Music Rage

The music industry, fronted by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), is systematically wrecking both music and talent. The RIAA exists to lobby for the interests and maximise royalty payments paid to the five music industry mega-corporations: Universal Music and Video Distribution, Sony Corp. of America, Time-Warner Inc., EMI Music Distribution and Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG). Those mega-corporations use the RIAA Rottweiler to maintain their co-operative monopoly of the music business and to screw (and sue) musicians and consumers (their customers) alike.

In one of many of its antisocial attacks, the RIAA (which comprises lawyers), used the clout of money and political donations to kill Napster (in its original incarnation), the then-loved Internet MP3 music sharing system. For many years the music industry failed to replace Napster with any model of its own for distributing music electronically, preferring to stick to its monopolistic practices that have served it so well in the past. Even today the online services it provides are overpriced and its online music crippled by DRM (Digital Rights Management).

Before it was ruined by the RIAA, Napster actually inadvertently increased the record industry's profits. People swapped music on Napster and as a direct consequence they discovered bands and bought more CDs. Instead of embracing Napster as a fantastic innovation that benefited everybody, the RIAA knifed it. What rewards did their spite and greed grant them? Their profits plummeted by 26%! (Of course the RIAA-owned musicians' royalties fell concomitantly.)

Napster proved internet distribution business models can work but the music corporations were not interested. They are paranoid about ceding control to the artists and individuals who make and pay for music. Freedom and democracy does not dovetail with corporate policy and investors interests.

Apple showed the music industry the way forward. The RIAA failed to prevent Apple's enterprise from becoming astonishingly successful, and has ceded much control of the distribution of music to Apple corp. This is because Apple succeeded, unlike the music industry, in providing people with a music distribution model they prefer.

Interestingly, ITunes allows people to download the tracks they like. This innoculates the industry's poisonous strategy of releasing CDs with about two or three decent songs embedded in dodgy filler material.

Yet Apple's ITunes service, while liberal compared to RIAA-sanctioned schemes, does not provide music that is free, i.e. it is crippled by DRM. Most people do not care as long as their music plays on their IPod. However those music files are not portable to non-Apple music players. (The remedy is to go through the hassle of cracking the DRM with software tools, but why should you have to go to all that trouble, if you have paid for the music?)

Due to DRM, rip-off prices, filler-padded CD's and, increasingly significantly, a desire to boycott the RIAA, people resort to obtaining to uncrippled music (chiefly in ogg or MP3 formats) via internet peer-to-peer (P2P) apps. P2P systems. P2P are file sharing systems e.g. BitTorrent, eDonkey etc. P2P systems are used for many legit purposes, e.g. legit software and content distribution, not just for sharing a subset of media files that the RIAA claims are illegal. Guess what? The RIAA and MPAA lobby to have P2P activity declared illegal, period.

The RIAA is actively bullying peer-to-peer providers, and has sued them indiscriminately. And lost, but not without deliberately causing great inconvenience and disruption to innocent parties by their mischief.

More recently the RIAA has turned its petulant wrath to Internet Radio. If the courts accept the RIAA's demands for higher royalties, then these radio stations will operate at a loss and will die. This would pave the way for the mega-corporations represented by RIAA to monopolise Internet radio. These Internet radio stations and peer-to-peer music-sharing programs are ideal channels for new talent to develop a fan base. This is one reason why the RIAA is trying to destroy them.

It plays like a mafia story, Mr Big is systematically crushing the defenceless small guy. The music industry pigopolist giants, Sony, EMI, Universal et al are irresponsible in their pursuit of control, for they own and control the RIAA. The RIAA do their dirty work (endless dirty work). Did you know that the RIAA keeps for itself 2% of the money you pay for a record industry-distributed CD? And they use that cash to remove your rights, your convenience, your freedoms... and to sue you...

Most people are aware that the RIAA are spying on and suing men women and children (via the parents of those children if they are very young) for music file sharing. Much is said of this dispicable RIAA tactic elsewhere. I'll just add that the RIAA is deliberately attempting to use the law (at least in America, they can't get away with this crap in the UK, for example, at least not yet) to scare people from file sharing. It isn't working. Of course they are making a pretty penny for forcing people to settle out of court for thousands of dollars, to avoid having to play court costs and risking astronomic fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is extortion, plain and simple. Why isn't the government of the United States protecting its people from being terrorised and robbed by this RIAA mafia? (Cough***corruptioncampaignfees***cough).

Yet another reason to abhor the vile RIAA/music industry is that they are deliberately corrupting music CD's to prevent people from playing them on computers, DVD players etc. This crippling technology is called DRM (Digital Rights Management). The idea behind DRM is to stop people using computers to copy their music (or anything else for that matter). DRM annoys and inconveniences me, as I spend a lot of time at my PC and I listen to music on it. Obviously informed people will no longer buy DRM i.e. "protected" i.e. corrupted CD's. The music industry are giving people another incentive to use OGG or MP3 music files here.

