Effects Of Online Piracy

Reggie · Bastard Joined: 11 Nov 2011 Posts: 953 Location: MinnySOta

Slate published an interesting take on the effects of online piracy.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/small_business/2012/01/sopa_stopping_online_piracy_would_be_a_social_and_economic_disaster_.html

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La Piazza Gancio · Grump Joined: 26 Nov 2011 Posts: 151 Location: Chicago

Lotsa truth in that.

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sd10521 · Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2012 7:16 pm Post subject:

This is insightful:

http://gizmodo.com/5877143/riaa-reminds-us-why-we-hate-them-with-obnoxious-smartass-tweet

George The Penguin · Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2012 7:50 pm Post subject:

Read the piece. Funny thing is if the Music industry & the movie biz think this will bring consumers back to the store in droves, they are sickly insane. Did they forget that Tower Records, Borders and others are still gone? That the economize is still sinking? That folks like yours truly is still going to have to choose between paying for food, utilities and medical stuff & a stupid movie or CD? (Hint: I come first.)

I swear if the entertainment biz shut down used records/CD store next as they wanted to do back in the late '90's, it's curtains for the big boys.

Unless of course they go back to '70's prices. ***chortle****

BarrieB · Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2012 6:25 am Post subject:

10 X=0
20 X=X+1
30 Less people are buying our CD's now because they cant afford to.
40 Let's put the price up to cover lost sales
50 If X>5 Goto 70
60 Goto 20
70 Oh shit no one's buying our CDs

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Don · Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2012 8:18 am Post subject:

It's been a while since I've purchased CDs, but I think US$10 for older albums (10+ years) and US$18 seems fair to me. For physical product; deduct $3 for digital content. They've recouped their original investment in the old albums, yet they still make a healthy profit to apply toward new ones. A quick Google shows that most prices are at or below those levels.

My objection is to the money they waste by putting out endless greatest hits variations. They've got to pay for art, promotion, editorial content etc. If they did it once, and did it right, that album could last twenty years. Maybe put out a volume II and a four disc set for hardcore listeners.

My objection is too the numerous variations that you have to have, and this is where free downloads excel. I don't want to be forced to go to Target and import from Japan in order to get a version that has more tracks.

An album produced after 1995 should not need remastering. Stop playing 3 Card Monte with your customers.

Put ALL of your albums online at the highest possible quality. Twenty-five cents per song. Leave them there for eternity. You can make more money from having music available when people want it than to engage in the endless cock teasing that goes on, and at deluxe prices.

Once those needs have been fulfilled, the record companies are free to take down pirates. I think they will quickly find that they don't have the distribution channels in place to take advantage of more legitimate purchases coming their way. There are thousands of blogs offering downloads in of thousands of bands that people aren't familiar with. In order to sell at the levels that music is being pirated, in the manner of that people are now accustomed to, you'll have to set up a minimum of five blogs per record company. Each of those blogs need a staff to select, upload, obtain video and write text for ten or more releases. Every day, including holidays.

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OtagoPaul · Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2012 7:37 pm Post subject:

Here in NZ the price of CDs has actually fallen in real terms. When I was in the biz (ie, when I was a drone in a record shop, whoring Celine Dion records to middle aged shitheads with wooden ears) a new CD in NZ cost you NZ$33, at the time equivalent to about US$16-$18. These days if you're an idiot you'll pay NZ$35 for a top 10 album, but most people will buy them at a general retail chain store for NZ$25-NZ$30. If you buy cool imports you might pay up around $35 (about US$28.00), or you can buy them overseas/legitimately download them for less.

While $35 sounds a lot when you convert it, at a more realistic exchange rate (say 60c to the dollar rather than the current 80c) the price we pay is closer to the price that you pay. With the US and European economies in the shitter, our dollar is way over valued, but that's another story...

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OtagoPaul · Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2012 7:45 pm Post subject:

And I think Don's quite right, the regional licencing and record company model is broken and cannot be fixed. The big retailers in NZ stopped using the local companies when parallel importing was permitted, meaning the need for Warners (for example) to maintain a sales team, admin staff etc to market the new Susan Boyle record no longer exists.

