Grammy Chief Yells At File Traders
from the cry-me-a-river dept
Ah, the music industry at work. Grammy Chief C. Michael Greene (who apparently makes $2 million a year while running this non-profit group) used his speech at the Grammies last night to trash people who trade music online. It's beginning to sound like a broken record, but the music industry is so blind to their own greed that they don't even realize how silly they sound. He tries to put the issue "into sharp focus" by using the absolutely useless example of hiring three kids to download 6,000 songs in a day. How does that prove anything? Because they downloaded 6,000 songs does it mean that they would have gone out and bought those 6,000 songs on CDs at $18 a pop? Does it mean that they won't find something they like in those 6,000 songs which will cause them to go out and buy a CD or see a show of a band they otherwise never would have heard of? The music industry continues to position music trading as this evil activity, and refuses to listen to what their customers want because they can't see through their own dollar stained eyes to realize the potential of working with online file trading systems to actually grow a market in a way that will make them even more money. Update: Some interesting responses to Greene's speech. It seems that a lot of people think it was a terrible, self-serving speech. They quote musicians and analysts who all think that it looked really bad for him to make such a speech without improving how the labels work with musicians or how they distributed music online.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Better start cracking, I've got a lot of music to
The Recording Industry Association of America, which represents most record companies, estimates that people illegally download 3.6 billion songs each month.
If this is in fact the case, then I'd assume that they've broken it down to an average number of songs per user, and if they'd assume around 50 million internet users in the US (probably way too high!,) that would be around 72 illegally downloaded songs per user per month.
Considering the fact that I have not downloaded a single song from Napster or any other Music/File trading service, I better get to work. After all, this is what the RIAA wants us, their customers, to believe, that we are all a bunch of theives who would rather pay $20-$70 a month in connection fees to download enough songs to fill 6 CDs then purchase them for $18 a pop. Hmmm...maybe they have a point there...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
did you notice...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
I turned on the television last night just as he was making said speech and I was absolutely disgusted.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Your mistaken about one thing.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sales?
--
Zak
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Sales?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]