As a side effect, some of the RIAA's crippled CD's have been known to kill Apple Macs. I'm not making this up! *. More recently, Sony music CDs installed a rootkit on Windows PC's (which are always insecure) thereby rendering them even more insecure, and sometimes breaking them completely! This horror is the horror of Digital Rights management - DRM.

The music industry maintains its monopoly by controlling the distribution and marketing of music. In this way it is increasingly difficult for independent musicians to be heard and sell their music. Simultaneously, musicians that do sell their souls to the RIAA are receiving less and less for each song sold. Only immediately successful bands make any money at all these days (the rest are ditched regardless of talent). Copyright laws were originaly drafted to protect artists AND benefit the public. Over the years copyright laws have been subverted by the content industry and venal politicians to benefit themselves, and the latest copyright laws are obviously stifling creativity. Look at the increasingly dire quality of industry output, and notice the decreasing portions of profits that end up in the pockets of the creative artists, and judge for yourself.

The recording industry discourages Music TV and radio stations from playing independent music. Big brother RIAA tells you what to listen to, and most people tend to buy what they hear on the TV and radio. Unfortunately this music is being dumbed down. Cheap, "cool" and generally talent-free music such as stuff by banal boy-girl bands or thuggish hip-hop is being forced down our necks, and the young generation is being brainwashed by corporate marketing into believing this manufactured pop tat is trendy. The music is so relentlessly shallow that kids are being conditioned to shy away from high quality music. The young, such as students, do not seem to care any more.

The RIAA actually finds this ugly mess to its suiting. Music and musicians - and virtually everyone with functioning ears - lose out because of the recording industry's insane political motives. We are comparitively rarely seeing fresh talent: cynicism and stagnation have set in. Ironically the habitual promotion of mediocrity by politically correct types is playing straight into the music corporations' hands. Talent is risky and costs money in the short term, whereas mediocrity is always cheap and therefore considered safe in the short term. Consequently, we are being taught to embrace drek as hip content. Where is the rebellion now that we need it?

And so it is that the decline in civilisation and culture is reflected in the corrosion of musical creativity on behalf of music producers. This leads to the lack of demand for quality by the consumer. In fact the modern consumer is barely able to recognise or understand quality music as attention spans shorten. Once it has destroyed the market for quality music and song writing, the music industry can sell cheap trash on a scale never seen before. The profits roll in.

There is always a place for low-IQ music. Club music is timed to be in sync and resonance with your brainwave frequencies. When you listen to the pounding beat it literally gives you a high. It isn't the tunes or melodies that do this so much as the thud - thud - thud of the beat. The repetitive beat acts like a drug, releasing pleasure-inducing neurochemicals within the brain. I have no beef about this, I listen to this stuff myself when I'm in the mood. What we need is diversity, creative music for all tastes and moods. The last thing the world needs is further erosion of higher forms of music for the sake of optimising record industry profits.

I chiefly listen to pop, rock and classical, with some jazz and blues etc: they suit different moods. I was late coming to classical. It took me a while to get into it but I was driven by the instinct that perseverance would bring me rich rewards in the end. I was not mistaken.

A musician friend of mine has eschewed the music industry: the horrible, music-industry-owned mp3.com ripped her off. I mentioned how, when recently the radio played the second movement of Beethoven's sixth, a 20 yr old dismissed it as just "noise". This came as no surprise. Unfortunately there are too few people with an ear capable of appreciating beauty in music. My musician friend responded that this was why she teaches young kids, accepting under-tens as first starters. She points out they have immense memory powers but are all too often 'deflected into mediocrity by marketing.' She also points out that they are driven into 'team events rather than developing "The Self"'.

Music Industry marketing is a dangerous enemy of culture because it is about driving the masses to the lowest common denominator. Keeping the masses obtuse is profitable and that is the goal of the RIAA. And the music industry is doing ugly things to achieve it. If you think this does not affect you think again. Amongst other wrong-doings the RIAA is depriving us of great bands and great music by strangling talent at birth. Who knows what great bands could have existed without the pigopolist music industry cartel. We are thirsty, we are now stranded in a musical desert and the RIAA is withholding the water.

There is some resistance out there: Magnatune is an open record label. They are benevolent, compared to RIAA evil. Try them, support them. there may be a glimmer of hope!

Remember, the RIAA is there to do the dirty work of the music industry mega-corporations including Sony, Universal and EMI. At some point, idealism in music transformed from anarchy into into a nasty totalitarian regime. Remember that next time you tune into MTV or buy a non-independent music CD.

I for one am boycotting the music industry and have happily done so for a few years. The recording industry officially blames the loss of my business, and the loss of revenue of others like me, on piracy rather than on their own folly of course. Time to support independent, non-RIAA labels. See links below for ideas. Or if you must buy RIAA music, say to replace music you have already paid for in the past, there's always allofmp3.com - a russian DRM-free download site that's convenient to use, with support for ogg format music. They have a sensible pricing policy (at time of writing) and boast a superb service.



