It's a shit business, say Queensryche

Oh, you think you have it tough, in your job with no security and such a weak pension scheme you're still going to have to turn up to punch the clock when you're actually dead? Try being a rock star, mate. Listen to poor old Todd La Torre out of Queensryche complaining about his treadmill:

The glory days where you could take an entire year off and write and record, and you could earn a good, substantial living off of publishing, those days are gone. And so, you can still earn decent money… not like that. You're not selling millions of albums. Nobody's going gold unless you're a pop star. And so we have to try to find the writing and recording in between when we're touring. And, unfortunately, it becomes this cycle of… I think we'll probably do a record every two years, because by the time you try to promote and tour on it, there just isn't that ample time to take a year off and write and record. So it's kind of a two-year cycle, I think, for us, and for a lot of bands.

It's lovely that he assumes that the inability to Queensryche to make enough money to only tour every so often is because of shifts in the music industry, and not because Queensryche might no longer be quite the premium product. He's a bit like a shopkeeper trying to flog week-old milk blaming the state of the dairy industry in the UK for the need to mark down the price.

Protecting the cash cows

Lest we forget that most large-scale music enterprises are fundamentally no different from other large businesses, The Guardian explores the world of gig insurance:

The amounts of money at risk can be phenomenal. “For a stadium show, it could be anything up to two million quid,” says Enthoven. But it is not just the income from ticket sales at risk. “For an act like One Direction, they possibly make more money from merchandise than they do for the tickets,” suggests Twomey. So that has to be factored into their policies, which are often taken out at the earliest stages in planning a tour and will only run for as long as the tour lasts. “They are not annual policies, like car insurance, where you rack up year after year of no claims,” says Howell. “It is very specific to the life and health of the individual or the band members that you are insuring.”

A policy is generally worked out as a percentage of what the act will make at the end – typically 1.5%-2%, a figure that has not really changed in decades. “If more acts cancelled shows time after time, the premium rates would go up,” says Phil Middleton, general manager at ATC Management whose artists include Radiohead, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and Catfish and the Bottlemen.

This suggests, then, that the number of gigs which get pulled is roughly the same as it ever was, even if the value of those cancellations has skyrocketed.

It does make you wonder, though, how the music industry hasn't managed to improve its cancellation rate over the years - it's almost as if they know what breaks musicians, but are prepared to take the risk.

And, of course, if there's ability to insure against your musician breaking, you're going to take a few more risks with them.

You might wonder whose interest the insurance is in.

[Thanks to @zaichishka]

Charli XCX: Apparently PopCrush is easily surprised

A rustling in the bushes, and Popcrush is at our window, panting wildly:

Charli XCX Shares Surprising Remarks on Music Industry

Surprising remarks? She's not suggesting that the remaining major labels merge, stop making music and start raising chooks and herbs instead, is she?

What did she say that was so surprising, Popcrush?

Her next album is due out later this year, and armed with her new LP, Charli says she wants to “f— up the music industry, not make it a prettier place.”

Oh. That's not actually especially surprising, is it? That seems to be exactly the sort of thing that Charli XCX has been saying since she first started releasing music. It's a bit like hearing Ed Miliband say he intends to win the next election and finding that a surprise.

Still, surprised Popcrush is, and it needs to reassure its apparently hugely conservative readership:

But don’t let her tough words fool you — her sound is still pure pop.

Phew. That's alright then. I was worried her attempt to work around the structure of the multinational music industry would only be possible by making free jazz.

Shirley Manson sees some hope in smouldering remains of the music industry

There's a certain degree of truth in Shirley Manson's biopsy on the music industry:

Speaking to Metro following the release of Garbage’s new album ‘Not Your Kind Of People‘ last month, Manson said: “It’s a shell of what it once was and the industry hasn’t got it’s head around the fact a lot of young people don’t listen to the radio or buy records – the industry has been slow to adapt and become a dinosaur.”

