p2pnet - rss feed: Big Music mp3 price fixing
p2p news / p2pnet: New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer’s latest attack on the Big Four Organized Music family centres on mp3 download extortion.
According to mainstream media reports-by-press-release, the corporate music business is booming with OM’s sue ‘em all marketing campaign frightening people away from the p2p network to sites such as iTunes, RealNetworks and Napster which are, of course, no more than outlets for music industry cookie-cutter ‘product’.
However, that’s music industry lie-speak. Relatively speaking, only a tiny handful of misguided souls buy from the iTunes, etc. By far the vast majority of online music lovers get their fixes from the indie sites and the p2p networks. And more and more people are ignoring Big Four product every day, as the Big Champagne chart on the left proves.
It shows the numbers of people around the world simultaneously logged onto the p2p networks at any given time between 2003 and 2005
Sony BMG, Vivendi Universal, Warner Music and EMI claim this is stealing, although nothing has been stolen.
But in fact, they’re the thieves, trying to use the force of law to compel people to spend a dollar and more on digital downloads which are worth scarcely more than a few cents.
Music lovers are reasonable people. They’d happily pay a fair price for their downloads but they’re staying away from iTunes, etc, because they’re not stupid enough to fork out $1 for a low-fidelity, compressed version of a track the labels have already received payment for at least once.
As p2pnet has pointed out over and over again, corporate sites charge so much over the odds because the labels wholesale each track at between 65 and 80s cents, which leads directly to the grotesquely inflated pricing by the industry supplied and supported music ’services’.
Now, “Warner Music Group disclosed Friday that it had received subpoenas from the New York attorney general as part of an industrywide probe into how much record companies charge for digital music,” says the LA Times.
“According to industry sources, who declined to be identified because the probe was continuing, [New York attorney general Eliot] Spitzer is reviewing whether the companies conspired to set wholesale prices.”
The reality is, of course, there’s nothing to consider.
The labels have been knowingly and deliberately fixing download rates since Day One but mainscream media reporting-without-question has led to a common acceptance of Organized Music’s overcharging as a virtual standard.
“Wholesale digital music prices can range from 60 cents to nearly 90 cents a song, according to industry executives. Operations such as Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes, the most popular digital music source, then sell songs to users for 99 cents per download.”
The LA Times has Warner spokesman Will Tanous saying, “As part of an industrywide investigation concerning pricing of digital music downloads, we received a subpoena from Atty. Gen. Spitzer’s office as disclosed in our public filings. We are cooperating fully with the inquiry,” according to a statement released by.
“A source at Sony BMG said the company also received a subpoena and said it was cooperating as well. Sources said the two other major music companies - EMI Group and Universal Music - either had received or soon would receive subpoenas.”
Meanwhile, Organized Music’s most recent effort to force people to buy its lossy digital files is to escalate its attacks on youngsters.
Stay tuned.
Also See:
LA Times - Pricing of Music Downloads Is Probed, December 24, 2005
attacks on youngsters - Teens next RIAA victims, December 23, 2005
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’ for Christmas or at any other time. Do bug your local political representatives. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance
December 25th, 2005 at 1:12 am
Haha RIAA idiots. Who’s serving the subpoenas now?
They’re dying faster and faster.
December 25th, 2005 at 1:16 am
The article should be called Big music download price fixing. Calling them mp3’s makes the mp3 format look bad. All that the cartels offer are wma and m4p files, which are both infected with DRM. As we all know, mp3’s are a non DRM format.
December 25th, 2005 at 2:21 am
“The article should be called Big music download price fixing. Calling them mp3’s makes the mp3 format look bad. All that the cartels offer are wma and m4p files, which are both infected with DRM. As we all know, mp3’s are a non DRM format.”
Good point, mp3 and ogg are good formats…USE THEM!!! Don’t be fooled into DRM shitzzzz!!!!
December 25th, 2005 at 3:36 am
It just keeps getting better and better. In order for them to feel self rightous at suing everything in sight, it has been consistantly the position of the **AA’s to take the moral high ground. Yet with one thing right after another, it is demonstrated how low that ground really is. For the cartels, a ditch would constitute high ground.
