Shortsightedness & Greed Killing Part of the Music Business?

It seems like issues that have plagued the music industry leaders, keep coming back to haunt them. Two financial revealings this week point to just that.

The first comes from the RIAA, which is essentially a lobbyist for the major record labels. It's no secret that they've been suing people who shared music over the Internet. Now it's no secret how much they spent on lawyers to do it in 2008. There's a document circulating that the sum is $16 million. TorrentFreak has an article on why the RIAA think it was worth the money even though they only received about $391,000 as a result of their lawsuits. Go figure. I see it as $16 million dollars to alienate your audience/consumers. Give them something they want, at a price point that makes sense and they will pay for it.

The other piece of news is concert promoter Live Nation announcing yesterday that tickets sales for the top 100 touring acts are down 12% in the first half of the year and they expect the numbers to be worse in the second half of this year. Per Encore: Executive Chairman Irving Azoff, who presented via video conference, chided investors for the sell-off.
"I'm hoping that what I'm seeing as all you guys e-mail back to your offices to dump the stock isn't indicative of the fact that we have a group of investors that are so shortsighted," Irving said.

In this case not only have ticket prices confused and angered ticket buyers, but now the chairman is chastising investors. Is this a house of cards waiting to fall? I don't think that will happen, but in order to prevent it, it seems like some serious rethinking/restructuring needs to take place.

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. There has got to be a trainer out there who will come in and show them how it's done.

Govt gets inovlved in saving Hollywood from piracy

Is this really where our government should be spending $30 million? According to a post on Cynopsis:

The U.S. government earmarked $30 million in new funding to help track down and prosecute piracy of Hollywood content. The funds are part of the Omnibus Appropriations Conference report, targeted for personnel and programs authorized by last year's bipartisan Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO-IP) Act and will be divvied up as such: $20 million will be allocated in state and local economic, high tech and internet crime prevention grants; $8 million will be used to put FBI agents on the case targeting IP crimes; and $2 million will be reserved for new Dept. of Justice IP prosecutorial activities. MPAA CEO Dan Glickman released a statement thanking Congress and calling attention to the impact piracy has on industry jobs. The MPAA and RIAA also praised this year's "Operation Holiday Hoax," launched by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and a task force dubbed the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center.

There are so many other worthy causes out there (first and foremost the high number of unemployed people) that our government should be focusing on. If the film industry had taken any notes on how badly the major record labels handled the digital age, they would not be in a position to need $30 million to fight piracy. Note: piracy is not why your industry is flailing.

TechDirt challenged the artists whose files Joel Tenenbaum had shared over the Internet to comment on the case. Joel was sued by the RIAA, who won the first round. A Boston federal jury ordered Joel Tenenbaum to pay $675,000—$22,500 per song—to the major record labels for willfully infringing 30 songs by downloading and distributing them over the KaZaA.

The TechDirt challenge would have no legal ramifications, but it would be interesting. The comments that stood out the most were those that thought so little of the musicians and their work. The tones were dismissive. Some forget that without the musicians, there are no files to download and there are no record companies and there is no RIAA.

Among the songs Joel downloaded were Nirvana's Come As You Are and Nine Inch Nails' The Perfect Drug. I haven't been able to find comments from Trent.

RIAA to Stop Suing Internet Pirates

The RIAA realized that suing individuals who traded music over the Internet, was not the way to go. They have decided to cease suing. According to a WSJ article today, the RIAA opened legal proceedings against approximately 35,000 people since 2003. They are now making deals with Internet Service Providers that will warn their users that they are in violation, rather than having to ask the ISP to divulge the name of the user.

The whole campaign seemed ill advised from the beginning. What did they have to gain from suing a 13 year old girl? Possibly using her as an example, but it wasn't a deterrent. The major labels have been band-aiding situations for years and it is no surprise that they are in bad shape. If they had embraced the technology, put out quality product and engaged the fan, none of this would be happening. Maybe the RIAA should hire Stephanie Meyer as a consultant. She has done all of the above. According to boxofficemojo, the film version of her book Twilight has a domestic total sales of $152,320,664, as of 12/17. Her series of books have sold over 25 million copies. Her latest release, Breaking Dawn, shipped 3.7 million copies with 1.7 of of them being sold on the first day of release. When was the last time an album did that?