Posted on 01/30/2008 9:32:00 PM PST by bamahead
Paul McGuinness, long-time manager of rock band U2, on Monday launched a verbal attack against illegal music downloaders, as well as internet service providers, device makers, Silicon Valley and even hippies in a speech at a conference in France.
McGuinness blamed these forces for "destroying the recorded music industry," with illegal downloading through peer-to-peer file-sharing networks the single biggest reason for why the business is in decline.
ISPs have for years profited from that illegal downloading, which occurs on their networks, and their arguments that it isn't their job to police the internet are no longer valid, he said. The ISPs, he added, have an obligation to prevent that file-sharing on their networks, and if they don't do so voluntarily, they should be forced to.
McGuinness said much of Silicon Valley arose out of "hippy values" that did not include a respect for copyright and established business models. Many of the area's entrepreneurs don't consider themselves "makers of burglary kits," he said.
"There are plenty of private equity fund managers who are Deadheads," he said, a reference to hippy icons The Grateful Dead. "And embedded deep down in the brilliance of those entrepreneurial, hippy values seems to be a disregard for the true value of music."
His speech was interrupted by bursts of applause, according to the Financial Times, but bloggers were quick to condemn his remarks.
"There are so many problems with this, it's difficult to know where to begin," wrote influential technology blog TechDirt.
"The problem here isn't that others are letting the recording industry languish. It's that just about every other industry has realized that there's plenty of money to be made in the music industry."
(Excerpt) Read more at cbc.ca ...
tech ping.
Trashing their ideological brethren? Tut tut.
Maybe its time for the record bidness to decline.
Why should a few weeks work on a record create some illusion that it is valuable in the tens of millions of dollars?
Perform. Sell tickets. Earn money the old fashioned way.
Records are advertising, not a product. That’s the whole problem right there.
Good points by McGuiness.
or maybe, the music industry is in decline because the music simply...sucks?
I agree witht illegal DLs. It’s unfair for those guys who produce these stuff to not let even the smallest of $$$ go their way because it’s the right thing to do.
Unfortunately for bittorrent and encryption, PLUS Safepeer/peerguardian...this is a losing battle for the companies.
"Their snouts have been at our trough feeding free for too long."
Such stunning hypocrisy. Who first comes to mind if asked who grovels at the United Nations trough more than any other, (if there are any others)?
I really think that the music industry missed the boat entirely on the digital age. What really errks me about it is they’d seemingly rather use the courts and their legal leverage to try and catch up, rather than innovating.
Here is a response to this Article that I found.
(WARNING for Language)
http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2008/01/29/mcguinness-idiocy/
Guy makes some good points regardless of whether you like his tone.
Sorry, dude. I swear like a sailor MOST of the time, but the author’s anger management program obviously wasn’t working, and his high blood pressure overpowered his remaining brain cells.
The only terms I “deciphered” were...look to the future’.
Political Charity Concerts and overproduction/overmarketing are killing music.
When bands are getting promoted based on haircuts (different styles/colors for each member and used as THE ad campaign) there is no “music” in the music industry, just “product”.
Since the industry still makes money off of decades old recordings (unlike in older eras when works would lapse into the public domain) they have a vested interest in maintaing the “status quo” that “there is nothing out there” if they don’t own every inch of tape of it.
In the 1960s a band might put out 2 or 3 albums a year. Today they spend a year on it and tour and then put another out in another year or 2.
I saw a documentary on fuzz pedals where a Queen of the Stone Age whined that the resistor he used to replace the one in his fuzz pedal (replacement taped by the manufacturer to the inside of the pedal) gave it a totally different sound than the other resistor did and that it ruined 4 weeks work on ONE TRACK.
Guitar wank much?
There is good music out there. And many festivals have many bands that are “known” by different undergrounds but none get on commercial radio, MTV, Rolling Stoned, People, The Tonight Show, or Saturday Night Live and none will ever be written about in Rolling Stone’s Rock and Roll HOF.
I hear the mainstays and their collection agencies complaining about digital downloads far more than the blacklisted indie acts.
Then again Frank Sintara hated BMI, Sun Records, and an indie artist named Elvis too because it changed the musical focus of the industry.
I would happily pay for good music. Sadly, U2 stopped making it twenty years ago.
Advertising for the lousy products.
Bozos in music industry make deliberatelly warped sound on CDs, so when it is ripped to shallow MP3 it gives an illusion of heft.
And they expect that people will shell out $15 for this crap?
Or reissuing the same albums over and over, to fix shoddy mastering in the 1980s and the 1990s.
Music business has to make up their mind: do they sell RIGHTS to listen or they sell PRODUCT?
If they sell PRODUCT, buyer becomes THE OWNER and can do with it what he/she pleases.
OTOH, if they sell RIGHTS OF USE, I have the right to bring faulty mastered Kind of Blue and get replacement free of charge, or replacement if "best sound forever" disc becomes unplayable.
File sharing is not new, it exists for the last 50 years and it actually helped music business. It was R2R and cassette taping operated over the sneakernet.
The Key problem of the music industry is unprecedented greed of the people who have no ears to hear their own product.
Did they ever?
"Back in the day" when U2 first appeared on the US music scene some of my friends started getting into them, but they sounded boring and pretentious even then. I never understood U2's popularity.
The industry would never let you “upgrade” from Sgt.Pepper v.1967, v.1976, or v.1988 to Sgt.Pepper v.2008. You need buy it for the full license price as anyone else.
If an album doesn’t have 10 good songs on it, it’s not worth releasing these days. Put out singles. Technology is not the problem here, it’s crappy albums.
The Dead was better (and more profitable) than U2.
Capitalist Pigs !........:o)
Bono’s bank account gets boned by downloaders film at 11.
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