That Didn't Take Long: Turntable.fm Blocked To All Non-US Users
from the music-industry-killing-off-another-one dept
Just last week, we wondered how long it would take before the recording industry helped kill off Turntable.fm, which we consider to be one of the best music services we've seen in a long, long time. Apparently, it's not taking very long at all if you're outside the US. We started receiving emails from people all weekend, letting us know that Turntable.fm had officially blocked all non-US users after realizing that its current licensing methodology technically only covers them in the US. The company insists that it's planning to return to other countries "as quickly as possible," but it may discover that's a lot trickier than they expect. After all, Pandora went through the exact same thing, blocking all non-US users over four years ago, promising to return as quickly as possible, but it still hasn't been able to, even now that the company's public and has a giant warchest. Part of the problem is that music licensing agencies throughout the world demand absolutely ridiculous rates from companies like Pandora, and I imagine Turntable.fm will quickly discover the same depressing news.Of course, in the meantime, those of us in the US can continue to use the service, and folks in foreign countries can get on via proxy servers which aren't too hard to find, but basically the industry's stupid licensing regimes effectively make this very useful service, that helps introduce people to new music, unavailable to most of the world. What a waste.
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
Filed Under: licensing, music
Companies: pandora, turntable.fm
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
In another universe...
The site grows. New features appear. Artists and labels embrace it. People like Thom Yorke and Trent Reznor show up on occasion in rooms that quickly fill with thousands of people. Seeing a chance to manage server resources and monetize at the same time, turntable.fm builds a digital ticketing platform for paid shows with set capacities. Labels like Stones Throw and Def Jux hold exclusive album launch parties on the site, with a full roster of their artists spinning tunes - with only a few hundred tickets available, they sell out fast and can pull impressive prices. Inside these rooms, the labels and artists sell the first official copies of the album, plus merchandise and concert tickets for the launch tour, through the integrated system that supports both list items and auctions.
In public rooms, a prominent but simple marquee scroller on the DJ table - styled to match the unique graphical feel of the site - also advertises merchandise, tickets and digital downloads. It does this automatically through affiliate programs, pulling results from Ticketmaster, Amazon and Bandcamp as artists come up on the queue, and also through a YouTube-like program that allows copyright owners to directly monetize their content and make more unique offerings. Users can opt to receive monthly newsletters with various offers based on the songs they played/liked that month as well.
Because the affiliate program cuts the performing DJ in for a small piece of sales once they reach a certain volume, some ambitious folk even try to make a career out of DJing on the site - and a handful succeed. They boast well over a million followers each, and are constantly courted by promoters to give exposure to new artists (a few sell out, and are rapidly abandoned). Others have used their popularity to promote their original work, converting their DJ-following into fans of their music, and RtB-ing them with Amanda Palmer-esque auctions on the virtual dancefloor.
The site sets the standard for social music, much fun is had, and money is made by all. Oh, and I can fucking use it from Canada.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: In another universe...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: In another universe...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: In another universe...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Called it...
Oh well, maybe I'll be able to check the service out when I happen to be in the US for a week in November, along with Pandora, Hulu, Netflix and all these other great services I'm not allowed to use. An American on vacation or working in my part of the world will lose their access in the same time, of course, even for those services they pay for...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: In another universe...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: In another universe...
I like this other universe where Def Jux still exists. I miss that label.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Abolishment
FCC (for rolling over for AT&T and allowing the current duopoly)
FBI (for being a quasi government entity that cares not one lick about the Constitution, but suppressing people)
CIA (for outright lying to Congress and promoting people for ineptitude)
The 257+ organizations that are part of top secret America, more interested in spending money than actual security
Patent Office (for stifling innovation in exchange for quick trials based on dubious "first to file" charges)
FTR (301 Special Report. Nuf said)
Lobbynomics (If we can get rid of this, the rest of the world would be a better place)
Patrick Leahy (For denying the effects of copyright enforcement in the name of his own paycheck.)
I'd go on, but then, I'd get mad...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: In another universe...
The answer isn't from people buying the special stuff, because it's already been shown that this is a very short term sort of way to market things. All of your fantasy depends on people doing the stupid thing, paying too much for too little, while not paying for what they really want.
It's a wonderful story, but it goes against reality.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: In another universe...
It goes against your reality, the reality of 1990's, when people queued up to buy shiny plastic discs.
It doesn't go against ours and to be totally frank what would it cost to give it a try eh?
The recording industry is in it'd death throws, people like Marcus are just trying to throw them a frickin' lifeline!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: In another universe...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
The recording industry keeps throwing the lifeline back because it's not _their_ lifeline, and they don't get paid when someone uses it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
and it usually comes back with a harpoon attached.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: In another universe...
with only a few hundred tickets available, they sell out fast and can pull impressive prices
Artificial scarcity? Really? You mentioned server load, but I can't imagine a chat room coupled with low grade avatars and music streaming will require "managing server load" to a few hundred. You've fallen into the same trap that the **AA's do.
