Insects (Beetles) Squeezing The Parasites (Music Labels!)
Call us ‘normals’ or saints if you want to, but we just like… no love it, when either the music labels are in a pickle or the music industry (not to be confused with the artists who make music) is in trouble, in fact if somebody were to tell us that the RIAA or any of the major labels just got bombed and its a blazing fire there right now – expect us to show up with sticks and marshmallows, as well as a church group to show everyone what happens to ‘really really bad people’.
Here’s a really good piece from Ars, we like it for a variety of reasons, the first being it shows what little super artists like Paul McCartney (and we aren’t even fans!) know about current technology (unless he was quoted out of context) and how they are trying to squeeze the labels, its fun with the shoe is on the other foot… and the first shoe is firmly up EMI’s ass!
Beatles piracy fixation gets stranger with huge FLAC release
The Beatles have demanded that they be compensated for any online file-sharing if they offer their music for sale over the Internet—even as they release a USB drive packed with 24-bit FLAC versions of their complete discography. Cognitive dissonance, or a good way to make more cash?
EMI recently scored an epic victory against the US website that tried to sell Beatles tracks online for a quarter, but the whole incident raised a familiar question: why, exactly, isn’t The Beatles music legally available online?The answer isn’t hard to find—as everyone knows, The Beatles’ own music company, Apple Corps, hasn’t been able to reach a deal on offering the songs online. It’s not as though EMI hasn’t tried to convince Apple Corps to allow online distribution either; it has, repeatedly, and the surviving Beatles are open to the idea. So why hasn’t it happened?
It’s due to concerns over piracy—and The Beatles’ insistence that they receive compensation for songs that leak onto P2P networks. Given that the major vendors like iTunes and Amazon now offer non-encrypted MP3 and AAC files, it’s a sure bet that at least some downloaders would toss their copies out onto the ‘Net. The thought of compensating The Beatles for all the times that such tracks are downloaded no doubt makes EMI feel a bit queasy in the stomach.
In fact, we know this is the case because former Beatle Paul McCartney confirmed it earlier this year in a UK interview. (To know what he’s talking about, it helps to know that EMI was acquired by private equity firm Terra Firma a few years back, and the group installed Guy Hands as EMI’s chief executive.)
“I met Guy Hands on a plane once,” said McCartney. “His crew bought EMI. I refer to them as Terracotta but I believe it’s Terra Firma. I said: ‘What is the problem? I want to do it, we all want to do it.’ And he explained that in the deal that we want, they feel exposed. If [digitised Beatles music] gets out, if one employee decides to take it home and wap it on to the internet, we would have the right to say, ‘Now you recompense us for that.’ And they’re scared of that.”
The Beatles, in other words, are demanding a guarantee against Internet leaks, or recompense if those leaks happen, as the price of doing the deal. Who knows if this is the whole story, but it’s a revealing anecdote, coming as it does right from McCartney’s lips.
What makes the antipiracy stipulation so odd is the fact that The Beatles have released their music on CD for years, including newly remastered versions that just appeared in stores. These are better-quality files than anything offered at the mainstream download shops, and P2P users “wapped it on” to the Internet immediately after the albums were released.
The whole situation sounds ridiculous, given this reality. It would be like a movie company releasing a film on an unencrypted Blu-ray disc, then balking at putting a compressed version “on the Internet” because it might be pirated. But it’s already on the Internet.
The story gets weirder, though. The Beatles have..
Read the rest of the article as well as cool commentary on Ars
Related posts:
- One Shot Answer For The Music Industry? NOOOPE!
- Music Industry Going Back To Basics – Trying To Bribe Their Way Through (UPDATED 2)
- Spain To Get Sued By Indie Labels!
- Music Industry: Too Greedy For Own Good (Whats new?)
- Pirates Don’t Screw The Artists, Labels Screw The Artists
- The Real Music Pirates…Rogues
- Music Labels Losing Money. Artists Making More Than Ever!
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