD-quality sound in two-and-a-half to four minutes. Consumers in the test will initially be able to choose from more than 1,000 albums from many musical genres. Participants in the test will have to pay for the music they download, but prices have not yet been set. After the test is over, each company will decide whether to proceed with the new distribution method. In addition to trying to create a new revenue stream, the companies are trying to catch up to the many people who illegally allow Internet users to download albums and singles for no charge. "You can't compete on price with something that's free," said Larry Kenswil, executive VP/global head e-commerce and advanced technology for the Universal Music Group. To compete effectively with pirates, Kenswil said the record labels will have to convince consumers that they are getting something of value when they buy via the Internet the legitimate way. Kenswil said profits from selling music via the Internet will be "proportional to the broadband roll-out." That's because the system developed by IBM and the music labels requires the use of a high-speed cable modem, or a technology that is as fast. If consumer demand for buying music this way takes off, record and CD stores could well become an endangered species. However, new media analysts said it will take five years for 20% of American homes to subscribe to the Internet via cable modems. David Simons, managing director for Digital Video Investments, estimated that there are currently 700,000 cable modems in the marketplace. "As far as replacing CD retailers, if I were them I wouldn't start worrying for another three years," said Simons. Simons said another challenge is that there's not a convenient way to store the music. Reuters/Variety ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1999 13:07:11 -0600 From: "JH3" Subject: Re: Re:cently Discussed >Later this year, 1,000 homes in San Diego will be able to download albums >with CD-quality sound in two-and-a-half to four minutes. Okay, fine. I only wrote "it may not happen in our lifetimes" because I myself am actually about 87 years old. John H. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1999 11:21:36 -0800 (PST) From: Capuchin Subject: Re:cently Discussed On Tue, 9 Feb 1999, Bayard wrote: > Music companies look at Web options > By Richard Katz > NEW YORK (Variety) - IBM and the five biggest record companies will soon > sell albums directly to consumers via the Internet on a trial basis. > > To compete effectively with pirates, Kenswil said the record labels will > have to convince consumers that they are getting something of value when > they buy via the Internet the legitimate way. That's a good trick. And the only way to do that is to appeal to their morality... and I don't know if a corporation (or worse, a group of corporations) can do that ever. But if the artists themselves offered the service and said "we need you to pay for this service so that we can put food on the table and get our asses into the studio next year", you might have something. Nobody will pay for an artist (or record company) that says "Pay for this so that I might get a new house in Spain and a diamond collar for my setter." OK... there's one other way. Tell people "Do it this way or we come into your home, scan your hard drive, and take you to jail and fine you thousands of dollars for every song you didn't buy from us." That would last about a day. > "As far as replacing CD retailers, if I were them I wouldn't start > worrying for another three years," said Simons. Exactly. > Simons said another challenge is that there's not a convenient way to > store the music. MP3s and minidiscs, my friend. Oh... and IBM has those microdrives... Hard disks the size of your thumbnail that hold a hundred MB. Right now they're fragile and expensive, but if there's a market, that'll change rather quickly. That drive would store almost two hours of high quality MP3s. Here comes the big one. Je. ________________________________________________________ J A Brelin Capuchin ________________________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1999 11:24:30 -0800 (PST) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: death of the record companies On Sat, 6 Feb 1999, dmw wrote: > i got all trigger happy and deleted the condescending response Was I condescending? I wasn't sure if you were referring to me. > i used to think the net might mean the end of record companies, and that > that might be a good thing. > but there are fundamental problems. There are always problems. > the biggest is the way the vast majority of people consume music. > everyone reading this, by definition, is an exception (even eb). > most people don't go out of their way to seek out new music; most people > prefer to have a narrowly selected spectrum of music spoonfed to them. And that will always be the case. But who narrows the spectrum? Right now it's the record companies. Later, it'll be the station programmers themselves or their corporate bosses. When the money is out of selling records, the motivation for choosing what gets put on the spoon will change. > hell, wanna know a dirty secret? when i first stumbled on iuma, when it > only a had a hundred or so artists -- i felt guilty because i didn't want > to take the time to download a hundred samples of, in all probability, > mediocre music. > (this was sort of reinforced after i randomly selected and downloaded a > few...) ...because 95% of anything is trash. That will always be the case as well. It's the same with radio, isn't it? > i don't want to hear the output of every band in the world; i want to hear > a tiny fraction that has what i think of as merit. no way am i going to > wade through slush piles of shoddily produced demos -- in one sense, > they're even worse than slick major-label fodder, because they're > mostly honest, sincere, and well-intentioned, which makes me feel > mean-spirited when i know them to be crap. Well, no reason to feel bad for not liking someone's work, no matter how honest or sincere. You don't owe them your fandom because they care about their craft. They're still submitting it for public approval or disapproval. But that's neither hither nor thither, the fact is that there will still be a narrow stream of music dumped through the usual public channels (radio, muzak and like services, film and television soundtracks... probably not the music videos like we used to see, though). And people will seek those particular artists or tracks. > i think in the 21st century, information will cease to be regarded as > power. there's too much information already. the power is knowing how to > find the right information at the right time -- and if that information is > what band is hot this month, i'm sure the record companies will be right > there to supply it. You're missing THE MOST IMPORTANT point here. The music on a CD is just information. Owning it will not give you power because anyone else can own it just as easily with or without paying you. A recording company is a distribution company. They were created to spread recorded media around to folks so that a particular artist could be heard by folks not within earshot. The information they distribute is much cheaper and easier to distribute without all that atomic baggage. These days a record company is also a press/PR machine. A PR machine is needed to keep up massive interest in an artist and keep that information selling. When the information can be had for free, what will be the purpose of the PR machine? And how will the record company make its money? They'll find another way, surely. But it won't be from selling the recordings. That's money down the tubes. > oh, and artists making a living from touring? > (i'm really trying not to be snide here, but i have a feeling it's not > going to work.) > that's just ludicrous. sure, a few artists are able to make a living > touring (especially those who travel alone with acoustic guitars, and > those who've built up followings over many years). I was kind of being optimistic when I said an artist could make a living touring... I KNOW that. But I originally said that "artists will make their money from touring". Whether or not that's a living is something else. > a few novelists make a living at it too, but the last time i saw a > statistic, less than 2% of published novelists supported themselves with > their writing -- the rest had day jobs -- and with the ever-increasing > glut of hackwork series books crowding other things from the shelves, i > can only imagine that percentage has fallen in the last several years. EXACTLY! People keep writing fantastic things even though they don't make a living at it. They don't generally do it for the money. And that's the publishing industry. It's going to be a while before we're reading books with a machine. For now, you need that printed medium. But we just pull musical information off of a disc with a little decoding computer. The industry is already selling the bits, not the atoms. > i decided a long time ago (way before the band (re)formed) that my next > band would release music over the web, with singles treated as > "shareware." i still plan to do that. You mean freeware. Shareware tells you to send money to the creator and often cripples itself if you don't (or until you do). Freeware gives you no bonus for giving money to the creator. Now, you could put a little clip a the beginning of your track that asks for cash and tells who you are and where you're located and how to get the money from the listener to you, but if anyone cares to redistribute that and pop off your clip, they can do that. It's so much easier than cracking software. It's fairly trivial. You could publish something other than your full single for free, but that sort of defeats itself because a single is a whole unit, not easily divided, and already a single is designed to be fit as much "hook" in the smallest space as you can. You could publish it very lo-fi. But I thought people didn't care about music quality? If that's true, then it's the same as making it free. > i hope kristin hersh can make a > living doing it. fortunately for me, since making music seems critical to > my sanity, i've got a good enough day job that i can afford to lose money > doing it. I hope Kristin Hersh can make a living doing it, too. But she's selling an elite club membership. She's not selling the music. The music is going to make its way out to people who don't join anyway. She's selling elite fandom to music geeks. I think of it more like I think of the pledge drives on PBS. You send her fifteen dollars and she'll send you her MP3s. Send PBS forty dollars and they'll send you a tote bag. You're not buying a PBS tote bag. You're contributing to the community and they're trying to show their gratitude. I think your second point is the most accurate. Most folks who make music do so because they love to make music. They're not in it for the money (and those who are can be spotted easily and usually produce poor product). You get your artist's satisfaction for completing a work. You get a pat on the back from the folks that enjoy it. Just like those novelists. > friction/feckless beast net loss 1993-1998, estimated, pooma number: > $5,000 > 1999 expenses, to date actual: $260 (rehearsal space, not incl. strings > and other incidentals) > 1999 revenue, to date: $80 But you don't think about the money, do you? It's a hobby. It's something you do to improve your life. Keep going. And put out those singles for us all to enjoy. You'll double your back-pats for sure. > and, frankly, to have someone suggest that i _shouldn't_ sell recordings > of performances of my music, or that i