RIAA Wants To Put People In Jail For Sharing Their Music Subscription Login With Friends

from the criminalizing-sharing dept

Ah, the RIAA. Just as you're paying attention to some ridiculously bad law with awful unintended consequences they're pushing in one place, they pop up with a different law they've already (quietly) convinced politicians to pass somewhere else. Today's entry is a new law that has been approved by the legislature in Tennessee at the urging of the RIAA, which will make it a criminal offense to share your "entertainment subscription" login info with anyone else. You're a college student, and you decide to go halfsies on a Netflix or Rhapsody subscription with a friend? Watch out, you may face a year in jail and thousands of dollars in fines. If law enforcement decides that the "value" of the content you watched is high enough, you could be charged with felony charges, and face much larger fines and longer jail sentences.

The way the law works is to add the "entertainment subscription" phrase to an existing law concerning unauthorized access to cable or satellite TV services. Not surprisingly, Mitch Glazier (a man famous for selling out all musicians by allegedly sneaking a clause into a bill in the middle of the night that took away the rights of musicians to reclaim their copyrights... just months before taking a high paying RIAA job which he still holds today) is insisting this law is necessary to protect the music industry:

Mitch Glazier, executive vice president of public policy for the RIAA, said the bill is a necessary protective measure as digital technology evolves. The music industry has seen its domestic revenue plunge by more than half in 10 years, from $15 billion to $7 billion, he said.

Either Glazier is lying here or the reporter is quoting him way out of context. It may be true that revenue for the record labels that Glazier represents has declined. But the revenue of the music industry -- which includes things like concerts, merchandise, publishing and other areas has actually done pretty well. Besides, the idea that Glazier has any interest in protecting "music" is pretty laughable. His job is to protect labels, often at the expense of musicians.

And this particular piece of legislation is particularly stupid and shortsighted on the part of the RIAA. For the most part, if people are buying one of these subscriptions with the intent to share, at least they're still buying a subscription and paying money to the industry. In the absence of that, it seems quite likely that they'll just go straight to full on infringement. Furthermore, the ability to share a single login with a few family members or friends is often seen as a part of the value. That is, a family may decide that it's worth it to buy such a subscription, because they can split it among a few different people. But, make that a crime and you've just massively decreased the incentive for people to buy such subscriptions.

The bill still needs to be signed by the governor, but it sounds like he's buying the bogus claims of Glazier and the RIAA on this one, saying that "I don’t know enough about that legislation, but if it's combating that issue [infringement], I would be in favor of it." Update: Annnnnnnd... signed. Of course.

And, of course, this is just a foot in the door sort of move. Once the RIAA has this in Tennessee, expect to see similar, if not identical legislation popping up in lots of other states as well.

Filed Under: copyright, crime, felony, subscriptions, tennessee

Murdoch's Big Bet Gone Bad: iPad Only Publication Not Engaging Readers Much

from the that-was-tough dept

You know, it really wasn't that hard to predict that the brainchild of Rupert and James Murdoch -- an iPad-only news publication, called The Daily, that people would pay for -- would flop. The Murdochs (father and son) don't have a particularly good history of succeeding on the internet. In fact, they have a history that is mostly littered with failure when it comes to internet ventures. But, in an age when ubiquity, availability, access and sharing are what consumers want, coming up with a publication that was locked down, specific to a single platform, and quite limited, just seemed like a bad recipe from the start. We'd already noted that a bunch of the "big name" journalists and staffers that had been brought on to The Daily had been leaving just weeks after the publication launched.

But what about readers? While the Murdochs have been quiet, the folks over at Nieman Lab put together a nice proxy, in looking at how many people were Tweeting stories from The Daily's iPad app. I'm sure it's not a perfect correlation, but if people were really engaged with the news from The Daily -- which, increasingly, is an important aspect of news communities, you would expected to see this number continue to go up. Instead, as Joshua Benton describes, it's "decline, plateau, decline." Here's the graphical representation: Again, this almost certainly does not represent a direct correlation to readership. We see stories that gets lots of traffic get very few tweets or comments, and stories with relatively little traffic get a ton of comments. But, on the whole, as an overall proxy, it at least suggests something not good is going on at The Daily in terms of actually getting readers engaged.

And, I think, that's the obvious problem the Murdochs always run into with their online efforts. They're good at producing content. They're dreadful at actually engaging with a community. They bought MySpace, but their failure to understand what people there wanted resulted in its rather massive decline. It seems clear, with the Daily, that engagement and interacting were an afterthought. At best, it was a "let them tweet!" sort of discussion, rather than a look at how to actually engage the community in any meaningful way.