Ah, but there is a silver lining:

“When corporations become dinosaurs they get desperate and greedy and become involved in ugly practices,” she continues. “The good thing about the collapse is it’s got rid of characters who have no interest in music. The workers left at the companies are passionate and care about bands.”

Hang about... if the few remaining staff are passionate about music, but the companies are slow-moving dinosaurs, does that mean caring about bands is an outdated attitude as well? Or would it be better to have people who view music as "product" but can at least put together an effective twitter campaign?

There's nothing worse than an angry Seal

I don't know what it is that caused Seal to suddenly decide to kick the corpse of Amy Winehouse about, but, boy, is he angry:

"I used to get quite angry at Amy Winehouse because I love our industry, I think it has a lot of integrity and don't think it's a birthright to be part of it," he told the Daily Star.

"I have very little tolerance for people who don't respect it. If you're in the fortunate position of being able not only to operate in our industry but to be successful commercially, it's a privilege."

What? She didn't "respect" the music industry? Obviously, her recent death makes Seal's comments tasteless, but even if she was still alive, they'd be offensive. It's a privilege to be part of a cash-generating bunch of quasi-Cartelled multinational companies; to be made to sing and dance and sent out on overseas tours when you're clearly too ill to perform?

Surely the industry is lucky to have talented people willing to make its Faustian deals; and the respect should be flowing in the opposite direction?

In case you think Seal has inside knowledge the rest of us don't:

"When I heard she had died I was really sad because I wished I could have bumped into her somewhere. I was so excited by... her vocal performance. It was a breath of fresh air, that's why I would have made an attempt to give her my view.

"I don't know if anyone was around Amy who she respected enough to give her a mouthful and say, 'It doesn't last forever'. It was a crying shame."

He doesn't appear to have even met her. And yet he's convinced that hectoring her about how she was disrespecting the BPI by being quite seriously ill would have - what? made her pull herself together?

Perhaps rather than worrying about disrespect to "the industry", Seal should think a little bit about not disrespecting the dead.

About Bera, with a sore head

I'm not entirely sure that, when asked why you make music, the reply "I was born into the business" is one you want to hear from a sixteen year-old. Really? It's not that you're driven, or love music, you've just gone into the family business?

It seems a plausible explanation for Bera, though, who at the age of 16 talks about making music like his mummy was a press pack and his papa was a Rolling Stone. Well, not a Rolling Stone, more, perhaps a Tigerbeat:

“I’ve been in this business since my childhood, and I’ve been trying to get as much information as I could from every relationship. Even though some of my projects didn’t work out, they still gave me a lot of experience,” says Bera. “As you know, ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,’ right?”

As you know.

He's sixteen, and already dead-eyed-talking about "trying to get as much information" from "relationships".

“I have a really cool relationship with [label Georgian Dream], we’re friends before anything. I respect them a lot and they respect me for who I am. They know what I can do and what I can’t and I know it too. I’m not trying to do Michael Jackson, Usher or Chris Brown… My first role on stage is to be natural and sincere,” says Bera.

No, he really is a person. This might sound like the sort of thing you'd expect a computer-generated J-Pop star to have had programmed into their 'interview response' file, but Bera is flesh and blood.

He's asked about longevity:

“It all depends on the consumers, on my fans. I’m thankful for what I have today, for what I get from them and I’ll be grateful forever,” says Bera. “Even if everything ends tomorrow, I will know that we made it, because people already gave me so much love and emotions.”

Yes, he really does describe the people who like his music as "the consumers".

Did I mention he was sixteen? Normally with teen stars, you worry that the music industry bullshit will swallow them whole and spit them out. With Bera, it's the reverse: he appears to have swallowed the bullshit and is now doing the spitting out.