intrinsically prostitute my art by > doing so, pisses me off. I said nothing about prostituting your art. After all, if you can sell tickets to your performance, you can try to sell your recordings. I'm just saying that you can't sell information anymore. That is to say, you can't sell the right to information. Information has an expiration date. You can sell your recording, but only to the folks that want to make sure they're the first to own it. If anyone cares to have it, they can get it without giving you a dime... it's just a matter of time. > p.p.s. i'm still no fan of record companies, bleeve me. trust them as far > as you can throw them, get the fine print explained to you, don't accept > the blow, and don't barter your publishing rights for quick > cash. and i still think the copyright laws need to be > reformed to be more appropriate for post-20th century society, although i > don't have a blanket solution rolled up and ready to go. Exactly. And as soon as the copyright laws are reformed, your publishing rights will be worth diddly anyway. Personally, I think Bowie made a killing on that stock offer. The rest of this mess: On Sat, 6 Feb 1999 MARKEEFE@aol.com wrote: > I think you hit the nail right on the head, Doug! Sure, music geek- > freaks like us will be able to find a lot of good free music on the web, but, > yeah, most people will prefer to hear what the radio stations have selected > for them and then buy said music in a nifty, cellophane-wrapped package at the > Sam Goody across from the food court. But the record company hates this. They see that they spend tons of cash on shipping and pressing and wrapping when they can just sell the data on the net. It's cheaper to distribute the music otherwise. They want to cut out the shink-wrap game just like the software industry (why did Egghead close? Who buys shrinkwrap software anymore?). Record companies WANT to make downloading music a normal thing... they just want control. They want a proprietary format. They want to kill open formats that are reproducible. Most of the situation you describe, Michael, will continue. Just not the mall part. > This won't make the world any more a > righteous place for the more struggling of musical artists out there. The > scales won't finally be tipped in the right direction. But smart and > discerning music-lovers like ourselves will benefit and the boring teenagers > of the world will still have something to consume, thereby furthering our > economy toward no particularly discernable end. As my friend and coworker (and member of two local bands who play out weekly and open for bigshots) Gatt says, "the death of the record companies won't mean the end of rock, just rock stars." I have no problem with that. On Tue, 9 Feb 1999, Aaron Mandel wrote: > > No matter what the encoding method, there will always be a way to freely, > > cheaply, and easily re-record and redistribute. That's the whole point of > > information revolution. It's the way things work. > hit albums still sell a huge number of copies even after the point has > been reached where everyone who might want to buy it knows someone they > can tape it from. > and i don't think most people care all that much about sound quality. I would say most people care about sound quality. But they care more about convenience and being cool. Cassettes are super inconvenient and very uncool... particularly dubbed cassettes. CDs do not sell better because of their sound quality... no siree. CDs sell better because you can skip around to different tracks, because they're nigh invulnerable, and because they're COOLER. At least that's why they gained the edge on cassettes. Ever put on a homemade CD around a nontechnical friend? They flip. They think it's the coolest thing in the world. They want their own. If record companies want to start distributing music electronically, they're going to destroy themselves. The added value of a jewel box and liner notes are their only selling point right now (to those people that can get their music elsewhere). If they start selling "the right to download", they're not going to make a penny. Once the information is out, it will be free. > > For every established band that has the clout (and gall) to extort cash > > from their casual listeners, there are a hundred smaller bands willing to > > give you their new album in order to develop a fanbase. > but this is often speculation on their part, figuring it's what they need > to do if they ever want to hit the big time. And what's the big time? Is it having the accolades or the cash? > > It's already happening with software. > Sun giving away an operating system to sell more computers is not the same > thing as Sun Ra giving away records to sell more concert tickets, because > one is a much more plausible way to stay in business than the other. Well, the free Solaris is one thing (and they give away Solaris X86, which doesn't run on any Sun hardware. Not so they can sell more Suns to consumers, but so that more software will be developed so that they can sell more Sun hardware to companies. It's like Diamond supporting an MP3 site so they can sell more Rios.), but hardly the whole picture. I deal with software companies daily... and we don't buy software. We buy support contracts. The software itself is almost always free. You pay someone who can make sure that software is always up and running... to let you know when a new version is out and to listen to your complaints about the way this version works. It's nothing like paying for software. While there's no direct analogy, I compare it more to a live performance than a CD. You go to a show so that the band will do their thing for you (not so that you can hear the song... you can do that any time). You go so that you can feed on their particular energy and give yours back. And the band will respond to you and