Of records that had been removed from the shrink wrap? I'm not sure about that. I'm not saying VNYL couldn't accept ONE return, but if they accepted returns on (let's say) 50% of what they sold, and then re-sold that inventory, and the cycle continued, it would start to resemble a record rental service, which is currently prohibited by law. It's a slippery slope and they're on much stabler legal ground accepting no returns.
But it's a subscription service, not a traditional record store. And again, I'm not saying they definitely can't accept the return -- I'm saying they might not be able to "pawn that shit off on someone else." Because that would be tantamount to a rental service.
This is just a guess, but it's probably related to whether the files can be easily copied. The amendment exists to reduce the incentivizing of home-taping. Basically, the govt/music biz didn't want record stores to buy one copy of a record for $12 (or whatever wholesale cost might be) and then rent it to a hundred people at $3 a shot, only to have those hundred people go home and make a copy of the record, while the publisher gets only one royalty.
Video games might have some form of copy protection, though. In any case, I think places that rent video games pay a different price for their inventory -- like way above wholesale or even retail -- and that may also affect the royalties paid on those rentals. There are other odd exceptions too: I believe you can rent out audiobooks, because there's little replay value in those, and of course not-for-profit libraries can "rent out" records.
But I'm not a lawyer and those are just guesses. I do believe the law is binding though.
I'm honestly not sure if returning the records would constitute a form of rental in this case. But I didn't say it absolutely would be in violation of the law, just that it's unclear whether it would be in violation of the law. If it were my business, I wouldn't accept the return without first consulting a lawyer.
Agh, correct, as are Communions. Must have subconsciously associated Iceage with Iceland. Anyway, I've amended that in the text above. Thanks for the heads up!
We literally just published a huge essay on The Waterfall, by Young Classic Rocker Ryan Leas.
http://www.stereogum.com/1799475/opening-the-world-again-my-morning-jackets-the-waterfall-and-the-new-americana/franchises/essay/
Kory Grow at Rolling Stone got a comment from Mayhem bassist Necrobutcher:
Reached for comment, Mayhem bassist Necrobutcher -- who co-founded the group with Euronymous -- expressed his displeasure with the film. "This book Lords of Chaos is fucking crap and that some stupid Swedes are gonna make a movie out of it is not OK," he tells Rolling Stone. "I will do everything I can to stop this film.... Tell the Swedes and the Hollywood people to go fuck themselves."
http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/madonna-video-director-to-helm-norwegian-black-metal-movie-20150504#ixzz3ZD9N7pUA
I like to imagine that they recorded it with normal bass levels, and Lars hated the way it sounded but he didn't say anything because Cliff was too much of a commanding presence. But Lars couldn't let it go, so he wrote that note on the cassette right before sticking it a mailer, so that labels would hear it as he intended it to be heard: bassless. Then, when Newsted joined, Lars just said straight up, "Turn down the bass."
That's how I like to imagine it! But truthfully, the bass levels on the demo are kinda high.
Yeah I'm not saying it's a great thing for all Norwegians, just that theirs is an entirely different model than we have in the States. Norway doesn't even use the AM band and AFAIK all their (5) FM channels are run by a government affiliate. This move allows them to cut costs and add 800% more alternatives and it's allegedly more effective in terms of communicating during emergencies. Something like this probably WILL happen in the US at some point but not for a long time. If anything, what you'll see first are radio stations going out of business (with no new owners moving into those frequencies) because the model is flat-out no longer economically viable. But even then it'll be years before the FCC is prompted to phase out terrestrial radio. Nobody is going to sign off on a government agency shutting down a market economy AND a communications system.
I dunno how much to read into this. Norway is a country of 5 million people with a super high GDP per capita and standard of living, with only five FM channels servicing the entire country. And it's still two years out. I don't think you'll see terrestrial radio phased out in the US (320 million people, much more diverse income range, way more terrestrial radio options) anytime soon.
I want to learn more about this, so I'm hoping you'll elaborate, but my immediate reaction is: Wouldn't any such model rely on a radical restructuring of the entire internet? Of the initiatives you mentioned, only Bitcoin is in semi-wide use, and it's still fairly obscure not to mention pretty complicated and inherently unstable. I'm not saying you're wrong, I just feel like we won't see anything like what you're suggesting for another decade at least, and I can't imagine it becoming the standard for much longer than that (think about how many people still don't understand how to operate the apps they have now).