Judge gently points out to music industry it isn't worth all the music in the world, ever

Judge Kimba Wood, who is hearing the claims for damages against LimeWire for unlicensed filesharing through its network, has told the music industry it needs to be realistic. The Register explains:

In an opinion published ahead of the damages hearings, Judge Kimba Wood revealed that the record companies, seeking statutory damages against the music-sharing service, are seeking damages predicated on the “number of direct infringers per work” – leading to a damages claim of as much as $75 trillion dollars (according to Wikipedia, total global GDP is around $69 trillion”).

“The absurdity of this result is one of the factors that has motivated other courts to reject Plaintiffs’ damages theory”, the judge wrote.

If only everyone took the time to work through the figures and spot that record companies seriosuly oversetimate their losses. Might stop bad laws being made to plug these trillion-pound crimes.

Bookmarks - Internet stuff: The Indelicates

Simon Indelicate talks about leaving the corporate record industry to form Corporate Records in ORG Zine:

It’s probably worth noting that, discounting the uncompromising positions of paid lobbyists from the BPI, these are not evil or stupid people. It is just that the industry they built and did great things with no longer has an economic foundation. It used to be that the recording, manufacture, distribution and promotion of recorded music were enormous costs that prohibited entry into the market by anyone without serious financial clout.

The technology of the last two decades have now almost eradicated these costs. The ability to effectively record or synthesise music requires only a computer and an internet connection. Manufacture and distribution of physical media is unnecessary when the encoding and transfer of digital music is free. Effective promotion costs only time and the right twitter contacts. Costs have collapsed. Consequently the supply of recorded music has exploded.

[hat-tip @dillpickle]

Ghostwatch

Amanda Ghost, Blunt-collaborator-turned-head-of-Epic-turned-xx-collaborator, got a broadly sympathetic profiling and interview in yesterday's Guardian Film & Music:

Sony remains confident enough in her business acumen and knack for spotting talent to enter a joint venture with her new label, Outsiders, allowing Ghost to take Oh Land, a new-school Madonna by way of Björk and Lady Gaga, with her. The Dane was Ghost's first signing at Epic, but her single, Wolf and I, will become Outsiders's first release next month, funded by Sony. Ghost continues to work with Sony-signed artists including Beyoncé, Shakira and John Legend – her co-write with the latter, Getting Nowhere, is the current single for another Sony artist, Magnetic Man, and she says it was one of only three songs she wrote during her time at Epic.

A perhaps more probing piece might have asked how far the Outsiders label is a sign of faith by Sony, and how far it's part of the settlement of her contract; certainly, it's hard to see how Oh Land would fit with the Sony roster.

And that Sony are happy to work with her artistically is surely a validation of the argument that she was a creative who wandered into the wrong part of the business, rather than a rejection of that?

Mind you, when she says things like this, you can see why someone would give her an office with a sofa and a drinks cabinet in it:

[Being an executive] was magical, and fun, and depressing, and unhappy – a multitude of emotions. But ultimately it has helped me as a songwriter and a producer and a record-label boss, because I can see what happens to the product once it's completed – how it's treated, how it's marketed, how it's sold. And it makes me believe even more in the power of content, and how important it is to get that content as air-tightly brilliant as possible before you throw it to the wolves."

Product and content, product and content; and not fans or even customers but "wolves". She can approach music and artists and magic with just as much dead-eyed contempt as anyone who worked their way up from the Capitol accounts department - despite railing against record companies thinking they can treat their business like it was selling toasters.

Her final words are fascinating, though:

"It's very important we realise why the music business is failing," she says, "and I do not believe it's because of the internet. We need to focus on the quality of the music and allow artists time to develop. All creativity should be made, I believe, outside of corporations, and be nurtured with the incredible tools we have. With publicity and television and viral and online and social media, there is no reason why you can't get that music out there – and if it's good, people will respond."

Did she believe that before Sony gave her Epic? Because if she did, why did she ever take the job in the first place? And if she really believes that creativity should be made outside corporations, why is her vanity label a Sony imprint?

Her self-chosen surname is a good one: a creature who floats between two worlds, without a firm commitment to either.

