At 8:02 AM -0400 10/14/02, Phil Daley wrote: >September 24, 2002 >By John C. Dvorak - Opinion from PC Magazine
Man this pisses me off! My comments to follow. >It's rampant. The new P2P systems, such as KaZaA and Morpheus, have >picked up where Napster left off, and blank CDs now outsell >prerecorded discs. Don't forget that blank CDs are used for many things, including computer backup, legal file exchange, recording of musician's own music (like many of us), small production runs where mass duplication is not warranted, and legal home copying for one's own use. He is implying that ALL blank CDs sold are used to make illegal copies of copyrighted music, which is patently false. >When Edison first released his prerecorded cylinders, they sold for >$4 each. With mass production, he eventually brought the price down >to 35 cents, nearly a 90 percent reduction. If the same ratio held >true with $16 CDs, the cost of which has been perpetually propped up >by price fixing, they would cost $1.40. Since it costs less than 25 >cents to mass-produce a CD, $1.40 is reasonable and profitable. Holy cow! What load of false assumptions and leaps of logic! I am no economist, but even <I> know that selling 10,000 units brings the unit cost down to a fraction of what it would it be if one sold only 1,000 units. How does he assume the same ratios hold true from Edison, in a brand new industry with a brand new product, to modern music business which has access to years of info on marketing, distribution, manufacture, and accounting practices? The writer also assumes that the mechanical manufacturing cost of 25 cents is the only cost to the record label. What about composing, copying, rehearsing, performing, and recording the music? What about marketing and advertising? I know these are dirty words to some of us artists, but they are reality. What about R+D? Research and development are essential to the creation and growth of music, and this is the hardest sell of all. You can't expect individual musicians to shoulder all of the R+D all the time, even though they already carry an enormous share of it. But labels know that less than one in ten of their artists are going to pay for their own production costs by CD sales, and they need to recoup the costs of all those money-losing CDs by making a buck or two on the big sellers. >Of course, the industry would need to adjust from extravagance and >sloppiness to frugality and normality. Less Dom Perignon, for >starters. And it's not as if record companies and artists won't make >money. 45-rpm singles used to cost 50 cents each, and it was a big >deal to sell a million of them. Elvis Presley led a good life, it >seems to me, by leveraging his career with those old profit margins. >Heck, he was giving away Cadillacs. Great. How many Elvises were there? He buttresses his argument against extravagance using one of the most popular musicians of all time. He also goes off-point here, mixing the artist with the label. Who is he accusing of bad business practices? Certainly not Elvis, who didn't really control any of his business at all. He just got rich from being a popular performer, and there is nothing wrong with that. Sheesh! We are NOT making widgets here, buddy! (I aim this at Dvorak, not Phil Daley, obviously!) Widget economics and business practice only gets one so far, and I am not talking about selling enormous numbers of CDs either. I am also talking about music, which is not counted up by accountants at the end of the year. >It's a matter of competition. A manufactured CD for $1.40 can >compete with a bootleg copy: Manufactured CDs generally play better >and come with nice packages and liner notes. They won't come with those nice things if they cost $1.40. This guy has no idea what he is talking about. >The industry can still make millions of dollars, just not billions. >And many artists can go back to making money the old-fashioned >way�by working harder and performing more. Things change, folks! The >gravy train has left the station. Artist are already working very hard and performing so much that they burn out, either physically or mentally or both, long before their careers should be over, thank you very much. Gravy train, indeed! Tell that to the 999 other musicians who never make much money from their work. He is fixated on those very few who hit big and get rich fast, whereas these are the exception, not the rule. > >The U.S. government should not be corrupted by the Recording >Industry Association of America and should instead do more about >price fixing. And let's stop lecturing people about legality and >morality. What are you, an anarchist? We should not let people know about things that are threatening what we like about our society, like music and morality? You sound like a Feringee (you know, the money-grubbing aliens from Star Trek, The Next Generation). Whose responsibility is it to uphold our culture's laws and mores, anyway? The government's sole responsibility? I certainly hope not! It is each person's personal responsibility. I'm getting upset now... >Students in particular are not moral reprobates, nor are they fools. >They are pragmatists, and they stretch the rules along with their >budgets. This is a crowd that worships the fake ID and is taught to >question authority. So you're going to lecture them about >copyrights? Give up. Rethink your business model. The problem will >be solved. Yes, I AM going to lecture them about ways to improve the world as a whole, and I do, and I'm not about to give up. However, I am prepared to concede that music exchange among students is not as bad a problem as it seems. First of all, the musical tastes that are formed when young stay with you your entire life, so this is like money in the bank for musicians. Think of all those teenagers, voraciously devouring music. Later on, they will have a couple of bucks, and they will be addicted, and they will make sure that music is a big part of their lives. According to numbers I've seen (and I won't say they are true, but let's go with them for the sake of the argument) CD sales are down about 20% since internet music exchange got popular. Some people might argue that it means that this 20% is being exchanged. I submit that this 20% is greatly exceeded, perhaps by as much as double or triple. Kids are listening to music way more than they ever would have if they were only buying CDs. Sure this bites into sales, but the effect on comsumers is similar to the effect of radio and TV. They get turned on to a band, or a singer, or a tune, and they look for more like it. Granted, the labels and artists are not directly profiting from teh increased distribution, and that is bad, but its not ALL bad. Young listeners are listening more than ever, and even though musicians are starving, they won't be starving forever if the public's musical appetites increase. But Dvorak is still not off the hook! Thanks, Phil Daley, for an interesting and provocative read, and giving me a chance to rant for a bit. I haven't had a good rant for while now! 8-) Christopher _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
