As a person who blogs quite often it was quite an honor when my friends at eZee
asked me to write the first post that was to appear on their site..
they wanted something long winded and which had some real meat on it…
naturally I started to think of Paul
McGuinness, few people are as long winded and have as much meat on
themselves as him.. especially since his last long winded speech at
cannes.
Paul
McGuinness (PG), as everyone in the music industry knows is the manager
of the awesome band know as U2, he is also very close to all the big
boys who own the big labels. Rumor has it he regularly buries his nose
in their butts and inhales deeply.. because its standard practice in
his line of work and that’s just the kind of guy he is.
Without any further adieu on to his speech…:
(Note: All supporting links open in a new window, you won’t leave the page you are reading by clicking on the link)
Paul McGuinness (PG)
: “Good afternoon and thank you for giving me this opportunity. I don’t
make many speeches and this is an important and imposing occasion for
me. What I’m trying do here today is identify a course of action that
will benefit all: artists, labels, writers and publishers.
eZee: And pretty much screw everyone else..
PG goes on to talk about U2s beginnings, U2’s successes, other
artists failures and how well live gigging is doing… not relevant to
our discussion so its snipped out.
(for an unedited original version of his speech check out the related
links at the bottom of this page or browse over to U2’s official
website at www.U2.com (cool domain name too!) )
–Start Snip
PG: At the beginning U2’s…..
So what has gone wrong with the recorded music business?
–End snip
More people are listening to music than ever before through many
more media than ever before. Part of the problem is that the record
companies, through lack of foresight and poor planning, allowed an
entire collection of digital industries to arise that enabled the
consumer to steal with impunity the very recorded music that had
previously been paid for. I think that’s been a cultural problem for
the record industry — it has generally been inclined to rely for staff
on poorly paid enthusiasts rather than developing the kind of
enterprise culture of Silicon Valley where nearly every employee is a
shareholder.
eZee:
While we totally agree with the above statement that the recording
companies lacked foresight, planning and relied on half witted
executives when they should have made some major changes… you could be
forgiven for thinking that the rest of his speech would be as good,
also note the word “steal” in the above paragraph.
There are other reasons for the record business’s slow response to
digital. The SDMI (Secure Digital Music Initiative) of the ’90s
pan-industry, was a grand but ill-fated plan to try and agree rules
between the content and technology industries. It went nowhere. SDMI,
and similar attempts at cooperation by record companies, have partly
been thwarted by competition rules. The US government has sometimes
been overzealous in protecting the public from cartel-like behavior.
Yes…as everyone knows cartels are just misunderstood folk..
I love the record business, and though I may be critical of the ways
in which the digital space has been faced by the industry I am also
genuinely sympathetic and moved by the human fall-out, as the companies
react to falling revenues by cutting staff and tightening belts. Many
old friends and
colleagues have been affected by this. They have
families and it is terrible that a direct effect of piracy and thievery
has been the destruction of so many careers.
Couldn’t agree with you more PG… for example the lives of the struggling single parents , collage students , unemployed , disabled , elderly, children, innocent people (and dead?) that the lawsuits brought by the RIAA have ruined by their (unlawful?) extortion games.
Maybe PG’s friends and colleagues can get a _real_ job rather than
sitting back like pimps and profiting while getting their artists
screwed.
Nonetheless there is one effective thing the majors could do
together. I quote from Josh Tyrangiel in Time Magazine: – “The smartest
thing would be for the majors to collaborate on the creation of the
ultimate digital-distribution hub, a place where every band can sell
its wares at the price point of its choosing”. Apple’s iTunes, despite
its current dominance, is vulnerable. Consumers dislike its
incompatibility with other music services, and the labels are rebelling
against its insistence on controlling prices. Universal the largest
label in the world has declined to sign a long term deal with iTunes.
“There’s a real urgency for the labels to get together and figure this
out,” says Rick Rubin of Columbia Records.
There IS a real urgency, instead of calling the consumer a criminal
(the very same consumer that puts food on your tables and your business
depends upon) and suing him for as much as possible,
lower piracy by showing him where he can get everything that he would
otherwise unlawfully download… in one place and at a fair price. While
we are still in the area of wishful thinking, lets ask for iTunes ease
of use… but no DRM so we can legally play the music we legally
purchased on our computer, mp3 player and in the car while driving to
work… or is that (fair use) just too much to ask for?