Music industry does something useful

One of the problems for anyone looking to build a service which uses music is the horrible confusion over who owns what rights for which market. It sometimes means certain tracks can't be used at all; other times, the difficulties in do cross-border deals mean great ideas can never roll out across the world.

So it's a useful start that the music industry is finally doing something to help. Reuters reports:

Now, consultancy Deloitte is working to develop a global repertoire database (GRD) for the publishing industry following input from Universal Music Publishing and EMI Publishing, some of the major royalty collection societies and retailers such as Amazon and iTunes.

Apparently, all it's going to do is tell you who owns what copyrights - which is a start, certainly, and from such a bumbling, badly-run industry any step in the right direction should be applauded.

But, of course, rather than thinking in terms of this being something useful, the RIAA-companies are trying to see how they can use it as a club against those frightful pirates:

"As an industry there have been many false dawns over the years but at last we seem to have woken up to the fact that we have to change," Neil Gaffney, Executive Vice President at EMI Music Publishing UK told Reuters.

"This GRD is a game changer because for the first time we will have an assured, common, trusted view of what we represent, own and manage.

"One of the complexities for a new services is people say they didn't know who to pay. It gets rid of one of the fundamental issues and means we can turn our attention to those people who use music illegally."

Oh, for God's sake, man: it's nothing to do with "illegal" use of music (which would be what? Forcing Pearl Jam on an underage child?). You're building something that will help people use your products. You should be doing that because that is how industries are meant to work.

If you're only doing this because you're afraid someone, somewhere, might be streaming an old Kula Shaker album to Bhutan without asking permission, I suppose you owe the pirates a thanks for having pointed out to you something you're missing.

It's not going to make any difference to unlicensed services, though: nobody who flings Katy Perry onto one of the many post-Limewire services thinks "if only I knew the address of her collection agency, I could have got a licence for this", do they?

Naturally, having taken this long to get to this point - it's like the railway industry having decided around 1936 they should start thinking about putting stations on their network - they've managed to come up with something that's less than a half-measure.

What would be valuable would be an agreement that would allow someone, wherever they are in the world, to generate a licence simply and easily, with the appropriate collection agency, that charges a sensible rate, at the click of a button. That's the sort of thing that the music industry could have done using 2002 technology, and would have helped with their bottom line. Still, there's always next decade, eh?*

* - assuming the record companies can hold on.

Swellers fella yells at labels

It's worth getting past the unlikely-sounding opening to The Sweller's Jonathan Diener's state-of-music blog because it's pretty sharp:

The idea for this rant all started when I was watching Weezer videos from 1996 during the “Pinkerton” album cycle. I started thinking how much magic the 90s had when it came to good music. I think of the bands that started in the 90s like Foo Fighters, Jimmy Eat World, Weezer and how they still have very relevant careers

I said the opening sounds a bit unlikely; anything that kicks off proclaiming the relevance of Jimmy Eat World to the second decade of the 21st Century is on shaky ground.

But it gets better - much better - when he asks why the music industry is struggling. Basically, he reckons that the businesses are trying to cream off too much money. Greed has turned away the consumer:

Now look at current show/concert attendance. So many venues are struggling to stay open. My friends all over the country and world who promote shows, work at venues, etc. have told me how bad things have been. Several big arena tours are barely selling out. Ozzfest and tons of huge festivals were having problems and a lot of them had to cease to exist due to lack of attendance. Also, for a NON-festival show do people really want to pay $15 in charges in addition to their $25+ concert ticket? No. People nowadays would just rather not go. It’s showing. And bands selling $35 t-shirts isn’t exactly drawing a stampede of fans to the merch tables either.

Funnily enough, Jon's argument actually echoes quite neatly a piece in the Wall Street Journal from last week - that the grinding upwards of ticket prices has started to kill demand and if the music industry wants to grow, it needs many more people happy to pay lower prices than constantly gouging a smaller and smaller core audience.

