RIAA - the truth, the pain
Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2003 3:17 pm
I was just doing a search for more info on the RIAA and if there's any "anti riaa" things I can help out in, and found this page, which seems old (days of napster) but is a really big eye openner. The riaa does not benifit anyone, not even artists.
Artists might get 1 to 2 bucks per CD sold, guess where the rest goes?...
http://www.geocities.com/riaasucks/
Join us in saying "NO" to the music nazis
What is the RIAA and what does it stand for?
The Recording Industry Association Association of America is an oligopoly of the five biggest record companies in the world. These companies are Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, EMI Music, and BMG Music. If you've ever purchased a pre-recorded cassette tape or CD, chances are 99 to 1 it was released by one of these five companies under one of their hundreds of record labels.
The RIAA is similar to a killer octopus whose tentacles are always reaching out for prey. The prey would be us, the music fans, and even the recording artistes themselves. The RIAA is committed to preventing any independent label from gaining a foothold in the industry. This is how they can team up with music retailers to fix the artificially high price of CDs. It also allows them to maintain a chokehold on the songs that get on radio stations' playlists. They pretty much decide which CDs are heavily promoted in retail stores and which music videos go in heavy rotation on the video music TV channels. In other words, these bozos have taken it upon themselves to decide what type of music we listen to and buy.
How are artistes and consumers victimized by the RIAA?
The RIAA is similar to any other business in that its main objective is to make a profit, and there's nothing wrong with that. But, something went really wrong with the music retail business, especially after the vinyl format was abandoned and replaced by compact discs. CDs are more durable than vinyl and they cost significantly less to produce, so why then has the price of record albums almost doubled since the switch to CDs was made? The RIAA has always been unwilling to answer this question truthfully. They come up with some of the most ridiculous excuses to justify the high prices. They claim operations costs such as production, marketing and shipping add significantly to the cost of the end product.
We know this is bullshit because record companies do not pay much in out of pocket expenses at all. If you're an unknown artiste you usually get a pretty bad recording contract, one that earns you about 35 cents for each CD sold. A big-name act can use their name and former sales record as leverage to negotiate a better deal for about $1.00 to maybe $2.00 per CD sold. Retailers tag on their inventory/overhead costs which is maybe $2.00 to $3.00 per CD. A mass manufactured CD costs only about 30 to 40 cents. What then happens to the rest of the money you pay when you buy a CD?
Just about all of it goes into the record companies' pockets as profit!
A big chunk of it pays the obscene salaries of record company executives. These people are well-known in New York and LA for their bleached-teeth smiles and $100,000 cars even though they contribute zero to the creative process. And they don't care much about promoting the careers of the artistes because as soon as the CD sales drop off they dump the artiste and start searching for the next big act.
Nearly all the promotions costs are deducted from the artiste's royalty checks. These include the cost of touring, the cost of costumes and makeup, the cost of studio time, the cost of the studio engineers, the musicians' salaries, the cost of making music videos, the cost of background dancers, the cost of the stage crew, the cost of the sound techs, the cost of the clean-up crew... The artistes collect only what's left over after everybody else gets paid. That's how the music business works. Many new artistes don't fully understand this and that's how some of them end up near broke even after selling hundreds of thousands or millions of CDs.
Music buyers also get screwed in that most CDs cost between $17.00 and $20.00 although they contain only one or two good songs and a bunch of filler songs. Where is the value in that?
The RIAA's obscene copyright policy
No one rips off the artistes more than these greedy record companies. The RIAA has a strict policy on the ownership of copyright music. This means once they release an artiste's music on one of their labels, they automatically become the copyright owners of the recorded masters. Years from the date of the original release they can re-release the tracks or license them for use in advertisements or for other purposes, and although the composers receive chump change royalties the original musicians and vocalists never see another penny. In other words, again, nearly all the profit goes to the record company.
