Speak (or vote) your piece at UMG!

[Rudy]

Univer$al Music Group now has a survey site set up:

http://www.umgpanel.com/

I haven't signed up to vote there yet (no time), but they'll get a piece of my mind when I do!

-= N =-

 

[Captain Bacardi]

Univer$al Music Group now has a survey site set up:

http://www.umgpanel.com/

I haven't signed up to vote there yet (no time), but they'll get a piece of my mind when I do!

-= N =-

You won't be able to speak your mind. As a matter of fact, this is pretty much a setup. When you get near the end of the questions, it gets into why anyone goes to a music site. Among the multiple choice answers is "download music from site". I bet you anything that they will get a bunch of pimply doofuses to check that particular box, then present it to Congress to say "See? These people are ripping us off. That's why we need to get rid of blank CDs", or something to that effect. This is an old Postal trick. They used to give us surveys, then turned the results around during contract talks. This is along the same lines.


Capt. Bacardi

 

[Rudy]

I would not put it past Univer$al to do that. I notice their sample survey border on entrapment. "OK, we have your e-mail address, and now you admitted you downloaded music from the internet...you filthy music pirate, you!.

Guess I won't waste my time. They're a lost cause to begin with. If you bothered to sign up and noticed the angle they're putting on it, then so be it. I may sign up with a throwaway Yahoo or Hotmail account just to shake it out...and post what I find here. (How many "other" fields in the survey can we fill with "U Suck"? )

I also read recently that DVD-Audio has lowered its prices to be on par with CDs. I don't get it--I'm supposed to go out and change all of my hardware to play these pathetic discs? Nope, sorry. This is the music industry's partial answer to piracy. "Now you can buy the same music you already own, again, but have it in surround sound, or at 24bit, 96kHz sampling. And you can't get that in an MP3 file!" Cool. That means I can't play it in either car, or in my 100-disc CD changer, or on any of my Disman portables, or on the computer CD-ROM drives, or my 6-disc changer, or any of my three boom boxes, or my JVC mini system, and likely not even in my first-generation DVD players. So, their solution to piracy is to sell us software we want so bad that we want to spend several thousand dollars buying equipment to play it on.

The improvement isn't worth it. Maybe to some elite golden-eared audiophile snobs who are half deaf to begin with, and to engineers lucky enough to have decent equipment to play it on, they'll claim to hear a difference. But who wants to sit rigidly still between a couple thousand dollars worth of good surround speakers to listen to music? The music industry's answer is their "next big thing" that, quite frankly, has absolutely no market. They have this illusion that, like CD players, we're all going to go gushing over this "brand new format" like we did CDs to begin with...when 99% of the listeners won't hear one damn bit of difference. (And to all the Joe Sixpacks out there in couch potato land, it's still "just a shiny disc that plays music.") I'm not buying into it, sorry. I hope DVD-Audio and SACD flop, big time. It's all about marketing and gimmicks, with little actual improvement in sound quality that few, if any, want.

Beside that, DVD-R drives can be purchased for as little as $299 now, and blank DVDs for $2. Give it a year, and both prices will probably drop by half...again. And then Univer$-hell, the RIAA and their paid-for politicians can whine about DVD piracy in addition to CD piracy.

More power to the pirates, I say. Whatever the industry will do to stop them, they'll find a way to get around it. The region encoding and Macrovision on DVD has already been busted--there are entire websites devoted to modifying your player, often through a series of button pushes on the remote control. Any CD encoding that comes along, mark my words, will be busted within days in the hacker community. DSS (DirecTV) access cards are routinely hacked to get free programming. If it's digital, the hackers and pirates will get around it. Nothing is unbreakable in the digital world.

Maybe we can get some satisfaction in knowing the stupid music industry is losing millions trying to create a protection scheme that is secure...when you know a handful of underground teens in Denmark may very well crack it within days (hours?) of its release.

-= N =-

 

[W.B.]

Like I said . . . these paranoid, money-grubbing label execs obviously feel the average consumer can't be trusted, and engage in the kind of profiling that if directed at ethnic or minority groups would be labeled "racist."

On another, related front . . . the industry is on the verge of targeting used-CD shops, demanding that CD's be treated as "rental" property, which upon resale (priced as unaffordably exorbitant as the first time) goes to the usual suspects. These instances of behavior, of disregarding the public and looking out only for themselves, and putting profits #1 and consumer relations dead-last, is almost exactly the type (albeit in a different form) we've seen in the cases of Enron and the deposed head of Tyco, as well as other such examples too numerous to mention. Click here for the whole enchilada.

 

[Rudy]

What's next? They get eBay to ban sales of used LPs and CDs? They run GEMM out of business for aiding and abetting the used record industry? Too bad the general public isn't aware enough to start a boycott of all music sold on the big labels. Those of us who know about the issue aren't big enough in number to make a difference. I'm sure the major TV networks and cable news channels are on the take, too--I haven't heard of one story by any of them regarding this situation.

One other disturbing fact: the RIAA and politicians are all Americans (and that's stretching the term...I'd deport the whole lot of 'em). And yet, 80% of the major labels are owned by non-American companies. Sony (Japan), EMI, BMG and Vivendi (Europe). IMHO, they don't have a leg to stand on in the U.S. Ship 'em out.

-= N =-

 

[Harry]

This all may have to do with the recent news in the industry about Sony and Universal music groups selling downloaded music. The news hit last Friday:

http://library.northernlight.com/FG20020614130000045.html?cb=0&dx=1006&sc=0#doc

Harry
NP: Lani Hall CLASSICS VOL 19

 

[W.B.]

I'm sure the major TV networks and cable news channels are on the take, too--I haven't heard of one story by any of them regarding this situation.

Whatever stories the news media have had on this issue (and this is gramatically correct, as the word "media" is plural), were heavily biased and one-sided against the average consumer and in favor of these multinational corporations. Moreover, many elements of the news media are tied in to these firms -- namely, CNN and Time magazine, both of which are owned by the only U.S. firm in the group, AOL Time Warner, which also controls Warner/Elektra/Atlantic. (Not to mention ABC News which is owned by Disney; CBS News which, like Paramount Pictures, is owned by Viacom; Fox News whose parent, News Corp., also owns 20th Century-Fox -- but none of these entities currently own any music holdings that I know of. But they all are against the average consumer, just the same.)

 

[jimac51]

Disney's ventures in the music business have been both expected and unexpected. As most know,they still make kiddie records and soundtracks on their own label and Buena Vista. Hollywood Records has been a wash,with their biggest success probably with the Queen catalog(an expensive deal which probably didn't see any profit until the "hits" packages started coming) and the Dave Clark Five packge,which was only a double CD of"hits" and no regular albums(I believe that that relationship mave have ended). Their attempt with urban music(Basic?)was disasterous when they signed a rap act so rank that they got cold feet and had Elektra,their then-distributor,take over it and quietly kill it. Lyric Street has been an attempt at country,with limited success(SheDaisy-a second rate Dixie Chicks). They took Mammoth Records from one hit(Squirrel Nut Zippers) back to oblivian. And Miramax is either involved in music,too(beyond soundtracks)but I don't have that information right now. The neverending rumor that Disney would be the ideal suitor for EMI seems to be stalled by Disney's repeated "two-step forward,one step back" forays into other entertainments. Now would not be an ideal time to purchase a reord label. Mac