Furthermore, labels rebelling against iTunes… isn’t that a dose of
their own medicine? Not only do they want to share shelf space on the
worlds must successful legal downloadable music site, they want to
dictate prices? Kind of like these prices maybe: (link)? Ohh! don’t you love the irony?
Then PG starts talking about technology to track downloads called
SIMRAN, which I couldn’t find much info about and maybe that’s a good
thing as mr.PG is one of their investors…never to miss an opportunity
he starts ranting about the opportunity missed by music companies to
cash on on people who prefer lossless music…
Sadly, the recent innovative Radiohead release of a download priced
on the “honesty box” principle seems to have backfired to some extent.
It seems that the majority of downloads were through illegal P2P
download services like BitTorrent and LimeWire, even though the album
was available for nothing through the official band site.
Notwithstanding the promotional noise, even Radiohead’s honesty box
principle showed that if not constrained, the customer will steal music.
Umm, correct me if I am wrong but… if its already offered for free
download.. and you just get it from a different source, how is that
stealing?
And I am sure it didn’t occur to Mr. Tech savvy, one track mind (PG)
that some people just prefer to download off torrent sites and limewire
because if enough people are sharing the same file and based on a few
other mostly common parameters… you can get MUCH better download speeds
(as the BT protocol was actually designed for this…(link1 , link2) Duh) plus since the artist is doing you a favor why burn his bandwidth and stress his download server?
What about the phenomenal success Nine Inch Nails have had while using somewhat the same principal? A cool 1.6 million dollars in their first week!
NiN were only able to do that… after they severed all ties to and from any PG’s friends, the labels…, of course.
There is some excitement about advertising-funded deals. But the
record companies must gain our trust to share fairly the revenues they
will gain from advertising. Historically they have not been good at
transparency. Let’s never forget the great CD scam of the ’80s when the
majors tried to halve the royalties of records released on CD claiming
that they needed this extra margin to develop the new technology even
as they were entering the great boom years that the CD delivered. It’s
ironic that, at a time when the majors are asking the artists to trust
them to share advertising revenue they are also pushing the dreadful
“360 model.”
Goodness me… big labels (your pals PG) screwing over the artists and the public… we are shocked, shocked I say.
But that’s an issue for the future, when we’re out of the crisis.
Today, there’s a bigger issue and it’s about the whole relationship
between the music and the technology business. Network operators, in
particular, have for too long had a free ride on music — on our
clients’ content. It’s time for a new approach — time for ISPs to start
taking responsibility for the content they’ve profited from for years.
And it’s time for some visionary new thinking about how the music and
technology sectors can work as partners instead of adversaries, leading
to a revival of recorded music instead of its destruction.
Yep, looks like the music industry is really headed for destruction… except for those annoying figures that show its still making quite a few billion each year.
Its fine that you use the same network operators to sell and transfer
your online music right now… maybe Mr. Holier than thou should realize
that that free ride happens to be on a two way street.
It’s interesting to look at the character of the individuals who
built the industries that resulted from the arrival of the
microprocessor. Most of them came out of the so-called counterculture
on the west coast of America. Their values were hippy values. They
thought the old computer industry as represented by IBM was
neanderthal. They laughed at Bell Telephone and AT&T. They thought
the TV networks were archaic. Most of them are music lovers. There are
plenty of private equity fund managers who are “Deadheads.”
They were brilliantly innovative in finance and technology and
though they would pay lip service to “Content is King” what many of
them instinctively realized was that in the digital age there were no
mechanisms to police the traffic over the internet in that content, and
that legislation would take any years to catch up with what was now
possible online.And embedded deep down in the brilliance of those
entrepreneurial, hippy values seems to be a disregard for the true
value of music.
And the true value of music is…? to line corporate pockets or to
reach out to as many admiring and appreciative ears with regards to the
artists?
Where is it written that music has gone from a way of expressing
yourself in a melodic manner to the goal of making more than you can
count?
I’ve met a lot of today’s heroes of Silicon Valley. Most of them don’t really think of themselves as makers of burglary kits.
Yes, you read that correctly, he did say ”burglary kits”. Heh!
They say: “you can use this stuff to email your friends and store
and share your photos”. But we all know that there’s more to it than
that, don’t we? Kids don’t pay $25 a month for broadband just to share
their photos, do their homework and email their pals.
No there’s also google, youtube, facebook, myspace and instant messaging, reading blogs like this(?), downloading TV shows… and I hear porn
is quite popular too.. which kind of makes sense, IMHO few people spank
the monkey/choke the dolphin while listening to Bach compared to
watching Jenna “baby sit” 
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