From: owner-full-fledged-strangers-digest@smoe.org (full-fledged-strangers-digest) To: full-fledged-strangers-digest@smoe.org Subject: full-fledged-strangers-digest V4 #23 Reply-To: full-fledged-strangers@smoe.org Sender: owner-full-fledged-strangers-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-full-fledged-strangers-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk full-fledged-strangers-digest Tuesday, February 20 2001 Volume 04 : Number 023 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Borders [jonie@olssons.com (Jonie Lehmann)] RE: Napster [Roderick Montgomery ] Re: Napster-Pretty Long [FredNow@aol.com] 3 Extra Tracks - Jo's "Story" [Scott Price ] Motivations [was re: Napster] [David Blanar ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 10:16:28 -0500 From: jonie@olssons.com (Jonie Lehmann) Subject: Borders Hey everybody, Well, the Borders/DC mini thing on Friday was well-attended. I did not stay and talk to Jonatha, but I've heard from my sales rep that Borders gave Bad Dog Records four months of price&positioning in exchange for the whole run of the long CD. She played Digging, Linger, Red Dress and Your House. And chatted a lot, not about anything. I don't remember her playing the guitar so simply before--she's relying more on her voice and less on guitar, although that could've been a function of the venue. I did buy the extra tracks, because I wanted to hear Deny--produced by Alain, which must mean it's really old. It's ok. more later, Jonie - ------------------------------------------------------ Jonie Lehmann - Record Buyer Olssons Books & Records 12350 Parklawn Drive Rockville, MD 20852 301/984-1433 X114 jonie@olssons.com - ------------------------------------------------------ - ---------------------------------------------------------- HELP! owner-full-fledged-strangers@smoe.org Send mail to full-fledged-strangers@smoe.org ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 12:55:24 -0600 (CST) From: Roderick Montgomery Subject: RE: Napster On Sun, 18 Feb 2001, David Blanar wrote: > Still, isn't Jonatha the definitive type of artist hurt most by Napster? Honestly, I think she's the type of artist that is helped most by Napster. If she rightly chooses to avoid the majors, then she bears many of the costs you mentioned. So how will free advertising hurt her business? IMHO, Napster will only provide more exposure. Those that really enjoy it will seek her out, attend concerts, buy CDs, and join this list. > Napster has reduced my CD budget to a fraction of what it once was. > The CDs I purchase are few and far between now. It's this hard, cold > fact which stirs a twinge of sympathy for Jo, et al. dk, this only tells me that you were formerly gambling your money on crap music. I remember record stores that let you listen to the whole record (yes, vinyl) before purchasing it. Blockbuster music did this with CDs for a while, too -- auditioning your purchase seems only fair. Napster is just a new way to do this. I don't want to be fed candypop by the radio and major label music machine. I want my friends (in person and online) to introduce me to viciously talented artists that have a passion for the craft, not necessarily for the business or the fame. > The author talks about generating revenue on the back end to > compensate artists, with added costs to the hardware and CD-R media. > I'm extremely skeptical of this working, but it's an interesting > solution. Cringely is just another momo pundit. ASCAP, BMI, CCLI, and others are just more bureaucracy, more "machine," to add to the mix. Any sort of administrative body to hand out $1B in royalties will no doubt take much of that for themselves. Please note that I'm not just raining on his half-brained solution -- I have a plan that would actually work... Before we get there, note that we already have royalty-added "music" CD-R blanks. We already have expensive DAT cassettes, and we already have SCMS. However, since there is a demand for and supply of redbook-burning, plain-old-data CD-Rs, the cat is already out of the bag. Why would a consumer voluntarily use software that will blindly charge them for downloading or burning music when there's already free and freely available software to do it without being charged? Of course, that's besides the fact that such a scheme would also extract royalty payments from computer users backing up regular old, non-musical data to CD-R. What's the crazy plan of mine? > From: Jim DeFord [mailto:jimdeford@home.com] > Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2001 3:54 AM > > Here's the latest and greatest on Napster: They soon will institute > software that will 'add-on' to all MP3's 'traded', code that will > prevent the downloader of said MP3's from burning them to a CD. > > Until some hacker writes a removal patch about 15 minutes later! ;-) Jim, that's almost it -- but that would require the voluntary use of software that would charge the user for every song burned to a CD. Who would use that?! What if your burner misfired and burned a shiny coaster? Instead, I would like to use two established, accepted technologies -- digital signatures (PKI), and electronic payments (credit cards, paypal, etc.) -- to ensure that voluntary payments find their way directly to the artist. Let's say Jonatha wants to try my new payment scheme... much like the Liquid Audio tracks they released earlier, she would digitally sign the MP3 stream and embed the signature data in one of the file description fields (called ID3 tags). This way, any MP3 player would still be able to play the file, but those with special software (say, a winamp plugin) could read the special signature. If you liked the track, you could use the digital signature data to extract and visit a web URL that would accept payment -- a "tip," if you will. Like one track? Pay $.99 for one track. You're not obligated, and the money is verified by digital signature to go directly to the right place -- the artist. The advertisement (free music) *IS* the product. Yes, it's entirely on the honor system. But it can't be circumvented -- any tampering to redirect payments to a thief would invalidate the artist's original digital signature. rm - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Roderick Montgomery rod@dinkdonk.com the fool stands only to fall, but the wise trip on grace... [Sarah Masen] - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---------------------------------------------------------- HELP! owner-full-fledged-strangers@smoe.org Send mail to full-fledged-strangers@smoe.org ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 16:17:13 EST From: FredNow@aol.com Subject: Re: Napster-Pretty Long In a message dated 2/19/01 3:45:49 AM, diamondmask@juno.com writes: >Perhaps at some point, you pay >$10, download an >entire CD worth of music, tracks you choose, with artwork and lyrics, the >artist gets say $5, >the server people get $2, and the label, (if there still is one) gets $4. >No shipping and >handling, no sales tax, no running to the store to find what you want, >fewer CD's and their >packaging made, and the artists can track what songs are most popular, >and those which just >don't get downloaded. And maybe fine tune their art to produce more >"downloads" instead of >knocking something out to put 12 songs on a CD. Dubious arithmetic aside, as a recording artist who is not a "multi-millionaire rock star" I do have a couple of comments about this. I'll say right up front: I am not a fan of Napster and its users when it is used to download music that can be bought otherwise. This is direct theft of income I need to feed my family, and it's contributing to a growing attitude that art should somehow be "free." Music is the product I make to earn my living ... no one should be expected to give that product away for free. As far as the scenario posed above, I see other problems, equally foreboding. The idea that audience response should dictate artistic content is dangerous and anti-art at its core. Of course, that hasn't stopped Hollywood from using test marketing to "fine tune" their finished product (i.e. happy endings only, please), but is this really what we want musicians to do? To make art of which the foremost goal is to sell the highest numbers? The only possible end result of this is art geared only to the most common denominator, appealing to the most people possible, devoid of any content that challenges and makes the audience think. And, of course, that rules out Jonatha Brooke, among many valuable others. - -Fred Simon - ---------------------------------------------------------- HELP! owner-full-fledged-strangers@smoe.org Send mail to full-fledged-strangers@smoe.org ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 15:54:11 -0800 From: Scott Price Subject: 3 Extra Tracks - Jo's "Story" As Mr. Rains suggested in his correspondence last week, Jonatha has responded to critics of the extra-tracks Borders-only CDs. The following is from her website: "Here's the Story" 02-17-01, 11:50 PM (PST) OK. Here's the reality of my situation. I wish I could have responded before this got so heated, but here I am, now. There ARE two extra songs on the Borders CD. The third one is a French version of "How Deep is Your Love." First I should explain for those of you dont know how this works that all of the marketing, advertising, store placement, signage, including listening stations, is paid for by the record company. And it gets paid for in 2 or 4 week increments. In other words if you want your record on a display, in a listening post, or in an ad in the newspaper its there for those 2 or 4 weeks as long as you continue to pay for it. And believe me Its expensive. When we were getting ready to launch "Steady Pull" we were presented with an amazing opportunity. For six months, Borders would feature my record front and center in all of their 560 stores around the world if I would give them two extra tracks that would be exclusive to them, on a limited number of CDs. (We're talking a few thousand.) This is something I just couldn't pass up. It had been my plan all along, (and still is) to send the extra songs as downloads to anyone who ordered "Steady Pull" from the site prior to the release date. Since I couldn't say anything about it until then, I thought it would make a nice surprise. The bottom line is, I just hope you like the record, and I hope you'll buy it. And buy it wherever you feel comfortable doing so. I don't feel I've "ripped you off" in the least. Buying it over the web site for 16.98 plus shipping was your choice. And I really appreciate it. That's that. You got it a little sooner, you got downloads in advance, you got it signed. I love your support, and I love making things available to the regulars here, and I plan to continue to do so. But there are always going to be things that I'll be doing that will be exclusive to somebody else -- soundtracks, radio tracks, different mixes, downloads, that's the reality of what I have to do to compete. But I will also continue to make other things exclusive to my website. If you pre-ordered the CD and really feel you've been ripped off, please send back your CD and we'll refund your money. I hope this explains. It is a jungle out there, and the majors are just throwing money at retail. We have to try more creative means. So, thanks for your support, I imagine most of you get the drill. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---------------------------------------------------------- HELP! owner-full-fledged-strangers@smoe.org Send mail to full-fledged-strangers@smoe.org ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 06:45:28 -0000 From: David Blanar Subject: Motivations [was re: Napster] Fred's point regarding rewards only to "popular" music is compelling for me, personally, considering I too make my living as an artist (my canvas is a different medium, but it translates). Similarly, I don't want to live in a world where every movie ends buoyantly either. I believe not paying artists for their work is *obviously* wrong, especially in our Western capitalist society. No one would argue Jonatha shouldn't get paid for her work. However, there are fundamental reasons which created Napster, beyond the mere fascination with 'something-for-nothing.' For it to have reached so far, so fast and so deep in the mainstream, it clearly touched a nerve in us. I, personally, feel compunction using Napster (for obvious reasons), but at the same time, I'm enraged paying $16 -- sometimes less, sometimes more -- for CDs. I'm further incensed my favourite artists aren't played on the radio, airwaves dominated by big money. Thus, the question I ask: what, other than Napster (ie. money), will motivate the RAIA to change? I'm *not* justifying Napster. I *am* trying to find resolution to my years of feeling horribly powerless as a consumer. Napster is a great equalizer in many ways, though it's not unlike owning a firearm. Very, very dangerous, yet it makes you feel oh-so powerful. (Did I just compare the RAIA to the NRA?) Cheers, friends. I'm looking forward very, very much to seeing Jo 1 April at the Fillmore. A *wonderful* venue for a wonderful artist. dkb **************************************************************************** This email and any files or other attachments transmitted with it are confidential and may be legally privileged and are intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. This communication represents the originator's personal views and opinions, which do not necessarily reflect those of rivals.net or its subsidiary companies. If you are not the intended recipient be advised that you have received this email in error and should delete this message and any attachments from your system and that any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing, or copying of this email is strictly prohibited. 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