I'm also not sure how it would work in practical terms on a global scale. A service like what.cd can exist because it operates on the margins. Oink got shut down, and Pirate Bay is always being shut down. But if the entire internet became a single mesh network (or a handful of highly populated mesh networks), you'd run into the same issues of copyright we see now, no? If you can assign an identity to a waveform, you can also watermark that waveform so it can only be sourced back to the copyright holder (with identical non-watermarked waveforms being rejected by the network). It's not so much a question of where the data is hosted as it is how the data is controlled by the copyright holder. In order to monetize it, you'd still need for users to pay someone, and that someone would have to distribute royalties. You'd need some sort of consolidation or centralization, no? I'm sincerely curious, because I don't understand how this could or would work (but I think you're also probably right to some degree).
I actually haven't heard it -- I've never been a fan of Porcupine Tree, but I can't say I've kept up with their work (or their affiliated projects). That said, I'm not claiming Tribulation are the most innovative guitarists; they're just employing the instrument in a style that I really respond to: It's a really rich, melodic, expressive, even flamboyant approach that reaches back to stuff like Led Zeppelin, Rush, Metallica, Smashing Pumpkins, At The Gates, and Agalloch (among many others). If you like prog (and I'm assuming you do, considering your fondness for Opeth and Steven Wilson), you might like this, too. But if you can't get past the vocals, I can't say you're wrong. I think that's totally understandable, actually.
I wasn't dissing Opeth! And I wasn't talking about Blackwater Park. I was just saying that the last two Opeth albums don't really rip. They're pretty mellow and meandering. (That said I totally disagree with the rest of your statement.)
As someone who thinks a lot about Max Martin (who is totally unaffiliated with "Fireproof"), I'd like to contribute this anecdote here:
I was listening to an old episode of the podcast "Who Charted" on which the two hosts and sometimes a guest (in this case the guest was comedian Nick Kroll) listen to songs off a particular chart and talk about them.
One of the songs on the chart in question was J-Lo and Flo Rida's "Goin' In," and Kroll responded with, "Did this song take like 10 minutes to make? ... There's nothing at all difficult about making this."
A couple spots higher was Katy Perry's "Wide Awake" (co-written by Max Martin, which is why I cared enough to notice). And hearing that one, Kroll said: "THIS song sounds like it actually took some time to make."
Which, of course, it did; I can say this confidently knowing Martin's process. This is what 1D writer Savan Kotecha (and Martin disciple) said about writing 1D's second record, Take Me Home.
"We work melody first. That’s Max Martin’s school. We’ll spend days, sometimes weeks, challenging the melody. The goal is to make it sound like anyone can do this, but it’s actually very difficult."
It's craft, man. One Direction work with really good songwriters and that results in really good songs. ("Fireproof" was co-written not by Kotecha, FYI, but Julian Bunetta.) And you can hear that just by listening to them, I think; it's obvious on its surface. That's what Kroll was reacting to, and pretty frequently, that's what makes a pop song transcendent.
"I’d also like to point out that streaming music at +320kb/s has got to be recipe for maxing out data plans."
This is such a great point, especially considering telecommunications companies are phasing out unlimited data plans:
http://www.verizonwireless.com/news/article/2015/04/the-lure-of-unlimited-wireless-data-is-it-necessary.html
(Worth noting: Tidal is backed by telecom giant Sprint/Softbank.)
Can you give an example of this: "The internet is already starting to move away from the philosophy of discrete files hosted in specific locations, and more towards a completely distributed, torrentesque swarm of content"?
I feel like the opposite is true. My guess, actually, is that torrent trackers have seen a decline in usage since the rise of things like Netflix and Spotify. Also, what happens when you want to stream something that's not being seeded at a high rate (or at all)? Also how do copyrights holders collect royalties? Etc.
