Just shortly after Stevie Nicks said that the Internet has destroyed rock, the founder of Elektra Records, an RIAA record label according to RIAA Radar, says that music has a bright future and the internet is not the enemy.
There’s a fascinating article over on CNet which shows that Jac Holzman, founder of Elektra Records and helped bring you artists such as The Doors, has had some positive things to say about the digital age.
He helped push the record industry to adopt the CD and was quoted as saying “I think the music industry has a bright future” when discussing the internet. Here’s two excerpts from the article:
In music, Holzman saw the rise of the LP, 8-track tape, DAT, compact disc, MP3, and BitTorrent. After all that, new technologies don’t spook him. On the contrary, he says many of these technologies helped make a lot of artists and industry people rich. When it comes to the Internet and digital distribution, Holzman is confident music labels can capitalize on them too. He says they really don’t have a choice.
“I was having lunch with a very dear friend of mine [in the record business] sometime around 2000,” Holzman said during an interview this week with CNET. “We met right around the time when Napster came together, and I said ‘There are opportunities and there are potholes. How are you preparing for a digital future?’ He said to me, ‘Jac, I just want it to go away.’ Well, you can’t continue that conversation.”
Holzman suggested that the big labels goofed when they sued Napster out of existence. At that point, the rise of the CD had left the industry without an effective way to sell individual songs. Before the CD, the 45-rpm vinyl disc was the perfect singles vehicle. The costs of manufacturing CDs, however, made that format more suited to selling full albums, according to Holzman.
“With Napster, it would have been easy to proliferate singles,” Holzman said. “You would have had no manufacturing costs. You would still have the value of the single as a calling card for albums and you could have sold [songs] for something like 79 cents, made it affordable. You would have had ability to count because all of the transactions went through a central server at Napster, unlike peer-to-peer where you bypassed servers. Now, would P2P still have happened? Yes it would. But we would have established a principle of being paid for digital music.”
Holzman also sees positive things when it comes to the re-use of copyrighted works through fair use. Additionally, he thinks that suing music fans is a mistake and that ISPs should share some profits from the music that has been flowing through their networks.
All this comes after Stevie Nicks, in spite of the evidence that suggests otherwise, blamed the internet for destroying rock as well as John Mellencamp saying that the internet is the most dangerous invention since the A-bomb.
So where does this leaves the mainstream American music industry? I think it shows that everyone in the RIAA ranks don’t universally have the opinion that the internet is destroying music. Even within the RIAA, there are opposing views with the digital age and how it affects music. It’s a lot like the misconceptions of those who support digital rights. Those who support a loosening copyright laws don’t necessarily all say that copyright laws should be abolished and that everything should be free. In fact, many who support a more liberal copyright law even say that they are more than happy to pay for copyrighted material.
In the ranks of the RIAA, not everyone is of the extreme point of view that the internet should just be dismantled. Do such people exist? Yes. Are they all of the same opinion? No.
That doesn’t mean that the debate hasn’t shown signs of polarity. I think it’s the extreme points of view that do have this affect though. If one person says that the internet should be abolished, a large number of people with various points of view will rally against a call like that.
Overall, it’s very refreshing to see something like this surface.
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I’m one of those “old guys.” I’ve observed the avarice of the majors for a long time. They loaded up albums with a lot of crap (Rumours and a few other exceptions aside) so they could sell 2 or 3 good songs for $16 or more. They treated their artists badly, and still do. If they had found a way to sell individual songs for 99 cents themselves, before the Internet came along, the recording industry would be smaller but healthier today. If the labels are hurting today as badly as they let on, I say they’re reaping the whirlwind. I do feel badly for the artists, including Stevie (who probably isn’t hurting for money), but especially the young people who get little or no support from their labels to develop their skills.
All well and good; however, the courts have prevented the CD/music industry from putting copy guard on artists’ intellectual property. Anyone with eyes (and ears) knows that music is being stolen in grandiose amounts every day through filesharing services, without a single royalty being paid. This is a disincentive for the creation of new music — why bother if it will simply be stolen instead of bought and paid for?
It’s unrealistic and undesirable for the Internet to be “dismantled,” but until the ‘Net learns to better police itself in order to prevent this brazen theft, it is seriously damaging the music business. All you have to do is look at the profit margins and CD sales. Even when you add iTunes and other for-pay services, the industry is hurting more than it should be, and has been since long before this tough economy.
As for proecuting the thieves? You wouldn’t suggest that computer software pirates not be prosecuted, so why suggest that entertainment software pirates not be prosecuted? They are thieves.
CD sales and digital music sales will NEVER EVER be the same because kids these days can cherry pick the latest and greatest song. They don’t have to buy the whole album like they used to.
An entire $20 album has been reduced to a solitary 99 cents greatest hit. That’s just the way it is.
And there is still an incentive to create music just as there always was and has been. Recorded music is a relatively recent invention. Artists like 50 Cent and Wale consider P2P to be an important form of promotion that leads to show up at shows, buy merchandise, or even CDs to show their support. If there is a disincentive it is the fact that it’s pretty dam hard to get your music out there and develop a fan base.
The main problem with people is they have been made stupid and ignorant by the state and corporations, so too many believe all this state and corporate BS, they need to educate themselves and stop assume their programming and “common sense” is always correct.
Copied information or data is not stealing because you have not deprived anyone of this virtual property or of their privacy, this is merely a copyright infringement, a right provide by the state, a right which technology has made effectively void, once you sell this “copyrighted” information or data to the public, without a commercial confidentiality contract e.g. NDAs.
The state does not exist, it is merely an idea which a group of people say they represent, and enforce this perception using the public schools system, propaganda, threats and force i.e. effectively an ordered warlord, quisling and useful idiots collective. I usually tolerate the state, but they lose my tolerance for anything giving person rights to the perpetual abomination and corruption of Capitalism called a corporation. I see no wrong in disrespecting so-called corporate rights, when they are inappropriate or abusive.
It’s pretty shocking to see some one in the RIAA who isn’t a retard. Especially with how old he looks in the picture. Old guys like that are usually the ones who say “I just want it all to go away” instead of “lets capitalize on this!”
“But what about the kids trying to make it in this business?”
all the rock and roll hall of fame industry and music industry has to do is apply the affirmative action to the music industry by lowering the standards required to get into the business such as.
1. doing a degree mill type thing by having web sites that issue illegal licenses.
2. no longer require a physical music school have all training online sort of like what “http://www.macsw.org” has done for refrigeration ( you pay $25 to have the test mailed to you and you can download the text book as pdf from them and using the find command in the pdf reader locate the answers and viola!!! you ace the test and get a refrigeration license that allows you to handle freon).