take your feedback and give back the right thing (unless it's a stadium show with a prebuilt, immutable setlist). And then there's GNU/Linux and all the new similar things. For every working product, there is a clone that does it just as well for free. It's just the way things are going. Any information that one man will produce for money, another man will produce (or reproduce) for fun or art. It's exactly Doug's information glut that causes this. There is so much information that you can't rightly ask people to pay for any particular piece of it. There will always be another piece that is free and fits the same bill. On Tue, 9 Feb 1999, JH3 wrote: > Okay, but isn't that mainly because those of us who grew up in the > pre-InfoRevolution days (i.e., pre-1994) are culturally acclimated to the > idea of music being associated with a purchased artifact, such as a > vinyl LP or CD? What worries me is that we're teaching our beloved > little brats to get everything they want from teevee, the internet, etc. > at such an early age, they'll see *that* as the normal way to obtain > almost anything. Why does this WORRY you? That totally confuses me. > I suppose it all depends on whether humans want > to collect material possessions instinctively, or based only on learned > behavior... This is an important point. I definitely have a "pride of posession" thing. Even communal eddie tews has it. But who does this? Collector people. And those people go after PARTICULAR objects. There will always be niche markets. Chemical photography, for example, will never die. > There's also the moral argument of people paying > musicians for their work because it's their intellectual property > and it's the right thing to do, but I doubt that'll deter people > much longer. Okay, I'm a pessimist. Don't you trade tapes? How is that different? It's the artist saying (in best cases) "Here is my product. Do with it what you will." And you do just that. Do you pay the artist for their work? Not really. You go see them when they're in town... you buy the record (but most of the money either goes to the record company or into costs of production)... but where are you paying the artist for their intellectual property? How much money is Robyn getting for Robynbase? I know you're not making any, but you are using his intellectual property and repackaging it to fill a different consumer demand. Does he deserve payment? You want to pony up? > Capuchin's original argument, which I misinterpreted then and may still be > misinterpreting now, was that the big technological benefit for musicians is > that they'll soon (if not now) have the means of producing their products > themselves without having to sign financial-enslavement deals with record > companies the way they do now. Which is just fine, except that they'll still > want to maintain control over their product. And to do that they'll need > some sort of heavy-muscle organization to protect them and their rights, > just as labels and management companies do now. Well, you did get my point. But I think the biggest reason artists want control over their product is the money they might make on it. If there's no money in selling recordings, there's no reason to maintain control. > Once the record labels > have been stripped of their manufacturing and marketing role, they'll > probably just resurface as what they really are now: mobsters, racketeers, > and worst of all, lobbyists. (Okay, I'm a *really nasty* pessimist.) This is a great point and furthers something I barely touched earlier. The record companies probably won't DIE... but they'll cease to be record companies. And they'll fight every change (even those for the better) tooth and nail. They will find another way to make their money. They will do their best to adapt. They will change and some will die. They may die thirty or forty years after they stop selling recordings. J.K. Gill was a stationery store chain in Portland. It was in business and profitting for 120 years. They sold paper and pens originally... then they sold home publishing materials and vinyl lettering and stuff. They tried to become a kind of bookstore. Then some games and other paper sundries. And last month they went out of business after 136 years. Does Wells Fargo do anything it used to? This is the fate of the record companies. > It might not happen in our lifetimes, but eventually the infrastructure will > exist to make it possible to download the equivalent of an entire audio CD > in just a few seconds. I can do it right now. Not from home... but from work. It actually takes a couple of minutes (but less than five most of the time). And we're considering upgrading our backbone (but that's not the bottleneck). I'll be able to dump it home in about a minute more when that cable comes in (two months, maybe?). And that will also allow me to open my FTP and web servers to the public. Hm... let's see if Jeme gets busted. > (And who knows, maybe everybody will get their > jewel-box inserts as printable bitmaps from www.alternatech.net/jh3/robyn or > some godawful site like that.) Musicians are going to have to come up > with some awfully creative gimmicks to sell pre-packaged music once > that starts happening. (Hey, "win a date with Robyn - free chance with > every purchase!" On the other hand, I guess less packaging would be > better for the environment...) Bingo. You're there. Now... why does it worry you? Just do something else for a living and do music for yourself... or have pledge drives. But you can't sell recordings unless you have something REALLY special as a value-add. > >and i don't think most people care all that much about sound quality. > BTW, I agree completely with everything else you wrote, Aaron. I > don't care what anybody says, nobody but superstars and solo acoustic > acts with name recognition can make decent money from