Yet the process continues where the cartels are suing everything in sight claiming all and sundry are stealing their goods. The truth comes to light once again who are the thieves.
Just another day on the planet of the dinosaurs…
December 25th, 2005 at 4:40 am
they don’t learn their lessons apparently. They got screwed before and had to pay millions of dollars because of the CD price fixing. Hopefully they’ll use the previous inability to learn from illegal activites and slap the companies with even bigger fines.
December 25th, 2005 at 6:21 am
“Music lovers are reasonable people. They’d happily pay a fair price for their downloads but they’re staying away from iTunes, etc, because they’re not stupid enough to fork out $1 for a low-fidelity, compressed version of a track the labels have already received payment for at least once.”
Reasonable people, isn’t that the truth. Low-fi tracks are the sole reason I stay away from iTunes and all other pay music services, not because I can get most songs for free on a p2p network, which by the way are mostly lo-fi as well, and more prone to errors and poor encoding in general. The fact is that this is just another method of control perpetuated by the greed of these organizations. They don’t want people to have hi-fi tunes for obvious reasons, but at the same time they want to charge as if they were. I’m sure I’m not the only dyed-in-the-wool true blue music lover out there that feels the same way and cares about the quality as much as the tune itself, if not more so. I would gladly use these services if the quality actually matched what they’re charging, despite the fact that I know where the money would be going. I and a great many others would be broke all the time with being able to buy hi-fi tracks, that’s for sure. The longer this crap goes on though the less likely this will be as they are alienating way to many customers, and at a drastic rate too. As it stands right now with the current situation, it’s similar to charging a premium for a lemon of a product. It makes absolutely no sense with cars or any other product, and it’s sad to see that there are so many suckers out there using these services. Add DRM into the mix and you are really being severely ripped off folks. Hopefully this investigation will result in some sanity put back were it belongs, and perhaps there is still hope for the rest of us that do care about legally paying for our music, but see the truth of how things are at the moment and refuse to be ripped off.
December 25th, 2005 at 8:22 am
I remember buying records when they were vinyl. I loved nothing better than to set it up and listen to it on a good stereo and plow through the artwork. There was something magical in that sense of it belonged to you. I would take off the wrapping, carefully slide it out of the wrapper, lay it on the turntable, clean it, and then carefully adjust the controls while it started playing and then lay back with that artwork and just enjoy the magic.
That’s no longer part of the listening experience. The magic is gone. So is the artwork. With the mp3, the ambience isn’t there and I can’t hear the stick hit the cymbol before it rings. Nor can I hear the guitar pick hit the string the moment before the string rings. Whats worse, the price for this junk has gone up and I can’t legally put it on the reel to reel to enjoy as a long playing tape that doesn’t need to be fooled with for a long time. Mp3’s don’t do it for that sort of equipment. You always hear what is missing and notice it missing. That’s not quality. Nor is it worth a dollar for that sort of subpar product, even if the artists were as good as they were then (and their not for the most part).
I see nothing desirable in the music today. Not from the subject range, not from the artists, not from the quality. Worse, the majority of the music I see today that I might be interested in, I already have. I don’t need to buy Greatest Hits because I have the originals. Those originals are not hampered with any sort of anticopy. If I want a cassette, ok, if I want a cd, that’s ok too. No hassles and no issues in how I want to use them.
Someone in the cartels have forgotten that how the buyer wants to use the music is everything. Without that, there isn’t much need in buying a rental limited edition that isn’t worth the money to begin with. But lets really make it good and give out free rootkits and spyware that you can’t cancel or refuse. Yeap, sounds like a real bargain to me.
At this rate, I’ll pass on the next 20 years of what is called music by the cartels as I see nothing worth spending the money on.
December 25th, 2005 at 12:11 pm
Anti monopoly laws should prohibit the formation of CORPORATE membership associations, such as RIAA, the movie MPAA and the music publishers MPAA. The reason is simple: Their only purpose of the CORPORATE associations is control prices, competition and politicians.
