RTP-area local music and culture

["Chris Clark" <chris AT ti-law.com>]

This is the model that I have always felt was the best answer to turning
illegal downloading / "piracy" into a viable revenue model for artists,
labels, songwriters and publishers.  Jim Griffin has been promoting this
model for ten years or more.  You are correct that it is far from perfect,
but I think it has the best chance of any solution I have seen of creating a
really big pool of money from downloads and dividing that money somewhat
fairly.

I think you could track plays/downloads a couple of ways - my hunch is that
the big players (major labels and publishers) will advocate a sampling
methodology - i.e. track a small percentage of downloads and pay based on
the fiction that the sample accurately represents the whole.  On the other
hand, the closer we can get to tracking actual plays/downloads, the better
off the independent artists and labels will be.  

I think the only way this works is if it's mandatory for all ISP
subscribers.  If you don't want to download media from the Internet (which I
think once this gets implemented and people realize its possibilities will
be almost nobody) you still have to pay the fee (kind of like how a portion
of your taxes pay for schools whether you have 5 kids or none).  I think the
price point of the added fee will make a big difference here - most people
won't mind if the fee is fifty cents, but they might if it is five dollars.

At the very least it is refreshing to see this idea gaining some traction -
should be interesting to see how they try to implement it.

Chris Clark



-----Original Message-----
From: ch-scene-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:ch-scene-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of
jim.brantley AT gmail.com
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 10:37 AM
To: ch-scene AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: Good article about music biz...

That Wired article is a great one. I also saw this interesting news
today: http://www.slate.com/id/2189888/

The major labels (or at least Warner Bros.) are finally pursuing the
model long advocated by Bob Lefsetz (everyone's favorite music biz
gadfly/curmudgeon: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/) wherein consumers
pay a fee to the ISP for the right to legally download all the music
they want. Artists/copyright holders are then reimbursed according to
how many times their songs are downloaded/played (at least that's the
idea).

It will be interesting to watch how people respond to this. At a
glance it seems like a grand idea, but there are some big problems
with it:
1) How do you accurately track plays/downloads? It seems like we're
still a ways off from the level of standardization that would make
this feasible. I also see privacy concerns with this (e.g. I do have a
Last.FM account and love it, but it also creeps me out a little bit).
2) What about ISP customers who don't want to download music (and
therefore don't want to pay the fee)? I guess it could be voluntary.
3) Would this result in a major label monopoly? How do independent
labels and artists fit into this? If this artists-reimbursed-on-
download/play-metrics model could be made to work, it seems like the
endgame may be for the labels to be squeezed out anyway - or at least
turn them into publishing houses (focused on continuing to monetize
their catalogs) and/or PR machines for new artists, since the cost of
recording has continued to drop and the cost of distribution with this
model would be close to nil.

On Apr 28, 6:21 pm, local... AT gmail.com wrote:
> This ran back in December, but I just finally got around to reading
> it.  David Byrne discusses the current state of the industry with some
> people you know, possibly, quite literally. Here is the link:
>
> http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_byrne?curr...

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