touring, > period. That's probably true. See above. > And last week Stephen Buckalew wrote: > >Maybe artist who put their music on the web can sell advertising based on > >the number of "hits" they get, and make money that way...kinda like > >one-band radio stations. Or to keep the fans interested, collectives of > >like-minded musicians/artists can start up art/lit/music pages based on > >common aesthetics and sell advertising space on the site. ;-) > Maybe... But that sounds awfully idealistic. Even if musicians have the time > and energy to hire (or become) their own advertising-sales force, > accountants, bill collectors, and designers in addition to making music, the > competition in web-based advertising is overwhelming and getting worse - and > I can't believe the money you'd make from it would come anywhere close to > the amount you can make from even modest record sales, even if there's less > initial risk involved. BAH! I can't believe you guys think an artist would stop making and distributing his music just because there's no money in it. > Then again, I could always be wrong. XXX HOT EXOTIC BABES WANT YOU!!! XXX > FREE DOWNLOADS - www.tinseltown-titty-parade.com - XXX - CHECK IT OUT NOW!!! > XXX There's always that. and that's just for the gullible that don't know how to find all that same stuff for free... just like paying for downloading MP3s. The sex industry has always made money and always finds new ways to use new technology. That's enough for now. Je. ________________________________________________________ J A Brelin Capuchin ________________________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 09 Feb 1999 19:20:05 +0000 (GMT) From: Michael Wolfe Subject: Nifty news I just found out from Wall of Sound that REM is going to be playing Bumbershoot this year! Crikey! I've never gotten a chance to see 'em, and they've been pretty influential on the development of my musical taste, so I'm really looking forward to it. They'll be doing a whole tour, in spite of their earlier insistence to the contrary. Apparently, they "didn't have anything better to do this summer." - -Michael ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1999 14:37:11 -0500 From: Natalie Jacobs Subject: Fegbooks Mervyn Peake, of course, goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. "The Gormenghast Trilogy" is sheer genius. (The first two books are much better than the third, though.) Leonora Carrington was a Surrealist painter and novelist who, I believe, was married to Max Ernst. "The Hearing Trumpet" reads frighteningly like one of Robyn's stories, or even a novel-length Quailspew. The scene where the protagonist eats a stew made from her own boiled carcass is particularly memorable. John Crowley's "Little, Big" is similar in some ways to Mark Helprin's "Winter's Tale," but infinitely denser, better-written, and more poetic. It's probably one of the best fantasies I've ever read besides Tolkien, and that's saying a lot. I believe I've mentioned my adoration of Ursula Le Guin before. "The Left Hand of Darkness" is classic science fiction (with ambisexual aliens!), "The Dispossessed" an intelligent and fascinating look at an anarchist utopia, and the Earthsea trilogy is terrific fantasy. (Even woj agrees!) The late great Angela Carter is the queen of the magic realists. I recommend "The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman" (like a Bosch painting in prose), "The Bloody Chamber" (twisted re-writes of various fairy-tales), and her short stories, which are collected in one volume that I can't remember the name of. Philip K. Dick probably needs no introduction. "Valis" is my favorite - incredibly weird, moving, and sad - though "Ubik" and "The Man in the High Castle" are very good, too. "Time Out of Joint" is the book that "The Truman Show" ripped off. I'm probably forgetting a bunch. n. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1999 14:31:37 EST From: MARKEEFE@aol.com Subject: Re: cently Discussed In a message dated 99-02-09 14:00:27 EST, you write: << IBM and the five biggest record companies will soon sell albums directly to consumers via the Internet on a trial basis. If consumer demand for buying music this way takes off, record and CD stores could well become an endangered species. >> Gee, thanks a lot! << However, new media analysts said it will take five years for 20% of American homes to subscribe to the Internet via cable modems. David Simons, managing director for Digital Video Investments, estimated that there are currently 700,000 cable modems in the marketplace. "As far as replacing CD retailers, if I were them I wouldn't start worrying for another three years," said Simons. >> Well, great. Just as soon as I'm finished paying off my small business loan, I'll have to close up shop. No, actually, I'm sure there'll still be a big used CD market out there, especially for out of print stuff. Boy, would I ever be happy to Sam Goody/Musicland get run out of town, though! << Simons said another challenge is that there's not a convenient way to store the music. >> Huh? Other than CD, you mean? Burners will continue to go down in price, more and more people will have computers up to the task of burning CDs, and nearly everyone has CD players now as their main music-playing device. This really doesn't seem like much of a challenge to me. Now, on the other hand, getting a bunch of San Diegans to sit inside downloading CDs when they could be hanging out outside, drinking Dos Equis, and watching the sunset -- *that* could be a challenge! They'd get a much more accurate picture of the potential of this system if they offered these cable connections to Portlanders like John Jones, Jeme, and myself . . . especially in the middle of February! :-) - ------Michael K. ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V8 #44 ******************************