The advent of peer-to-peer file sharing
Technology is truly a wonderful thing, because it brought us a new way to get the music we want without taking out a second mortgage on the house. It caught the RIAA's attention because, for the first time in history, technology threatened to make the RIAA a redundant organization. Music fans can upload and download MP3 files without any interferance or control from the RIAA, and this really pisses off the record companies.
Napster was the biggest and most successful place to do this on the Internet, but naturally, they are getting a nasty legal fight from the RIAA. The really good thing about Napster is it proves the recording industry to be a real dinosaur. The RIAA has been so busy ripping us all off they paid no attention to the fact that technology was about to make them obsolete. It took, Napster, the brilliant brainchild of a college dropout to wake up these giant monsters. Now they're barking up Shawn Fanning's butt because they claim Napster has encouraged copyright violations that have cost them billions of dollars in losses. We seriously doubt this so-called copyright violation has hurt the music industry in any significant way. When was the last time you heard of a recording artiste out on the street begging for money to pay his rent? The very RIAA admitted they're selling more CDs than ever before so this is obviously not about money but about control. Unfortunately, the RIAA missed the bus. Peer-to-peer music filesharing had already spread all across the Internet to the point where even if Napster shuts down there are many other ways to do it.
Should we, the music fans, feel guilty about not paying for downloaded music? NOT AT ALL! The record companies have been screwing us in the butt without vaseline for years, and there's nothing at all wrong with us getting something back from them in exchange. They feel no guilt about taking $19.00 for a cheap plastic CD from teenagers who've been buying millions of copies of Eminem, N'Sync, Brittney, Christina, and the Backstreet Boys, so why should we feel guilty about taking something back from from them? Some of these kids who buy these overpriced CDs can hardly afford the money but they like the music and so what choice do they have but to pay.
Also think about this, you don't get to sample the songs on a music CD before you buy it. And, if after you buy it and take it home you find that most of the songs are garbage good luck to you trying to get your money back. Retailers have an RIAA-backed policy that they will exchange opened CDs only if they are physically defective, and they will only exchange the title you bought for another CD of the exact same title. The reason they claim is that once the package is opened they can't guarantee that you didn't make a copy of it so its a protection for them. What this really means is that once you hand over your money for a CD, if you open it and play it and find that you don't like the songs you're stuck with it anyway. Once the RIAA collects your money they ain't giving it back, and there's not one thing you can do about it.
Why they are fighting against Napster
The music industry is 99% hype and 1% art. The fight against Napster is not about money or copyright. It is really a fight for the survival of the RIAA. Imagine what would happen to all these overpaid executives if the electronic distribution of music cut out all of them and their middlemen retailers. What other industry could they turn to and earn the salaries they now make for doing nothing?
Napster created in only a couple years what the music industry never will accomplish for itself - an efficient and user-friendly client that allows people to get the songs they want without paying a ridiculous price for it. Many Napster users say they wouldn't mind paying a monthly fee as long as they can get the songs they want without all the filler stuff. This was an excellent opportunity for the music industry to jump into the 21st century and do something really good for themselves and their artistes. Instead, they're trying to wreck Napster.
The music industry will never be successful at getting millions of users to pay a subscription to use any on-line service they come up with. Why? Because, as always, they are more concerned about profit than they are about what music fans really want, and they would make any on-line subscription service so expensive that many people wouldn't give it a second thought. If these people really knew anything about marketing they'd realize that when you offer consumers what they really want they'll be more than willing to pay for it and the profits automatically follow.
Profits aside, Napster has also been good for the music industry in that it allows new and unsigned bands to get a lot of needed exposure. All it took was for the scumbag members of that fading group, Metallica to cry wolf and all of a sudden the RIAA brought out the big guns. If Metallica could only read some of the things many of their former fans have posted on the Internet about them they would be shocked.
By the way, please boycott Metallica.
