P2P Calls in Air Strikes
Published March 28, 2003
Another Missed Opportunity — or Monetization?
Mr. Chairman, to date the music industry has missed many opportunities to get ahead of the digital curve and realize the tremendous opportunities to create and monetize new digital business models.
Nearly a decade ago, they ignored attempts by the head of their own national trade association, the RIAA, to apprise them of the coming tsunami. As recounted in a recent article:
In fact, [Hilary] Rosen tried to steer the labels toward the online future long before they saw it coming. In the mid-90s, Rosen brought [technology guru Esther] Dyson to a conference of music executives to brief them on how technology would transform their business. Dyson described for them the inevitability of digital delivery, an eventuality Rosen says she had begun to understand but wanted her bosses to hear from an outsider. But as Dyson spoke, the label executives became defensive, them furious. By all accounts, the meeting devolved into a shouting match.11
When the digital future began to arrive, this head-in-the-sand attitude was replaced by a series of legal assaults on the very online services and technologies that the industry should have embraced and extended:
* In early 2000 MP3.com launched the mymp3.com online locker service. It employed software that, when a user put a music CD into their computer's CD drive, could immediately determine what CD had been inserted and could also confirm that it was an original and authentic product and not a burned duplicate. It then made a streamed copy of that CD available to be heard by the user at any location from which they connected to the Internet. While the CD database created to provide the service was a technical infringement of copyright law, it merely made more convenient an activity that CD owners could engage in legally - the space-shifting of CDs they already owned to an online locker. The mymp3.com service provided convenience as it relieved users of the tedious task of "ripping" and uploading their own music. This was a service the labels should surely have embraced as it enhanced the value of their primary product, the CD, and promoted ephemeral music streams rather than permanent downloads. But they sued, and won, and drove MP3.com into a choice between bankruptcy or acquisition. Universal Vivendi swallowed them up, and little's been heard from them since.
* Even as the lawsuit against MP3.com was proceeding, the Napster phenomenon was gaining steam. Seldom has a new technology so captured the public's enthusiasm, as overnight a software application opened the eyes of the world to the possibilities of immediate and intuitive access to any sound recording ever made anywhere in the world any time of day. Despite clear evidence that this online sampling service was inciting tremendous excitement for all genre of music, and despite a $billion dollar licensing offer from Napster, the labels again sued, and again won. And again, in the aftermath, a major label stepped in, this time BMG. Napster combined the cost and content efficiencies of P2P with a centralized directory that provided total knowledge and control, an ideal model for monetization. BMG appealed to its brethren to license their content to Napster and thereby create for the recording industry what Orbitz is for the airlines. Sadly but predictably, they refused. Napster languished and, just recently, and somewhat ironically, its brand name was just sold off to Roxio, a company best known for its CD-ripping software.
- P2P Calls in Air Strikes
- Published: March 28, 2003
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- Section: Sci/Tech
- Filed Under: Sci/Tech: Internet, Music: News, Video: News
- Writer: Eric Olsen
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this was great i am happy to see that others are benifiting to open mindness
of new technologies/ and sad to see that the world is all about price gouging/ worries of hollywood suicide and most inportant greed. I believe point in case
as a consumer of movies and music and will come straight out and say it as no one else will -fear of are goverment I guess.
1. movies-are so many experience good and bad /sad and happy -and so many experinces have been held on the cinimatic screen exploited/ and life situations to catastrophies of floods/earthquakes to aliens and how we view them. theaters are great experinces
but some times the translation is lost
and can only be gained by home expirence . thanks to technolgy we have that choice. are own tiny theater -surround
speakers /flat screen tv's -can you accually blame people for not wanting to sit in a theatre were some lady smells and has a crying baby. also might i add
that downloading of a movie is a differn't experiance all together-you have this wierd tech-feeling you get that we accually have moved into the future 2004. That u can not belive that u are accually watching this on a computer and quite an overwellming feeling just ask the executives of the movie industry /when they wanted to know exactly what was going on with the p2p
and one them said ooh let me show u and downloaded the matrix revolutions. so point in case no matter if u are watching it on a hollywood screen or
a computer screen-if u like what u watched -its most likly going to influince you to purchase it on dvd.
(mundanity i love it.)
1. big fish-saw in theatre -bought it on dvd
2. finding nemo-down·load·ed-bought it on dvd
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Music it enriches are lives its one thing everyone agrees on -just not the form/ rap/hip-hop/ and boy bands and fake corporation meglaconglomerates
are now choosing the way we are to listen to music/ and how we are to view
who's hot and who's not. show's like american idol that cuts people's dreams and hopes down to size that does not fit the profile in fashion/and music style are outcasted. music should not be this way/ 2004 music terms are lets take the-sex out /no drugs/ hay what about just the rock and we can sell it as is.
nope it just doen't happen that way . some of the best groups like the sex-pistols were wacked out of their minds and made the best music. can u
imagine what john lennon would have been
like without drugs. the groups that no
one will hear such as revolver exept in small circles. here's my biggest point I own 3000 cd's used to have 2000 tapes
but traded them in for cd's. but still downloaded music to hear the new upcoming bands that no one wanted u to hear too controversial i guess. And help
people to experince music that they would not open up to. and vice versa
I have helped a 50 year old man to gain music back that his ex-threw out and thought he would never hear ever again.
Some of this music i downloaded I thought was good but not good enough to buy-as the letter to senator murry states just samplings never albums.
in a couple of cases was given full albums/ but one was the new mattalica and it just sucked sooooo bad that i gave it away. the other a new anthrax album-which i kept but plan to buy or get it at a pawn shop for the cover art .
and info in the jacket. so bottom line
music is music whatever the jonra. i have been buying cd's so long and also enjoy finding groups on the net like maroon 5 /overkill and d.r.i / groups not many listen too. last point -distrubution of these kind of music
can be bought but are hard to find it's either bidding on ebay for em-or special order. just try and find scars of the crucifix -from deicide not a liked group but hay someone listens to it.
thanks for the time/ viva la p2p controversy and the history that is made.