The only way this works is if the individual services divide exclusive content so that each one is uniquely essential. Otherwise why not just get a Spotify subscription and be done with it? But that sort of division is not in the best interests of the copyrights holders, and it's definitely not the model envisioned by any of the streaming services, all of whom want the whole pie, not a slice. I do agree with Albini that streaming services are just another advancement that will one day be obsolete but I cannot see this as a viable alternative.
Right but how does the app choose which service to pull data from? If Taylor Swift's records are available on Rdio, Beats, and Tidal, what algorithm does it use to assign priority? And wouldn't I still have to be a subscriber to one of those services in order to hear music behind a paywall? At best it seems like a slightly more convenient interface than Google. But if I have Rdio, Beats, or Tidal anyway, why am I using (and paying for) a secondary aggregator? For this to work, the streaming services would have to be eliminated altogether, I think (and I think that's what he's suggesting, too).
Yeah, he makes some great points, although I think his vision for "a cheap app that autonomously searches for music from anywhere on the internet" is probably not going to come to fruition (at least not as a streaming-service replacement). To me that seems inferior to Spotify for a bunch of reasons. But I'd be curious to hear him expand on the concept.
I hadn't seen that Verge piece, thanks for mentioning it. It's really interesting.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/9/8366967/apple-live-nation-tidal-streaming
I wonder how that would work in the long term. Would all Tidal-exclusive artists be limited to playing only Live Nation venues? Would non-Tidal artists be barred from playing Live Nation venues? That could definitely change the landscape of the streaming game as well as the live-music game.
Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon Prime offer different services. My guess is that most people who have Hulu and/or Amazon Prime also have Netflix. But Tidal, Beats, and Spotify are effectively the same thing. You don't need more than one. Maybe Tidal will pull all of its artists' music from other services and become a boutique like HBO. But that seems like a bad bet to me -- it will only lead to reduced exposure for the artists, not to mention smaller royalties checks. Why would Kanye West make his music available only to a very small group of subscribers, when he could make it available to the whole world?
I'm not saying Soundcloud is ripping anyone off; it's a fair trade: Artists pay for Soundcloud's server space, bandwidth, functionality, and community. It's a really clean interface and a great social sharing tool. And they're not throwing ads in front of songs or on the page, so it's not like they're collecting third-party revenue on artists' content. But yeah, no one should be under the impression that a Soundcloud spin generates a direct royalty payment for the artist.
Actually, I think artists have to pay a monthly fee to Soundcloud in order to have their music hosted by the service, but there may be a lower-tier option that allows a very small amount of data (like the equivalent of three songs) to be hosted at no cost to the creator. Again, I don't know the terms of service and I could be wrong.
I agree with this, but I won't argue with anyone who prefers FLAC just as a general rule: The human ear may not be able to detect a difference in sound, but in purely technical terms, FLAC is "higher-quality" audio, and if someone wants to pay for "higher-quality" audio just because it's available and they can afford it, then more power to 'em. But the Tidal price points are so fucked. There's no way the respective server/bandwidth costs (for 320 kbps vs. FLAC) are commensurate with that variance. They're just using a combination of vanity, flattery, piety, ignorance, and guilt to gouge the end user. The fact that they even offer a 320 kbps option (at HALF the cost) is evidence of their hypocrisy. "If you pay $20 a month, you can hear the music as the artists intended it be heard, which as an artist-owned business, is our mission. HAVING SAID THAT: You can pay $10 a month and hear it the other way, instead." I mean, come on.
I think Jay is both a business, man, and a businessman, but here he's leaning on the former to distract people from the latter. I'm sure he's got a prospectus for Tidal, but he's not sharing those details. He's just offering empty platitudes that sound progressive but don't stand up to scrutiny.
I can think of a hundred examples but here's one. The base rate for a lossless subscription is $20 per month while the base rate for a standard MP3 (320 kbps) subscription is $10 per month. That's a substantial difference (and I'm not sure how it's justified in terms of overhead but that's another story). Does the artist get paid twice as much for a lossless stream as a standard stream? Of course not, because behavior varies so greatly from user to user.