The type of deal Shawn Fanning and his crew are trying to get the record companies to agree to is the only way on-line music subscription can work successfully. If all the record companies put their entire catalog into a single on-line database music fans would have access to all the songs, even the ones that the record companies stopped marketing years ago, and they could all make a lot of money from this. How do we know this? Because Napster has been around for a while, and even though 50+ million Napster users are downloading music off the Internet the sales of CDs are stronger than ever. This means that if they cooperated with Napster the record companies could be making the money from both ends. But, they are too stupid to see that. Instead, they are planning to start their individual subscription services, and the reason they will all fail is because individually, each record company would offer the songs that are in its current catalog and. many of the much older songs would not be included, and that's not the type of service music fans want.
Do they really expect anybody to pay monthly subscription fees to each of the five companies to download music. I don't think so. Obviously people will not pay all that if they can do peer-to-peer filesharing through underground servers and continue to get the songs for free. This has yet to be figured out by that
, Hilary Rosen, at the RIAA.
Years ago, the motion picture industry tried to sue VCR manufacturers because they felt VCRs would rob them of all their profits. But look at how it all played out, most people use VCRs only to tape TV shows they're not at home to watch. Movies made during the last 20 years continue to break box office records because, VCR or no VCR, people are spending more than ever on going to movie theaters, paying for pay-per-view cable channels, and on renting videos. Likewise, we doubt any Napster user is sitting at his or her computer downloading songs and burning them on to CDs that will be mass copied and sold at the local flea market.
The future of the music industry
Our crystal ball doesn't show anything good for the RIAA. Unfortunately for them, if they kill off the concept Napster wants to create they're pretty much screwed. Peer-to-peer filesharing technology is here to stay, and as more people begin to use it it will only continue to improve and spread. Their attempt to shut down Napster is only the beginning, the technology is already out there and there's nothing to stop music fans from using it.
Keep downloading and sharing those MP3 files and let us all keep the on-line anti-RIAA movement strong!
say
"NO"
to overpriced CDs.
Stand up for your rights as a consumer and join us in our boycott of the RIAA. Don't by any more CDs for the rest of the year. Use your money to support your local artistes.
SCREW THE R.I.A.A.!
Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1125, old post ID:9917
Artists might get 1 to 2 bucks per CD sold, guess where the rest goes?...
http://www.geocities.com/riaasucks/
Join us in saying "NO" to the music nazis
What is the RIAA and what does it stand for?
The Recording Industry Association Association of America is an oligopoly of the five biggest record companies in the world. These companies are Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, EMI Music, and BMG Music. If you've ever purchased a pre-recorded cassette tape or CD, chances are 99 to 1 it was released by one of these five companies under one of their hundreds of record labels.
The RIAA is similar to a killer octopus whose tentacles are always reaching out for prey. The prey would be us, the music fans, and even the recording artistes themselves. The RIAA is committed to preventing any independent label from gaining a foothold in the industry. This is how they can team up with music retailers to fix the artificially high price of CDs. It also allows them to maintain a chokehold on the songs that get on radio stations' playlists. They pretty much decide which CDs are heavily promoted in retail stores and which music videos go in heavy rotation on the video music TV channels. In other words, these bozos have taken it upon themselves to decide what type of music we listen to and buy.
How are artistes and consumers victimized by the RIAA?
The RIAA is similar to any other business in that its main objective is to make a profit, and there's nothing wrong with that. But, something went really wrong with the music retail business, especially after the vinyl format was abandoned and replaced by compact discs. CDs are more durable than vinyl and they cost significantly less to produce, so why then has the price of record albums almost doubled since the switch to CDs was made? The RIAA has always been unwilling to answer this question truthfully. They come up with some of the most ridiculous excuses to justify the high prices. They claim operations costs such as production, marketing and shipping add significantly to the cost of the end product.
