News Alert: Major Labels Discover Common Sense Thwarts Music Piracy Almost Every Time
After reading the news that Universal and Sony Music plan to use "instant singles" as an effort to curve music piracy several times, I feel like the major labels have discovered common sense.
Sadly, not even for the right reasons.
The article clearly states that they believe this move will show ministers that they're "playing their part in fighting copyright theft."
The omission that they're making is that this looks good and hopefully makes them more money. If their new tactic didn't look good nor make them money, they would've never implemented it. The scary thing is that this is a decade too late. It's 2011 now and if this is news and considered "innovation" on their part, I hate to imagine the other things that labels are still dragging their heels to do.
Let's be clear, in announcing that singles will now be available for sale the same day that they hit radio, David Joseph, the chief executive of Universal Music, has basically told us that he figured out not to eat yellow snow. Why don't you eat yellow snow? Because snow is white and if it's any other color such as yellow, it means that someone has pissed on it. Lessons like this are just common sense.
Dear press, don't eat this.
This "victory" is a hard one to celebrate. For a decade, fans have heard songs on the radio up to six weeks or more before being able to buy them. Because of this misgiving, they've turned to places like YouTube and LimeWire to "obtain" them.
Now, fans will be able to actually buy songs when they're being heavily marketed to them. And get this: soon they might even be able to buy songs in Google too.
What other common sense practices aren't major labels doing?
Using music as a marketing tool, not a source of revenue. Artists don’t make anything on royalties anymore, labels make it all.
Please do not use the phrase “copyright theft” unless you are talking about something like Bridgeport Music’s forging of George Clinton’s signature to get the rights to his music. What you mean is infringement.
Their word, not mine. From Guardian: "Although pirating songs from the radio is as old as tape recorders, the record companies believe the move will show ministers that they are playing their part in fighting copyright theft." Also, great books on your site. I've read many of them.
I’m surprised they aren’t charging a premium for this……
“I think fans should have to pay extra for the privilege of owning a track early.” – Joe Blow Executive
Come on. Without the recording industry’s investments over the decades you wouldn’t be writing this blog.
Ah, thanks Kyle. I would have got that if you had put it in quotes. I love your blog too, just sayin.’
You really think this will help? I suppose it might put a small dent in the sharing of those songs but surely the label’s delayed decision isn’t that surprising. Ten or even five years ago, it would seem counter-intuitive that introducing digital copies of a song into the world sooner (thus greatly increasing the availability of those files) would *reduce* the instances of that file being traded. Even now, for this logic to pan out, a substantive percentage of files traded would have to be new, currently unavailable singles, which is not the case.
One common sense tactic would be the general adoption of a ‘pledge’ system. (There are some such systems already, but on a failry small scale.) New records would not be released until a target for binding advance orders had been reached. The target would be based on previous sales figures and estimated fan numbers for the artist, so for a big name artist it might be millions, for an Indie artist it might be tens of thousands. To sweeten the pill, people who ‘pledged’ could be offered some incentive, such as a discount on tickets to live concerts. Provided record companies and artists all followed the same approach, instead of undermining each other, the system should at least guarantee that they covered their costs. Of course, the people who think everything should be ‘free’ would throw their toys out of the pram, but that’s just too bad.
wow….it took these guys so long to figure this out. Seriously, who hires these idiots for their jobs? I have been ranting about this for almost a decade – ever since I was in college.