CORPORATE associations and political contributions should be banned. Only individual citizens should be allowed to form associations and only individual citizens and their associations should be allowed to make political contributions and to lobby, and then only to politicians in their voting district. That a New Yorker help a Californian politician to get elected is pure meddling in the voting rights of others. Californians, in this case.
The purpose of RIAA has always been to give a false competitive advantage of records to other forms of music, such as radio, theater, concert halls. No different than any other CORPORATE association.
Because the record companies are associated, they can get away with murder in their acts against their customers with their suing rampage and with their contract-trapped artists who are hardly paid, if at all, and with the songwriters who are hardly paid at all as can be seen here, where it is shown that RIAA leader Sony blatantly uses music on their records without any permission from the copyright owners:
http://rafa_venegas.web.prdigital.com/venegas_v_sony_lawsuit.htm
This case proves that while RIAA sues innocent people like Santangelo of alleged infringement, their members, who have a battery of lawyers and copyright savvy executives at their disposal do not care hat the rights of copyright holders are violated knowingly and repeatedly.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
December 25th, 2005 at 4:35 pm
Mp3 were created for general use and not for high end equipment. To be fare to mp3 format I converted 24bit wave file with frequency range from 30-20,500hz into 320kbs mp3 and dropped both of them into Wavelab. What I saw on the spectrum analyzer was not what I expected. I have found almost no difference between them. Only none audible frequencies were missing. The high end up to 20.5khz was there. I am more than sure that you will never tell the difference between mp3 at 320kbs and wave files even if you use the best mp3 player out there. Once again we are talking about mp3 format and mp3 players here.
As a pro guitar player for 35 years already and a sound engineer for 16 I can tell you that normally you do not want pick sound in your music. And if I could get rid of it completely I would be very happy about it.
You mention tape recorder like it’s something superior to MP3 but it’s not. Normally tape has 10khz top. With high end tapes and equipment you might hit 15,000. Also, over the time tape looses its quality because of deformations and changes in magnetic field. So, if you after quality get a CD player. If you want acceptable quality of the sound but you are not near of your hi-fi then an mp3 player will do just fine.
About iTunes, people have been renting movies for decades I do not see anybody complaining about it. How’s that different from renting music? It’s not that I like either of those services but it’s just something to think about.
And, yes! DRM sucks!
ViC Phoenix
December 25th, 2005 at 5:44 pm
Of course, you are right but if there is no any serious thoughts and suggestions about how we can change all that it’s just bitching. We all know that the world in not perfect. We all know that there is no friendly government no matter what country are you in. We all know that we have a better chance to find a diamond in a city waste dump than a politician that worth voting for. The question is how we can change all that? The history of revolutions shows us that it’s impossible to improve the government by changing it because the new government will behave the same way as the old one over the time. What else we have?
ViC Phoenix
December 26th, 2005 at 12:17 am
“Of course, you are right but if there is no any serious thoughts and suggestions about how we can change all that it’s just bitching.”
Some thoughts about the comment:
1. Light bitching by few will not make any difference. Heavy bitching by many will have an effect on current and want to be politicians.
2. As voters become more intelligent as a result of exposure to many opinions, throught, information, and tes, bitching, through the internet, politicians will have to be more responsive. The Internet is a new era.
As Lincoln said, you can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all the time. The people already know that politicians are trying to fool them all of the time.
Here in my country, Puerto Rico, we have just forced the legislature to eliminate one of the two bodies and become just one with 1/2 the legislators. We bitched first about the theft of the salaries of the legislators, who did nothing more than infighting and nothing about the countrie’s problems and legislted mainly for the benefit of private businesses. They learned from Washington. The bitching did not work so we petitioned a referendudun calling for the eliminiation of 1/2 the legislature. 80 percent of the voters voted for the change. The change will become effective in 2008. That was not bitching, that was action.