Perhaps if the record industry ever gets a break from its meetings with lawyers, it might like to think on that.

[Thanks to @jamesthegill]

Let's make more Muses

Harvey Goldsmith has got a plea - apparently we need more Muses. As in the band, he doesn't want Pierus to be getting all busy again:

"The only kind of stadium star or arena-plus star act that has come through recently is Muse. That’s it. Both here in Britain and in America. We need more of them.

"We need to have, as I have said time and time again, new promoters with new ideas, building new acts up so they become the new superstars. Without that, within five years’ time, there will not be a business."

Harvey Goldsmith, manager of Jeff Beck, promoter since England last won the world cup, suggesting the problem is old promoters with stale ideas. Whoever would have thought?

And his big idea is to clone an already successful band. "Let's make more of these, as they're already popular" isn't the most obvious way of encouraging "new ideas" in the music industry, is it?

Still, Goldsmith's warning should make all our blood run cold. If there aren't a dozen or so Matt Bellamies wandering about by 2015, there won't be any oversized gigs in inappropriate venues where you can only 'watch' by staring over people's heads at a giant TV screen that is out of sync with when the music reaches you. No more £45-plus gig tickets, plus parking, plus two quid bottles of water because you can't bring your own in. No more tailbacks on motorways as thousands try to cram up a road to a temporary stage in a country house back garden. Do you want to live in such a world, people? Because that's what will happen. Harvey Goldsmith says so.

Bookmarks - Internet stuff: Music industry

Victor Keegan writes a brilliant 'cheer up, misery guts' piece for the Guardian pointing out that the only place the music industry is really in trouble is in the music industry's minds. It's great from the standfirst:

If music executives sold bottled water, they'd be calling for a ban on tapwater downloads.

Napster wails that free music is terrible

It's like watching a genie trying to wedge itself back into a bottle. Thorsten Schliesche, Napster's vice president for sales and marketing in Europe, is upset.

(Hang about: has Napster got any sales in Europe? Apparently there's a .co.uk and a .de site, and it's all at the very forefront of the digital hyperroadway, proudly proclaiming napster.co.uk to be "recommended by 4Radio." Channel 4 pulled its radio experiment at the end of 2008 - why on earth would Napster be proudly proclaiming the support of a now-defunct but once modish digital adventure?)

Anyway, Schliesche doesn't like free music:

"New business models are arriving, amongst which the ‘freemium' service model has been naturally and powerfully adopted by consumers. Yet the ongoing momentum of that model does not have longevity and my greatest fear is that there are now too many 'free' messages to keep music truly valuable, as it should be, in the eyes of the consumer," he warned.

Like so many people, Schliesche's worry about people not "valuing" music doesn't really mean anything of the sort. What he means is he's worried about people not wanting to pay cash for music. Cash to him and his company.

The value of music doesn't exist solely, even primarily, in pounds and pence. That song that you slow-danced to at the school disco, or the one you lost your virginity to, or was playing when you fell in love - you value that song. In a way that doesn't require a signature or PIN code. A far, far greater threat to music come from people like Schliesche who see enjoying music as valueless unless it is part of a comodified system of exchange than people who value music, but perhaps don't put a cash amount on it.

Still, Schliesche - whose business and job is based solely on a service which used to give away music it didn't own for no money - is at least vaguely aware that he might be coming across a bit Bono:

"As a business Napster has been at the forefront of that change. In its original form, it was the first service to create a platform online that allowed people to search and find music, engaging millions of people. We don't deny that free music was part of that story," he explained.

Free music was a part of the story. In a similar way to, say, how a giant monster made up of used body parts and disappointment was part of the Frankenstein story. Or the Son of God was part of the Christmas story.

To be fair, he makes no attempt whatsoever to try and jump across this awkward gap in his thinking, and instead reaches out to people to, you know, do something:

"If users no longer believe in the need to maintain the ecosystem that is required to inspire and support new and existing artists and labels because they are getting something that they perceive to be free, somewhere along the way something extremely valuable may be lost. This discussion is one that must be addressed by all parties in the coming 12 months to ensure that the value of music is recognised and prolonged."