It's okay, I forgive you. :P
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Remember allofmp3.com and all the ruckus? "Oh my, Russia supports music piracy!". It took president Bush to complain to shut down site. But you know what? I had no idea that it was illegal and I used it. Because it was convenient, because I felt good when I bought music (although I listen mostly jazz and blues).
Then, few years later, someone showed me Spotify and it was wonderful! Yes, to register you'd need to tinker with proxy, but still. I even bought most expensive plan, because you could used service abroad then and forget about proxy. Few months later Spotify blocked my account in suspicion that I wasn't really from UK.
You know what? FUCK IT. I would really love to pay for convenient way to listen to music that I love, but apparently, recording industry don't need my money.
So, torrents, here we go! Oh, and Grooveshark. I know that their legality are murky, but at least service works in Russia.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: In another universe...
Actually, your comments (and Marcus's fantasy post) show and incredible lack of understanding of human nature and the ability of people to see and ignore artificial scarcity and manipulations. Sell the product people want, the music, and the rest of the business follows. Give it all away, and then you have to spend the rest of your lives trying to find ways to trick people to buy stuff. That isn't forward things, that is just bad business and bad for everyone involved, especially the artists. They don't want to spend their lives whoring out their time to try to pay the bills.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: In another universe...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: In another universe...
Unlike everyone else? Wow! Musicians are special.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: In another universe...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: In another universe...
When I talk about smaller, exclusive rooms, I am picturing rooms in which the artists are interacting with the fans - taking comments and answering questions. Obviously the intimacy of such a situation is inversely proportionate to the number of people, and there are fans who would be more than willing to pay more in order to share a chat room with their favourite artist and only 100 other people. So it's not really about creating artificial scarcity, but selling the scarcity that is an artist's attention.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: In another universe...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: In another universe...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
I'm Canadian that used to subscribe to MusicMatch Radio (well before Yahoo bought MusicMatch and killed that cash cow). I listened to all sorts of new music. Bought plenty of songs. It was a great service.
Then one day I got an email telling me that my subscription would not be renewed due to licensing issues. At that time, there was nothing comparable to MusicMatch Radio in Canada. The Canadian versions had restricted range of music and options and were much pricier.
So I didn't bother signing up. Money lost.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: In another universe...
As an example, you can examine the backlash against The White Stripes/Third Man Records regarding their most recent limited-edition releases. The label decided to auction them rather than let ebay sellers buy up the lot and jack up prices on the after market. Needless to say, fan clubbers were pissed and perceived Third Man as taking advantage of them, when in reality the label was doing the "honest" thing and letting demand set the price. On top of that, you'll notice that fans didn't seem to care that the money that would have gone to ebay sellers was now going to the artists. Despite the company line at pundit sites, people do not happily part with cash; where the fantasy that they love throwing money at artists comes from I'll never know.
Some artists would be good at this kind of interaction. Odd Future already does this, but I don't think they're making much money on that front. You can't really monetize Twitter interactions on a meaningful level, as far as I know. I believe most of their money is coming from good old CD sales and concert tickets/performance guarantees.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: In another universe...
you can lead a whore to water but you cant make her think.
id say its spot on here.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: In another universe...
I feel like you are being a little too pessimistic. I may not have all the details right, and there are plenty more ideas to be brainstormed. All I am saying is that turntable.fm is a fun, powerful, engaging platform that has a hell of a lot of potential - perhaps enough to supplant radio entirely as the standard for human-curated music. My fantasy universe is one in which, when faced with such an exciting new platform, content owners immediately begin experimenting with innovative business models, instead of strangling it with onerous licensing terms.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: In another universe...
Great vision of the future. Do you want to get together and bounce some ideas back an forth? Come up with several promotional ideas, websites, business models for the web sites, etc. I have been thinking about this for a while, we can ask if Mike would like to publish them here.
The one thing that is actually holding back the artists from leaving the record labels en masse is the promotion piece. If we can brain storm, and build upon ideas that people throw at us in the comments, and evolve this into something workable, we could make one hell of a dent in the record labels.
Just a thought ...
David
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: In another universe...
Actually, your comments (and Marcus's fantasy post) show and incredible lack of understanding of human nature and the ability of people to see and ignore artificial scarcity and manipulations.
That particular boot is on your foot not theirs.
Sell the product people want, the music, and the rest of the business follows.
How exactly do you propose to "sell the music". The only way that makes sense is if you actually sell the rights - which I'm pretty sure you don't mean. Otherwise you are always in practice selling some physical resource to which to music is in some way attached.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: In another universe...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Well this sucks
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: In another universe...
With the terrifying road that my own country is taking (United States), Canada is on a short list of other nations that I would be willing to defect to. Just get those internet caps under control and we'll talk.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: In another universe...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: In another universe...