Links

music links
Boycott the RIAA	Stick it up the unpleasant, hostile music pigopoly
RIAA Radar	Easily and instantly distinguish whether an album was released by a member of the RIAA
RIAA savages students	The music industry sues young people that did nothing illegal. How charming! If you don't like these unpleasant tactics to scare you off downloading music, then punish the record industry (represented by the RIAA) by boycotting them and buying only independent music. More RIAA: The RIAA boycott is on.
RIAA screws up	More from Slashdot, the music industry sues University in error. University responds pathetically to RIAA's strange snooping crimes.
Apple users' disgust	at RIAA's Pepsi child ad
EFF: Let the Music Play	Electronic Frontier Foundation "Let the Music Play" Campaign.
Music Industry Lobby Proposed Bill	Wacko Jacko talks sense! It is a nightmare.
Independent Artists	A network of professional songwriters, musicians, and indie artists.
Recording Artists Coalition	Support artists' rights
Magnatune	I love the business model behind this new "open music record label", it's an excellent way to boycott the RIAA! Brief summary of the site: Try before you buy, Hundreds of MP3'd albums; genre-based radio stations; artists get a full 50% of the purchase price and keep the rights to their music. Founded by musicians, for musicians. No major label connections. Not evil.
Audio Lunchbox	Unrestricted (DRM-free) independent music to download in MP3 and Ogg Vorbis formats.
eMusic	To quote an American, "If you're into indie stuff, then emusic looks like quite a bargain. Something around $15 a month for unlimited MP3 downloads." Agreed at time of writing (Sept 2003) [Update (Oct 2003): unfortunately due to a corporate takeover, the number of downloads is now restricted. Check the site for details.
Foobar 2000 music player	If you use MS Windows try Foobar 2000 music player, not Microsoft Media Player, as Foobar contains no spyware as far as I can tell, and doesn't give anyone permission to delete files from your machine. (Unlike Microsoft Media Player). Alternatively, there's Winamp though I'm not sure where they stand on the spyware issue at any one time.
Campaign for Audiovisual Free Expression	"exists to empower the creative community in the digital age by protecting the public's access to and use of audiovisual technologies."
Fat Chuck's Music	Chuck says, "Well, as an avid Slashdot reader, I got miffed when two news articles came out within about a week of each other. First, the press release that Charley Pride's label was going to "copy-protect" his newest album, "A Tribute to Jim Reeves," and second, when Universal Music announced that they were going to start releasing all of their CDs with copy-protection built into them. I figured if this was the future of music, I at least wanted the public to know which CDs were being corrupted since the record labels weren't going to tell us. That way we can vote with our money."
Don't Buy CDs	All consumers are urged to refrain from purchasing CDs to punish the recording industry. The site explains why.
Recording Industry vs The People	"A blog devoted to the RIAA's lawsuits of intimidation brought against ordinary working people."
Piratpartiet!	Swedish political party in favour of file sharing. Much of the site is in Swedish, with some English interspersed.
Ogg Vorbis	Ogg Vorbis is an open, patent-free, professional audio encoding and streaming technology (An open source equivalent of MP3). Ogg is as good as or superior to MP3 in quality especially at low bit rates. Ogg is new so more software will appear over time.
Adware	"Adware, Spyware and other unwanted "malware" - and how to remove them". Adware is a scumware detection and removal app. Free and used by me. Recommended. Spam, Spyware etc. the Internet is getting hostile with crooks.
WFMU	WFMU is an independent freeform radio station broadcasting at 91.1 fm in the New York City area, at 90.1 fm in the Hudson Valley, and live on the web
Apple's Music Store Concern	Apple insists that if you lose your music, you must repurchase it. (DRM nightmare).
Sound On Sound	British/European music techie mag
Ardour	A "professional" multitrack, multichannel audio recorder and DAW for Linux, using ALSA-supported audio interfaces. Supports up to 32 bit samples, 24+ channels at up to 96kHz, full MMC control, non-destructive, non-linear editor, LADSPA plugins. Open source - no copy protection or licence tracking.
Free Open Source Software	Independent music and independent software go together. This is my page on (free, as in liberty and often as in beer) open source software, with more links.

Add your comment to this page

From:	Jenni	Subject:	protected cd's	2002-06-15 10:17:57
From:	devnull	Subject:	Killing MACS	2002-10-01 11:05:30
From:	Sid Ruane	Subject:	Right on!	2002-12-05 15:37:35
From:	Concerned Citizen	Subject:	I'm Very Angry	2003-05-01 02:13:32
From:	lexicana a.c.k.	Subject:	fight the attack of taking our music	2004-04-15 23:33:39
From:	josh	Subject:	Amen Brother!!!!!!	2005-11-06 07:14:46
From:	Andy Melton	Subject:	AMEN!	2006-03-21 05:53:58

View the comments

help: how to add your comment

Page hits: 10471

Eadon reviews Khazad Doom's Encore