All About Music
February 26, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Two things to say today about music.
Good News (Hurray!)
- YouBloom : A Social Networking Site for Artists by Artists
Take a look at it and you might say ‘yeah yeah it’s just another MySpace’. But that’s where you’re wrong! It’s not. The main difference between YouBloom and MySpace is that with YouBloom money is involved.
At the moment, with MySpace, someone listens to your music and likes it, then you have to hope that they go off to iTunes to buy it. If that happens, you have to wait months before you find out how many sales you had.
Youbloom allows the artist to sell product (music or merchandise) on the site and you get to see in real-time what’s selling and what’s being listened to. They also share 50% of the advertising revenue with you – some other sites claim to do this, but if you read the terms & conditions, you’ll find it’s a bit fuzzy wuzzy… they’ll only share if the cock crows on the third full moon of a leap year sort of thing.
Other important differences:
- YouBloom – the artist owns the data
- You can import lists and use tools to communicate with your fan base.
- Fans get points for forwarding, rating and commenting on songs and they can redeem these for product
- Artist can sell product – digital or merchanise – and can choose to give it away for free, sell for hard cash, or sell for points.
The site is only out of beta a couple of weeks and already has 500 artists. It’s definitely worth a look. And for the record, I have nothing to do with this site.
Evil Bad News
I’m disgusted with the news that Eircom is being forced by IRMA to block access to music download sites. It’s such a ridiculous pile of legal poo. If it goes through, Ireland will be the first country in the world to block access to these sites. I hate the way the authorities here allow things like this (that they don’t understand, or that don’t affect builders/farmers) to go through with no comment.
It’s not even going to work. People will use proxys to get around it.
But the real point is, it’s not just about blocking access to music, it’s about censoring the internet. The internet should be kept free and semi-state appointed, old men from IRMA should back right off.
There’s a Facebook group called “Let’s Ensure We Have An Uncensored Internet for Ireland” you can join if you want to voice your disgust.
UPDATE 3 March: More signs of deals being unwound… Portishead are looking to fans to come up with their new business strategy.
if you lot have any bright ideas of how we should sell our music in the future lets us know
Here’s a pic lifted off the fabulous Pirate Bay website. If you want to download music for free, check out ThePirateBay.org :
Comments (10 responses)
If I can first correct an inaccuracy in your post. IRMA (with which I have no association) is not a group of “semi-state appointed, old men”. A quick look at their website would have told you it is an association formed by record companies and companies in the music business. Suits – yes – politicians – no.
As it currently stands most music (but not all) that finds its way out to the public is owned by record companies. The democratisation of production is changing this, but it is still largely true. Money flows from the record companies to the artists, both creative and performance. The amount of the flow depends on a large number of factors, but that is how the business works. So legally an owner of a piece of music has a right to protect that and to get some value for it.
If an artist or a record company (excuse me while I laugh!) decides to give some music, or the performance of some music away free then that’s great – everyone is happy. However if the owner of the music or recording decides to sell it, then they have both a legal and, in my opinion, a moral right to be paid for it.
As it stands the law is about 100 years behind dealing with the various ways in which copyright can be infringed today, and this is a particularly ham-fisted way of dealing with it. But is it censorship? Is it preventing people from accessing something they have a legal right to access? I’m not sure it is.
Great Post!
You are spot on about the proxies. There are a good few VPN services available in other countries, which mean that an Irish user could encrypt their internet traffic between their home here and, oh, say Sweden – then Eircom or IRMA wouldn’t have a clue.
I think the record companies are still stuck in the stone age. Instead of experimenting with new business models they are trying to stop a rising tide. I can’t say I feel particularly sorry for them.
I take your point about proxies, and ways around the current situation. I also take your point about record companies still living in the stone age – although the runaway success of the iTunes Store and other legitimate outlets and the demise of the traditional ‘Record Shop’ will force them to rethink.
Maybe I’m old fashioned (actually looking at my vinyl collection I am old fashioned!) however breaking the law is breaking the law, whether it means sticking a CD in a jacket pocket and walking out without paying or using a Swedish proxy to cloak my ‘file sharing’.
@Joe Conway. Did you ever tape albums back in the day? Did you ever buy bootleg mixes off those guys on O’Connell Bridge? If so, then you broke the law too.
I think the point is that the music industry bosses are missing the point. Many people under 21 have *never* bought music. Most of them have *never* bought a magazine. Stamping down hard on a social phenomenon is *never* going to work.
When Napster was shut down back in 2000, many hailed it as the end of free music downloads, but thanks to the brains behind file sharing sites, this has not been the case.