Let's break this down with extremely abstract (and admittedly simplistic and unrealistic) figures. Let's say Tidal had only two users: User A (a lossless subscriber) and User B (a standard subscriber). Tidal would then have $30 revenue. And let's say Tidal paid out 2 cents per lossless stream versus 1 cent per standard stream. If User A listened to 5,000 songs a month while User B listened to 500 songs a month, Tidal would have to pay out $100 royalties for User A's behavior, and $5 for User B's behavior. That's obviously unsustainable. So royalties have to be paid out at a percentage. Assuming royalties were Tidal's only overhead cost, in order for the service to be profitable, it would have to pay a flat rate per stream -- irrespective of audio quality -- of approximately half-a-cent per song, which would result in a total payout of $27.50, and a net profit of $2.50.
Of course these numbers are wildly abstract, and I'm using them just to make a point. There's no transparency because the details of the prospectus are probably equally confusing and frustrating (if not depressing). Tidal's business model is really complicated, and this doesn't even begin to take into account the involvement of Softbank/Sprint, the Japanese telecommunications company (which is literally worth like $92 billion) that appears to be bankrolling the service.
http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/30/tidal-confirms-partnership-with-sprint-owner-softbank-for-its-artist-co-owned-music-service/
Sorry, those are euros, not dollars -- you can see Spotify's 2013 P&L here: http://recode.net/2014/11/25/spotify-is-a-booming-billion-dollar-business/
I can't break it down as much as I'd like because they list "royalty, distribution, and other costs" as a single line item. But you can at least get an idea of how their finances look, and how Tidal's finances would differ without the unpaid subscribers.
Because Spotify has something like 50 million unpaid subscribers who generate ad revenue, and a percentage of that is paid to the artists, too. So Tidal's subscriber base would have to generate more revenue than all of Spotify's revenue streams combined. What Spotify pays per song is almost irrelevant, because the numbers are skewed so significantly by unpaid subscribers. In 2013, Spotify subscriptions generated $678M, while advertising generated $68M -- they could eliminate the non-paying subscribers and lose only a fraction of the bottom line but that would mean a much less vital service as well as less actual money (and a GREAT DEAL less exposure) for artists. There are too many variables to actually build out an equation but realistically, for Tidal to write bigger checks to artists based on songs played, it would need a near-monopoly on streaming music. Maybe not 60M subscribers, but at least, say 25M or 30M, which would constitute a Netflix-esque ubiquity IMO.
They won't take their music off Spotify because they make a fucking fortune from Spotify. In October 2014 Spotify paid Calvin Harris $300k for plays that month of "Blame" alone. Tidal is just an additional revenue stream. What they will do is give Tidal exclusive content in advance of Spotify and Beats, so a new Calvin Harris song might stream for a day or a week on Tidal before Spotify gets it. But there would be no profit in them taking their music off Spotify. This is just more profit.
Spotify's payout is also affected by their 45 million unpaid subscribers, because their ad revenue is lower than their subscription revenue, but still they have 12.5M paid subscribers (which is a huge number) and still those 45M unpaids are generating actual revenue for the artists. A pay-only service like Tidal would have to get like 30M PAID subscribers in order to generate more revenue for the artists than Spotify is currently delivering. But that assumes Tidal/Sprint are in fact cutting a larger percentage for all songs played, and I am pretty confident in saying Sprint shareholders are not exactly looking for ways to make sure artists are getting a larger piece of the pie. I predict they will pay exactly as little as is absolutely necessary, and I expect that figure is approx. between $0.006 and $0.0084 per song played.
There's almost no way Tidal (or anyone) is paying more per play on average than Spotify because Spotify is still not profitable (yet) and its largest operating cost by a wide margin is royalties paid to labels and artists. But even if Tidal were to say publicly that that they are paying (for example) $0.0095 per song while Spotify pays somewhere between $0.006 and $0.0084 per song, it would be misleading because Spotify's subscriber base is so much larger than Tidal's. Tidal might pay fractionally more per song, but at the end of the month, the check paid to the artist from Spotify will be larger because the subscriber base is larger. That said, I imagine Sprint is paying Tidal's "owners" a substantial sum upfront for their involvement, so some of those artists will end up with a better payout via Tidal/Sprint than they will via Spotify or Beats/Apple, at least initially, although I don't see how this thing survives a year.
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