record labels

One of the more amazing things over the past decade or so is just how clueless legacy content companies are when it comes to the realities of DRM.

For years, content creators have misunderstood the issue of online infringement entirely -- assuming that the effort had to be focused on somehow "protecting" works and ratcheting up infringement, rather than giving users more of what they wanted.

There are some things you would think would be obvious to record label execs, but often just don't seem to make it through their brains.

For example, these days, if someone wants to buy your music, they should be able to. Making it impossible to buy music that is available elsewhere is a pretty sure way to drive people to unauthorized versions.

Over at the Tunecore blog, former Rykodisc President George Howard has a post up explaining how payola works today in the world of major labels and radio stations.

While I know that a large percentage of folks reading this here are rushing to the comments to declare "ha! who listens to radio any more!" the fact is that a ton of people do, and for the major labels, it's still a key (if not the key) way to "break" an act.

As was unfortunately expected, despite no evidence that this made any economic sense at all, the member states of the EU have agreed to retroactively extend copyright another 20 years, at which point you can expect it to be extended again (thanks to jtdeb

After several years the court case between EMI and MP3tunes has come to an end, and the verdict can be seen as a clear victory for the music storage service.

We've been questioning the business model viability of Pandora for a while now.

The company had told various press outlets that it was profitable, but when it filed to go public that did not appear to be accurate.

The issue isn't so much Pandora, but the ridiculous licensing fees it has to pay.

Ethan Kaplan strikes again. The always-thoughtful (and thought-provoking) former recording industry tech exec has put up a blog post that not only explains why Turntable.fm is so popular, but also reframes why the record labels have failed to embrace almost every cool new internet service.

You should read the whole thing, but the short version is that users care about the experience, the big labels care about the legal rights.

And it's really the experience that makes things valuable.

We recently wrote about George Clinton speaking out about Bridgeport Music, the copyright troll that Clinton alleges forged paperwork to get the rights to Clinton's works, and then went on a rampage suing hundreds of (mainly hip hop) artists for sampling Clinton's work (something Clinton is in favor of allowing).

I keep having the same conversation over and over again with people in the recording industry. A few days ago, I met with the head of a record label that is doing all sorts of cool and innovative experiments (both on the business model and with technology) and he still kept saying "but we gotta stop people from stealing." The problem, as always, is that they seem so focused on infringement that they miss the bigger picture: What does it actually mean for revenue?

These are two separate questions, and the labels seem to prioritize the wrong one.

The entertainment industries have tried long and hard to take The Pirate Bay offline in Sweden.

Aside from the main criminal trial, they also obtained a wide variety of interim injunctions through the courts.