We know this is bullshit because record companies do not pay much in out of pocket expenses at all. If you're an unknown artiste you usually get a pretty bad recording contract, one that earns you about 35 cents for each CD sold. A big-name act can use their name and former sales record as leverage to negotiate a better deal for about $1.00 to maybe $2.00 per CD sold. Retailers tag on their inventory/overhead costs which is maybe $2.00 to $3.00 per CD. A mass manufactured CD costs only about 30 to 40 cents. What then happens to the rest of the money you pay when you buy a CD?
Just about all of it goes into the record companies' pockets as profit!
A big chunk of it pays the obscene salaries of record company executives. These people are well-known in New York and LA for their bleached-teeth smiles and $100,000 cars even though they contribute zero to the creative process. And they don't care much about promoting the careers of the artistes because as soon as the CD sales drop off they dump the artiste and start searching for the next big act.
Nearly all the promotions costs are deducted from the artiste's royalty checks. These include the cost of touring, the cost of costumes and makeup, the cost of studio time, the cost of the studio engineers, the musicians' salaries, the cost of making music videos, the cost of background dancers, the cost of the stage crew, the cost of the sound techs, the cost of the clean-up crew... The artistes collect only what's left over after everybody else gets paid. That's how the music business works. Many new artistes don't fully understand this and that's how some of them end up near broke even after selling hundreds of thousands or millions of CDs.
Music buyers also get screwed in that most CDs cost between $17.00 and $20.00 although they contain only one or two good songs and a bunch of filler songs. Where is the value in that?
The RIAA's obscene copyright policy
No one rips off the artistes more than these greedy record companies. The RIAA has a strict policy on the ownership of copyright music. This means once they release an artiste's music on one of their labels, they automatically become the copyright owners of the recorded masters. Years from the date of the original release they can re-release the tracks or license them for use in advertisements or for other purposes, and although the composers receive chump change royalties the original musicians and vocalists never see another penny. In other words, again, nearly all the profit goes to the record company.
The advent of peer-to-peer file sharing
Technology is truly a wonderful thing, because it brought us a new way to get the music we want without taking out a second mortgage on the house. It caught the RIAA's attention because, for the first time in history, technology threatened to make the RIAA a redundant organization. Music fans can upload and download MP3 files without any interferance or control from the RIAA, and this really pisses off the record companies.
Napster was the biggest and most successful place to do this on the Internet, but naturally, they are getting a nasty legal fight from the RIAA. The really good thing about Napster is it proves the recording industry to be a real dinosaur. The RIAA has been so busy ripping us all off they paid no attention to the fact that technology was about to make them obsolete. It took, Napster, the brilliant brainchild of a college dropout to wake up these giant monsters. Now they're barking up Shawn Fanning's butt because they claim Napster has encouraged copyright violations that have cost them billions of dollars in losses. We seriously doubt this so-called copyright violation has hurt the music industry in any significant way. When was the last time you heard of a recording artiste out on the street begging for money to pay his rent? The very RIAA admitted they're selling more CDs than ever before so this is obviously not about money but about control. Unfortunately, the RIAA missed the bus. Peer-to-peer music filesharing had already spread all across the Internet to the point where even if Napster shuts down there are many other ways to do it.
Should we, the music fans, feel guilty about not paying for downloaded music? NOT AT ALL! The record companies have been screwing us in the butt without vaseline for years, and there's nothing at all wrong with us getting something back from them in exchange. They feel no guilt about taking $19.00 for a cheap plastic CD from teenagers who've been buying millions of copies of Eminem, N'Sync, Brittney, Christina, and the Backstreet Boys, so why should we feel guilty about taking something back from from them? Some of these kids who buy these overpriced CDs can hardly afford the money but they like the music and so what choice do they have but to pay.
Also think about this, you don't get to sample the songs on a music CD before you buy it. And, if after you buy it and take it home you find that most of the songs are garbage good luck to you trying to get your money back. Retailers have an RIAA-backed policy that they will exchange opened CDs only if they are physically defective, and they will only exchange the title you bought for another CD of the exact same title. The reason they claim is that once the package is opened they can't guarantee that you didn't make a copy of it so its a protection for them. What this really means is that once you hand over your money for a CD, if you open it and play it and find that you don't like the songs you're stuck with it anyway. Once the RIAA collects your money they ain't giving it back, and there's not one thing you can do about it.