Record companies here need to focus on finding and promoting the local talent that overseas labels ignore cos they won't sell squillions. I think they've done a pretty good job of that. They've not (never) been successful at breaking local bands overseas though.

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sd10521 · Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2012 10:37 pm Post subject:

The God damned movie companies are no better.

Three months before a movie release date they have a commercial, (usually with the only good sixty seconds of the movie), every commercial break. It's released and it sucks. Three months later the DVD is released. Three months after that the directors cut is released. Then a few months after that the un-edited special directors cut with extra footage is released.

Bottom line is it all sucks, put out a better product.

George The Penguin · Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 3:13 am Post subject:

....But the movie companies were smarter than their music counterparts. In a parallel universe, no one would have ever downloaded any music at all due to the copy-protected CD's that the industry used, I have a friend who is a 'famous Hollywood film editor' who gets DVD's from the film companies during Oscar season. They are mastered in a certain way so that if someone were ever to copy and upload a movie, they can trace it back to him and...poof!! There goes his benefits and gets kicked out of the union for good.

And the pirated copies sent you to jail to boot.

The music industry never were too bright when it came to protecting themselves. The music industry in whole is a total muck-up anyway. Look at EMI for example: they managed to make blunders that caused them to face bank takeover. Google the whole sorry story if interested.

Stupid lot.

BarrieB · Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 10:02 am Post subject:

We can get the top selling albums at £8-£10 but anything that's outside that list has to be bought on line.

Most CD's are sold by the supermarkets., our last record chain (HMV) is now selling more games & DVD's than CD's & what CD's they sell are twice as expensive as the top sellers.

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Don · Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 10:21 am Post subject:

Yeah, if you buy as soon as something comes out you can often find a deal. And if you're patient and willing to dig a little, you can find lower prices. So it doesn't really seem to be that CDs are overpriced. They are, but not right away.

The more expensive items are those that aren't on the Billboard top 200 that week. Those are often full price and not heavily discounted elsewhere. Often, it's stuff that was released twenty years ago and isn't pulling steady sales. So to recover from lost sales, they boost the price and make it even less likely to sell. When that fails, the "remaster" it.

Put out the most complete product possible, price it fairly, and leave it in print for decades. Would this forum even exist if we were able to obtain any recording we wanted, anytime we wanted?

Sure raw tapes sound like shit, but why aren't the Beatles maximizing their profits by releasing all these bootlegs themselves? Give all the money to Ringo if you're too proud to have your name associated with it. People will buy this shit. They won't pay as much for official product as they will for illegal stuff, but that applies to everything. Record companies need to see this as a revenue source. Every band should have a DVD of the concert you attended available within one week. Audio can probably be available within a half-hour after the show for everyplace but the massive stadiums. The old sales model is broken, find a new one before some hacker does.

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Greensleeves · Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 1:13 pm Post subject:

OtagoPaul · Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 1:26 pm Post subject:

I believe The Pixies did the same thing, you could have a copy of the show you'd just seen available an hour after the gig finished and the last t-shirt was sold.

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George: Yes.

Don · Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 2:09 pm Post subject:

On January 18th SOPA/PIPA had 80 supporters and 31 opponents. On January 19 SOPA had 65 supporters and 101 opponents.

The content industries don’t want a definition of what’s legal and what isn't. They tried that and lost in 1992 when it was decided that people were allowed to make their own mixtapes. Instead, they're going after sharing itself. The way they achieve that is to make Google and the other search engines responsible. If it costs them too much to police that, they’ll just prevent you from uploading shared content.

Google will outlaw all shares because it’s just too expensive for them to figure out what’s legal and what’s illegal. So you’ll be forced to get everything from the established music and movie providers. You can’t make your own because it it might come too close to copyright infringement and Google doesn’t want to risk legal problems by making a wrong decision and costs too much to do it make a right decision anyway. So independents can upload their own music to YouTube or their blogspot, but it won’t be findable because the search engine can’t take that risk. That's how the media companies work. They want to control the web. They don’t want independents making their own music, they want you to buy theirs.

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