Hmmm... let me see here. I don't know the facts, but it sounds like the label decided to divert the profits had by eBay sellers to themselves. This inevitably raised the lowest prices available for the record, pricing honest fan club members who could have bought the records for their collection out of the market, while ensuring that only the rich or completely obsessed could afford the record. Then, people got pissed off about that, especially those who had been paying fan club members who supported the band for years?
Yeah, that sounds right to me, to be honest.
" Despite the company line at pundit sites, people do not happily part with cash"
Did the records sell? If so, the answer is yes, they do. If not, their audience apparently didn't like being fleeced by the label as opposed to avoidable eBay touts. Imagine that.
"You can't really monetize Twitter interactions on a meaningful level, as far as I know. I believe most of their money is coming from good old CD sales and concert tickets/performance guarantees."
You understand there might be a contradiction there, right?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Well this sucks
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: In another universe...
Actually, I will "STEAL" them. I think I have several great idea for a couple posts here, "Possible content business models - part 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,etc ()".
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Well there goes that discovery service
[ link to this | view in thread ]
I suspect turntable.fm are now looking at whether they want to do ip-country lookups for every client/stream and pay the fee in whatever country they're located in - and of course that's not even an option if MediaNet don't have the lisense for some music in some territories.
On a different note - this kind of thing will have a positive overall effect imo. Enough people saw turntable.fm and hyped it, and that means the cat is out of the bag. It can't really be stopped, because that'll just force it underground - and I don't doubt there's a team of devs in Russia with a few terrabytes of dodgy mp3s who will jump in with a similar idea if nobody else does.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
This is a very good point. I don't understand why these record labels don't understand that they can work with new ideas/business models or they can drive them underground, but they cannot stop them.
If you can't beat them, join them. Right?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Blocking by country is, I assume, done by IP address. Certain countries have certain IP addresses that they use, so if you block that range, you block that country. Simple enough to get around with proxies in other countries. But that was IPv4.
IPv6, from what I know about it, assigns "IP"s based on the devices MAC address (as well as some random number for security/privacy purposes). Because of this, and the size of the IPv6 address range, the doling out of IP addresses by IANA is quite simply unnecessary. Thus, there will presumably be no "country range" of IP's. Thus these country blocking attempts will quite simply STOP WORKING once we finally make the big switch over to IPv6 (which despite the fact that we officially ran out of IPv4 addresses sometime last year, is probably still ages away).
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: In another universe...
Because you do not see the new business model possibilities, and will continue to try and sell zeroes and ones in a world that does not support it.
But it's ok. Failure to adapt leads to extinction, its the natural way of things.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
A label might have released a record in one territory (and registered it with a rights collecting agency there) then lisenced the same record to another label to release in a different territory (and register it with another rights collecting agency there). In that case, turntable.fm would have to pay the correct agency depending on where the listenner is. Then of course the different rights collecting agencies will want different fees (if they allow it int eh first place). Like I say, it's a complicated business.
In my opinion, the rights agencies need to get together and sort this out between themselves, as they're the ones really stopping international services from working. For example, services as big and influential as YouTube can't play videos to people in Germany if they contain music registered with the rights collecting group GEMA. It's pretty bad for the end users and I hope they sort it out soon.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: In another universe...
You might as well say, no-one cares about Alabama. Somehow, I think most of the world cares more about Canada ;)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Apparently, part of the new IPv6 addresses is a network portion which services will still be able to use for this.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: In another universe...
In ten minutes of writing about one product, Marcus has put more thought and creativity into extending and creating possibilities for engagement, expansion and monetising than anything the (recording) music industry has done in 15 years. So stop whining and come up with your own ideas, instead of carping about someone else's.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: In another universe...
I'm Canadian too and was already annoyed about Pandora (which I thought was pure genius when I had a chance to try it before they blocked it). Now I miss my chance to try what sounds like yet another phenomenal service.
I really believe the **AAs have a spiteful and extremely narrow-minded approach to business. It seems clear to me that if someone invented the radio broadcasting business model today, they would try in earnest to kill it off.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
IPv6
Sadly one reason it is ages away is not a technical or even a logistical one. It is the political and administrative juggernaut needing to come to terms with things like a replacement for geo-locating. As the other commenter pointed out: they are working on a "solution" to this "problem". The world is now a global village but even in a tiny hamlet there are grumpy neighbors who want to put up huge fences.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: In another universe...
That was perfectly said. I just wanted to comment to commend you on that. Perfect ideas.
That is all. Also want to listen in Canada. haha.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Alternative way to get around the block
It's free and also supports Spotify. I'm so tired of record companies blocking everyone else outside USA. When I went to Europe, Spotify is so huge!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Organizing Cordiality
Love the music and the trails I leave, however, the payback was in the fans who learn these lessons and enjoy the new fans, sells, and expressions they'll be tankering in the future.
Thanks for the forum too all internet software programs out in all the sectors. May we have it become organized here first, as they catch on we'll find black gold in our music in no time.
[ link to this | view in thread ]