Why they are fighting against Napster
The music industry is 99% hype and 1% art. The fight against Napster is not about money or copyright. It is really a fight for the survival of the RIAA. Imagine what would happen to all these overpaid executives if the electronic distribution of music cut out all of them and their middlemen retailers. What other industry could they turn to and earn the salaries they now make for doing nothing?
Napster created in only a couple years what the music industry never will accomplish for itself - an efficient and user-friendly client that allows people to get the songs they want without paying a ridiculous price for it. Many Napster users say they wouldn't mind paying a monthly fee as long as they can get the songs they want without all the filler stuff. This was an excellent opportunity for the music industry to jump into the 21st century and do something really good for themselves and their artistes. Instead, they're trying to wreck Napster.
The music industry will never be successful at getting millions of users to pay a subscription to use any on-line service they come up with. Why? Because, as always, they are more concerned about profit than they are about what music fans really want, and they would make any on-line subscription service so expensive that many people wouldn't give it a second thought. If these people really knew anything about marketing they'd realize that when you offer consumers what they really want they'll be more than willing to pay for it and the profits automatically follow.
Profits aside, Napster has also been good for the music industry in that it allows new and unsigned bands to get a lot of needed exposure. All it took was for the scumbag members of that fading group, Metallica to cry wolf and all of a sudden the RIAA brought out the big guns. If Metallica could only read some of the things many of their former fans have posted on the Internet about them they would be shocked.
By the way, please boycott Metallica.
The type of deal Shawn Fanning and his crew are trying to get the record companies to agree to is the only way on-line music subscription can work successfully. If all the record companies put their entire catalog into a single on-line database music fans would have access to all the songs, even the ones that the record companies stopped marketing years ago, and they could all make a lot of money from this. How do we know this? Because Napster has been around for a while, and even though 50+ million Napster users are downloading music off the Internet the sales of CDs are stronger than ever. This means that if they cooperated with Napster the record companies could be making the money from both ends. But, they are too stupid to see that. Instead, they are planning to start their individual subscription services, and the reason they will all fail is because individually, each record company would offer the songs that are in its current catalog and. many of the much older songs would not be included, and that's not the type of service music fans want.
Do they really expect anybody to pay monthly subscription fees to each of the five companies to download music. I don't think so. Obviously people will not pay all that if they can do peer-to-peer filesharing through underground servers and continue to get the songs for free. This has yet to be figured out by that
, Hilary Rosen, at the RIAA.Years ago, the motion picture industry tried to sue VCR manufacturers because they felt VCRs would rob them of all their profits. But look at how it all played out, most people use VCRs only to tape TV shows they're not at home to watch. Movies made during the last 20 years continue to break box office records because, VCR or no VCR, people are spending more than ever on going to movie theaters, paying for pay-per-view cable channels, and on renting videos. Likewise, we doubt any Napster user is sitting at his or her computer downloading songs and burning them on to CDs that will be mass copied and sold at the local flea market.
The future of the music industry
Our crystal ball doesn't show anything good for the RIAA. Unfortunately for them, if they kill off the concept Napster wants to create they're pretty much screwed. Peer-to-peer filesharing technology is here to stay, and as more people begin to use it it will only continue to improve and spread. Their attempt to shut down Napster is only the beginning, the technology is already out there and there's nothing to stop music fans from using it.
Keep downloading and sharing those MP3 files and let us all keep the on-line anti-RIAA movement strong!
say
"NO"
to overpriced CDs.
Stand up for your rights as a consumer and join us in our boycott of the RIAA. Don't by any more CDs for the rest of the year. Use your money to support your local artistes.
SCREW THE R.I.A.A.!
Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:1125, old post ID:9917