Big labels are f*cked, and DRM is dead - Peter Jenner | The Register
5 November 2006
The major four music labels today are "fucked", he says. Digital music pricing has been a scam where the consumer pays for manufacturing, distribution, and does all the work - and still has to pay more. Labels should outsource everything except finance and licensing. But he's also optimistic that for almost everyone else - indie labels, musicians, songwriters and budding entrepreneurs - as well as network providers - the future's going to be pretty bright. The Big Four know that the DRM era is nearly over - and within two or three years, he predicts, "most countries" in the world will have a blanket licensing regime where we exchange music freely, for a couple of quid a month.Really interesting and insightful. He talks about the Performance rights societies dealing with most of the money and the problems with the "black box" — all the money that comes in that they can't figure out which artist to give it to. This is a huge problem already; they just base it off of radio playlists but yet they take all this money from clubs and bars which play different music. In the digital world there could be very accurate tracking and a lot of money could start coming to indie artists. There is another huge issue about downloads: is it a sale (like a physical object) or a performance ? download or streaming ? allofmp3 are using russian law, so they say its a performance and thus the artists will get paid thru the crappy russian performance rights organization. (The rest of the world says its a retail sale and thus allofmp3 is theft.)
The PRO are all country specific, and the internet is global. Big problem. The old models and terms (performance, retail sale) are now irrelevant, and the industry and the copyright laws are behind the curve on this. http://www.musictank.co.uk/bts_%20exec_%20summary.pdf
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/03/peter_jenner/