If the American people did the same as we did in Puerto Rico and kicks the legislature in the ass, they will send a message to the politicians: The days of wine and booze, the political racket, is over. Go to work, for the people.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
December 26th, 2005 at 2:09 am
The point is being missed, when trying to justfiy that one is happy about playing mp3 formated music on a player or computer.
It’s true in that simple context - people can be satisfied with a mp3 song, never reaching the point where they may know the diffrence between that and say, a lossless format.
But paying for something that lacks hi-fi quility of a retail studio recorded music for the same price as a singel cd song track would cost simply doesn’t cut it in rational sense. Why simply pay for something that lacks quality?
Because it’s enough?
You buy a wagon with a horse because it takes you from A to B and is thus enough? ‘Course not, you want all the bells and whistles in brand new car!
Now, looking at it from only a strict IP point of view there would be no diffrence in renting out movies and even music. Indeed as long as it can pluck a few pence from a pocket to your pocket it should be done, right?
And thus you are faced with a pretty solid problem - we have Culture. That big swelly thing that is about anything that has any relation to a thought and expression, we all know it - we are a part of it.
The problem itself is that once you introduce a new piece of culture to people consuming it, it is part of the collective culture. In other words, it dosen’t belong to you - of course that said in a philosohpical view point.
Envision you as a musical artist tried to stop everyone from hearing, recreating or taking part in your work you would need to beat them down, hoping that they can’t remember the song. Hard work, ain’t it?
This is why the state the collective people, is giving out a monopoly to your song, that everybody is agreeing that it shouldn’t be played or recreated during that periode. This is aslo the fundamental problem with the current IP copyright system right now - the basis on how we, the people, the state, wants to give out monopolies is changing and those whom owns the monopolies refuse to accept the reality of this.
Renting, in context to this, will mean that you are rented the right to listen to the song in a limited time, that the monopoly is extended for a brief periode of time to you.
The problem is that once this as been done, you cannot remove how the renting have added to the collective cultural mass. The music is “out there” - copied, whisled, played, rerecored, sampled.
You can’t reinforce it either - “you can’t listen to this” don’t really sound solid, does it?
And simply renting out discs with music is not something the industry will think is suffice - they want the right over it as well. They want the right to give and take away from you. The sense of renting out something in physical sense regarding foremost music, but now in some ways movies, is dieing as the format they took while in physical form no longer holds value.
As you can see - this dosen’t really cut it with how reallity works. Giving and taking something that has no physical form from the Cultural mass of people is not a form of controll that can be exercised. The only controll, as I can see, is how it reaches the masses.
Henrik Axelsson
Swedish P2P Advocate
flamingkarma.blogspot.com
December 26th, 2005 at 3:40 am
One of the new things starting to come down the pipes is the enforcement and the seeking of protections for IP property. I think one of the things that hasn’t been thought through is that if IP becomes protected property with the same sort of rights as tangible property, then it will reach the same status as tangible property. If that is the case, software, music, movies and the like will be taxed like property. Can’t be any other way if it is to reach that status.
That means that every business that uses software will pay taxes on that “property” as if it were land or something else. Some of those businesses like insurance, medical, and the like might use upwards of 600 apps in the course of their business operations. Think that might put a little crimp on those that have pushed so hard for IP property rights? Can’t happen here can it?
http://epaper.ardemgaz.com/WebChannel/ShowStory.asp?Path=ChatTFPress/2005/12/25&ID=Ar00101
December 26th, 2005 at 11:53 am
One of the great things about IP is that it doesn’t pay taxes.
There are music publishers and music catalogues or collections of movie rights that been appraised (based on earnings history) and then sold for truckload of cash but had previously never paid any property taxes.
Also in those locations where inheritance taxes are paid, the so called IP does not pay taxes at all, even when the property has a history of solid earnings and appraisal based on earnings history is possible.
How they get away with it is something I have never figured out. Maybe someone can ask the legislature. Certainly they are not going to bring up the subject. The silence at Washington is the job of the lobbyists.
Additionally, he income that the so called property generates abroad is easy to collect and stash away in foreign banks so they never pay local income tax.