The trouble is, the music industry ecosystem isn't designed to support artists and music; it's designed to support the music industry ecosysten. If people never paid a penny for any song ever, there would still be songs written, tunes sung, tracks recorded and music shared. The only difference would be that there wouldn't be a structure of major labels and accountants and lawyers floating on top.

The music industry and their part in their own downfall

Robert Sandall turns in a wonderful review for the Sunday Times of Appetite for Self-Destruction. This is Steve Knopper's careful tracking of how the music industry has been consistently getting it wrong for nearly three decades:

When the recession of 1979-82 reversed a 20-year boom that had seen record sales steadily quadruple in value, opposition to the introduction of the compact disc was rife. The tech guru at CBS demanded to know “what the hell we can expect to happen here with CDs”. His boss, ­Walter Yetnikoff, a rambunctious mogul of the old school, rejected it as an invitation to make pirated copies of albums on cassette tape, and refused to invest in new manufacturing plants. “I have no idea what they’re talking about,” Yetnikoff told his underlings.

Of course, they did finally catch on to these CD things, belatedly and in a way that screwed both artists and customers. Just in time to get it wrong all over again:

One record company bigwig who met several dotcom pioneers described the encounters as “tiresome”. The head of Liquid Audio, a company that specialised in the transmission of encrypted MP3s, was told in 1999 by a Sony honcho: “My job is to keep you down, we don’t ever want you to succeed.” As CD sales climbed to an all-time peak of 932m in 2000, nothing seriously disturbed the received wisdom in the record business that selling shiny and expensive pieces of plastic was the way forward.

There's some stuff on just how big a botch the closedown of Napster was, too:

Knopper does some impressive maths to show that, had a more equitable deal been struck offering legal downloads via Napster for $1 a track, the record industry could have benefited to the tune of $16 billion a year.

So, when the RIAA is sobbing about the millions it "loses" to unlicensed downloads, it turns out that is nothing to the money it threw away. Oh, and a legal Napster might have also headed off the take-up of bittorrent and perhaps even have stayed the inexorable rise of iTunes. As music industry mistakes go, that makes 'that guy from Decca who turned down the Beatles' look like forgetting to take an umbrella on a day when you're wearing a hat.

White Lies see a rosy future

White Lies don't fear no new music industry. They're upbeat about the whole deal:

Singer Harry McVeigh said: "People will always make music; people will always listen to music, so there's demand out there. You’ve just got to figure out how to make enough money from it to do it full time.

"Maybe the music industry wasn’t quick enough on the uptake in terms of downloads – if they’d jumped on a bit more, then maybe they’d be a bit more successful."

Maybe, Harry, maybe. Although the major labels aren't really interested in musicians making money, although they certainly won't object if that is a side-effect of the labels pulling in cash. Assuming they really can't work out a way to rake that money off, too.

Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet - Speak You're Branes

This was unearthed by the wonderful Speak You're Branes site (reading comments boxes so you don't have to) a couple of weeks back:

I have never bought a record, tape or a DVD/CD in my life. I have had a few bought for me but I refuse to give these so-called pop stars/singers any of my money. There is the radio for listening to music and that is as far as I take it.

I know of people who spend £40-£50 per month on music - quite frankly they are such sad people.