Groove Armada has taken an interesting step – they’ve broken away from traditional record company management, instead being marketed by Bacardi. Makes sense in my view – it’s long been said that bands are not making money from music sales anymore, but from festivals and merchandising. At every decent festival across the globe, Bacardi has a very attractive presence there. I know if I were Groove Armada, I’d much rather be pushed by Bacardi than by an expensive overhead record company. I don’t know much about the deal, but if Bacardi gives them freedom of expression, all the better.
If I were Sony Music, EMI, or the other big record companies, I’d be looking elsewhere for my money. They are not going to win the battle of download. A whole generation has grown up now knowing that you don’t have to pay to listen to the tunes you like.
Adapt and survive. Isn’t that what we’re all about this time of our evolution?
Now why can’t those pesky banks be hit with the same dose of delightful anarchic change!
@Ciaran Lee Thanks for your comment. Any chance you could come back here and add some links to those VPN services you would recommend?
@Joe : Regardless of your feelings about the ethics of music downloading, it is happening, and it will continue to happen unless a more attractive option is available. I would also add that although you are not a music downloader, you have most likely breached copyright law a number of times yourself, perhaps unwittingly. The issue here is not music downloading though, it is the censorship of the internet by a powerful group of suits with vested interests.
@Maryrose I have used https://www.relakks.com a bit and found the service quite good ( very good when it worked but it wouldn’t always connect). I have heard that http://www.vpntunnel.co.uk/ is quite good but haven’t used it.
Maryrose,
I think you are missing the point in what I am saying. The current record company business is going to fail, as I said witness the demise of Golden Discs and Zavvi as a failure of the older system, hurried along by the current financial crisis.
Your point about Groove Armada just reinforces what I have said – they chose to seek a different way of bringing their music to their audience. Just as many other artists and performers choose to sell CDs and downloads. Other artists choose to give away free downloads. My point is that it is the artist’s (or the record companies’) choice and we, if we wish to remain within the boundaries of the law, have to like it or leave it.
You also have to be careful about corporates (of which Bacardi is one) becoming the White Knight. They will do it as long as its is of advantage to them. I would also be slow to praise them for giving Groove Armada ‘freedom of expression’. Corporate history is strewn with the cast offs who found freedom of expression was all very well until it conflicted with the interests of the corporation.
Whilst you say that a generation of people have grown up expecting not to pay for their music, that generation has also grown up listening to pretty inferior mp3 approximations of real music. The difference in sound quality between an average MP3 file and a CD version is greater than the difference between a CD and a good quality vinyl recording – and we all remember the debate that that caused.
In conclusion, just because a generation has grown up not paying for music does not make it right. Many of the most heinous criminals believed that they were doing no wrong. My belief is that everyone deserves to be paid for what they do – artists and performers are no different.
Ciaran, You raise a few interesting points.
I don’t think my feelings on the ethics of downloading are relevant or important. My point is that artists and performers deserve to be paid for their work – simple as that. If they wish to price themselves out of the market that is their prerogative. If they wish to give their music away free that too is their right. In the same was as we expect our rights to be respected (e.g. the right to access the internet) we should respect the artists’ rights.
The issue of censorship is wider than this. We have been a society that has had censorship in one form or another and to varying degrees over the years and the levels of censorship change over time. Not so long ago Lady Chatterly’s Lover, for example, was unobtainable, Playboy only became available in the last 10-12 years. In the past however censorship was to ‘protect the morals’ of the people, and not in this case to prevent a breach of the law (in my opinion) or protect the profits of a vested interest (probably the view of a lot of people).
The basis for the legal decision was to prevent the breach of a copyright law. So perhaps the best method of getting the result you want is to seek to have the law changed.
Laws are there by and large for good reasons. Copyright law originated so that writers, artists etc could protect their work, make some money out of it and make it attractive for them to continue to be creative. If they can no longer make money from their endeavours, they will have less time to be creative and thus the amount of creative output will fall. I prefer to pay a little to them to ensure that we continue to receive the diverse output we enjoy today.
You write of a ‘more attractive option’ – I’d be interested to hear more about this. What alternatives do you propose? We need an alternative model, and perhaps this is where the debate should focus. As you say, downloading will continue and cannot be ‘uninvented’. However ‘an attractive option’ has to be attractive to the artists and performers as well as attractive to the punter.
I had posted a comment before the weekend, but somehow it got lost… what I had said was:
There is no denying that artists must be paid for their work. Hence my inclusion of the youbloom site above.
What I object to is the heavy handed way the enforcers are going about it. And given the current environment, it’s another example of things getting through in this country where the powers that be either don’t understand it or don’t care…
We’re already in the shits in Ireland, at least give the kids a break and allow them to do what an entire generation is doing the world over. Why start here when there’s a billion Chinese and a thriving industry over on the other side of the globe?
Common and Drake,has reminded us all of some classic hip hop beef. some of today’s best hip hop artistsjust don’t have that hunger that old school hip hop folk had.
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