Then there are the explanations of publishers. In one forum music publishers say they manage songs for songwriters, the beneficial owners. As managers they do not own the property and should not pay property taxes. In another forum, the courts, they say they own the songs and sonwriters own nothing.
Perhaps it is possible to have it both ways, or the best of two worlds.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
December 27th, 2005 at 4:06 am
It’s nice to see my “High price, low-fi music.” post sparked some good comments from both sides of the fence. I agree, for the average person they likely would not be able to tell the difference between an uncompressed high quality wave file and a lossy compressed encoding at a low bitrate, especially on the equipment and in the listening environments of most folks. But does that mean it’s ok to charge as much as the corporations do, to offer what is essentially a very low quality “product”, laden with DRM mind you, for what is clearly a premium price? I don’t think it matters what people perceive (or don’t), wrong is wrong, and I hope the law makers and enforcers set things right eventually.
A comment was made regarding a high bitrate mp3 (320k) and a wave file not appearing any different in a program that allows one to do a spectrum analysis, or of having very little difference at least. The real test is the ABX though, not a spectrum analysis. You can’t cheat an ABX test, and for what it’s worth, I’m one of those people that can score 100% on a 320k mp3. In other words, in an scientifically objective test I can tell the difference when listening to a wave file and a 320k mp3. That doesn’t mean compression doesn’t have it’s place of course, as I do use OGG Vorbis for the portable player I currently have. I have a much harder time with doing an ABX test for this type of compression. Because I’ve chosen to go the route of quality, I’ve cut myself off from all the download services available, such as iTunes. If they were to only increase the quality of the downloads for the price they are forced to charge by the recording industry, I would in all likelihood buy one of the latest 60GB iPod’s despite the DRM; two in fact so the wife could have one as well. Quality is the only things that keeps us from making the jump however, and I can assure you we would spend a great deal of money on such a service if it were only fairly priced for the quality you get. I’m not a big fan of DRM mind you, but I don’t think it’s that big of a deal as long as the quality is there, as well as a good deal of choice.
I highly doubt we are the only ones who feel this way, and that there are in fact a lot of people who are in similar situations. We are a vast untapped market. Like the original story said, we are reasonable music fans. We don’t want to do anything illegal or wrong those that don’t deserve it, especially the artists, but it’s hard not to when we the people are so clearly being wronged too. Luckily we all have a choice when it comes to spending our money. Some have chosen to be ripped off just to play it safe, and some are clearly oblivious, but hopefully most are simply avoiding what the industry is currently offering and finding ways to fight back. If we the people choose where to spend our money wisely, and the artists choose to stop being taken advantage of with such terrible contracts all the time, the middle man that is the current recording industry will eventually come to an end. I think what we are seeing with these greedy high prices, bad law making, and sue-em-all campaign, is the desperation of an old and dying way. They had a good ride, got rich doing it, but their time has clearly come thanks to the internet. They are no longer in control and this will be their down fall. History has shown that those that cannot adapt die, and it’s never been more true than as it is today.
December 27th, 2005 at 4:14 am
This was a real eye opener for me:
“Courtney Love Does the Math”
http://www.jdray.com/Daviews/courtney.html
December 29th, 2005 at 12:58 am
As always my favorite site P2P got the hot issues covered. Is Big Music really fixing those prices? Spoken X Digital Media Group feels that Eliot
Spitzer is over zealous in his govenor seeking ambition. He’s walking in the shadows of Ness and Gulliani; those got love to relate everything to
organized crime. In this case Spitzer is going to spotlight the Big Four on
a 99 cent retail / 70 cent wholesale ticket to the mansion in albany–personally I hope he makes it so he can hurry up and get out the sh**t-house and I can start pressing my counterfeit money again.
But this time I’m going side by side with the big four–no illegal behavior
here: Exxon,Citgo,Texaco,BP,Shell; if he wants to be the main man, these guys can use a price fixing investigation for something that we all need as opposed to something that not too many of us want at the moment. Speaking in my own interest as a publisher–”This guy is outrageous!”