I have never even been to a music concert nor downloaded any music on the web. My money is for ME and not for others to live like lords on it.
Bob Jackson, Newport

Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet - Crime & Corruption

On Music Think Tank, NoneLikeJoshua offers a lengthy history of the music industry's murky past:

Record companies can change the figures for how many records are sold from an artist for certain unethical purposes. This is where the terms, clears and cleans, come into play. A clear is a record that does not show up on an artist’s audit record due to bootleg international shipping. Some labels will state a number less than the actual amount sold; the labels bootleg a master copy without a barcode and send the copies to countries that do not use a barcode system or track any sales equipment. Record sales then fall through, and do not show up on the artist’s audit (Avalon, 2006, 199). A clean is made when a company produces excess records that are able to be returned to the record company for cash with no questions asked. The record will be given to private vendors that do not pass the records to the retail store but are returned to the record label for a refund. This could be a form of embellishment by whoever in the record company is having these private vendors buy and take back the money for the records (Avalon, 2006, 200). Every artist should know that a company may become antagonistic towards any artist that exposes some kind of wrongful accounting; the artist should begin to wonder why this correlation arises from the record company at this point.

Digital ate my music industry

There have been some awful explanations and pretty intense finger-pointing in the bid to find out what killed the music industry (or at least, what the RIAA-PRS believes to be the music industry). Joe Mardin is pointing his finger firmly at the CD.

Yes, the CD:

“In a way, the CD is what destroyed the music business,” says Joe Mardin, a musician, producer, arranger, and engineer. Mardin grew up in the music business; his father was Ardiff Mardin, the legendary producer of Hall & Oats, Norah Jones, Aretha Franklin, and others. “People were buying millions of CDs to replace their catalog," says Mardin, explaining how industry greed ended up killing the Golden Goose. “There was this imperative that started to emerge: 'You must fill up a CD with as much music as possible,’” Mardin says. “The rest was filler. You ended up with albums that were one or two hits and a bunch of wanna-be hits.” The record industry itself killed the album, trying to maximize profits.

So... having a format which persuaded people to rebuy the records they'd already owned with the promise of some sort of better experience was bad for the music industry?

I'm not sure I buy the idea that there ever was an imperative to "fill up" CDs, either - certainly, there's been enough lightweight releases in the last decade to suggest that some people were immune. And hasn't 'one or two tracks you want, and the rest so much bilge' been pretty much the standard set-up for an album since someone said "how about if we spin it at thirty-three and third?"

But even if you take Mardin at his word, he still makes no sense at all - if the music industry put out a load of tosh and killed off their audience, would you blame that on a small, inert, plastic disc - or, perhaps, the music industry management who took the decision? "Idiotic management decisions and greed killed the music industry" is both more honest, and a banner that many of us would be able to march behind.

[Thanks to Sarah D for the link]

UPDATE: Was going to stick this in the comments, but it probably deserves a higher profile - Peter Gorman on album length and the CD

Legal peer-to-peer torpedoed by majors

For quite a while now, there have been mutterings that a high-level UK ISP was about to offer a broadband product which monetised peer-to-peer sharing. If it's not been quite the Holy Grail, the idea has been sought like it was some other cup that Jesus might have used at some point.

And Virgin - the cable-operating business - was about to offer one. But now the plans have been axed:

However, 11th hour "anti-piracy" demands by major record labels including Universal Music and Sony Music meant Virgin could no longer launch the service as it had envisaged. Labels demanded that Virgin block uploads and downloads of songs from subscribers' PCs, sources suggest. Since the system is designed to encourage file sharing, the demand removed the service's USP.

Yes, it would rather, wouldn't it?

In effect, then, the conversation would have gone something like this:

Music industry: We are worried that people are using peer-to-peer networks to take music without paying for it
Virgin: We have technology that can track what people are sharing; if you like, we could charge people a fee for peer-to-peer sharing, and reward you and your artists for activity that would otherwise happen anyway, but without you getting any money
Music industry: That's brilliant. Make it so.
Virgin: Right, here we go then...
Music industry: Hang on a moment, though - could you just make a small tweak to stop people doing the uploading and downloading bit?
Virgin: You mean you want us to launch a service that legalises uploading and downloading, and makes sure everyone gets compensated - but without the ability to upload or download?
Music industry: Yes, that's it.

It's like watching people trying to put out a fire, but refusing to put down their buckets of petrol while they do so, isn't it?