Filed Under: engagement, subscriptions, the daily
Companies: news corp.

Why The NY Times Paywall Business Model Is Doomed to Fail (Numbers)

from the dude-where's-my-math dept

Not considering technical details (every wall can be brought down), even by its own business model the New York Times' paywall is doomed to fail.

Last Friday's Financial Times had some interesting numbers.

• Fact 1: According to analysts, the New York Times only needs to convert 1 to 10 per cent of the online visitors in order for the model to pay off.
• Fact 2: NY Times chief executive Janet Robinson has stated that they only expect about 15 per cent of visitors to encounter the paywall, since visitors can read 20 articles per month for free.
• Fact 3: Full website access and the mobile app are bundled for $15 per month. For the iPad app + web you pay $20 per month. $35 for all three.
• Fact 4: One analyst argues that the NY Times could earn $66m per year if it converted just 1 per cent of the visitors. This would mean they go from paying nothing, to paying (at least) $195 a year.

There is no way these numbers add up. Consider fact 1 and fact 2. First of all only 1 per cent might actually not be all that easy, let alone 10 per cent. Secondly, the 1 per cent is misleading, as they'll actually have to convert 1 to 10 out of every 15 visitors to encounter the paywall. So they actually have to convert 6 to 66 (!) per cent.

Next, the pricing might be too high. $15 per month is a lot for consumers who are not used to pay for news online, especially since there's no additional value as Mike commented last week. I'm not saying nobody will pay, but dragging in the 6 to 66 per cent of the visitors will be challenging, to say the least.

I cannot imagine this paywall to be successful. They can probably kiss the $40m investment in the development goodbye.

Filed Under: math, paywalls, predictions, subscriptions
Companies: ny times

As Predicted: iPad Magazine Subscriber Numbers Plummeting

from the gee,-who-woulda-thunk-it dept

Right before the iPad launched, we warned media companies that expected iPad apps to be their savior that they were making a mistake. Specifically, it seemed that this was all wishful thinking from publishers, who were hoping to go back to a gated system that they had used for many years. They were betting on restrictions, which is never a good bet. Of course, the early numbers actually sounded good, with many magazines trumpeting how many iPad subscribers they got in the first few months. But, it appears that many people tested out iPad magazines, and then decided they just weren't worth it. Again, this is not a huge surprise. Just a few weeks ago, we again discussed how iPad magazines generally suck, and it was unlikely they were going to have lasting success.

Even so, it's still surprising to see just how dramatic the dropoff has been -- especially in a platform that is apparently still selling like hotcakes. Wired Magazine, which initially appeared to drink the Kool-Aid big time on using iPad apps, now sees less than a quarter the number of buyers that it had when it put out its first iPad issue. Vanity Fair, Glamour, GQ and some others have all seen big declines.

Hopefully this will kill off the dream of just recreating magazines for the iPad, and content providers can focus on creating tools that are actually useful, rather than just on replicating the structure of a magazine in a digital format.

Filed Under: ipad, magazines, media, savior, subscriptions

Hulu Finally Announces Subscription Plans: $10/Month To Still Get Advertisements

from the well-that's-comforting dept

As has been predicted and expected for quite some time, Hulu has finally announced its subscription plans. Let's start with the one thing they got right: unlike some newspaper paywalls and such, they're not technically putting the existing offerings behind this subscription wall. Technically, you can still use Hulu for free the same way you did in the past, but as I explain in a bit, this might not work out in practice. So what do you get for your $10 per month? Well, you get access to the latest full season of shows from ABC, NBC and Fox (co-owners of Hulu). Of course, this isn't exactly a benefit. It just means that, unlike currently, Hulu doesn't delete shows quite as quickly -- a point that had been annoying users of the site. What else do you get? Well, you still get the annoying pre-roll/mid-roll/post-roll commercials, so you're not paying to get rid of those. And... hmm... well, if you pay, Hulu is just slightly less obnoxious about trying to block you from accessing the content on a television (even with a perfectly legitimate setup).

That appears to be it. I'm trying to figure out who thought this was compelling. Basically, for $10/month, Hulu will be slightly less annoying to the average user by not deleting content during the season and maybe kinda sorta letting you access Hulu on your TV if you happen to use the "approved" equipment. Of course, you could also use a system that gets around Hulu's bizarre and pointless TV blocks just as easily, but we'll skip over that for now.

Looks like another lost opportunity. Hulu could have come up with real reasons to buy by actually adding value. Instead, it just focused on being slightly less annoying. Some might not see these as being all that different (doesn't it add value to be less annoying?). That's true, but there is a fundamental difference: anyone can be less annoying without getting people to pay for it. Any business should be striving to be less annoying all the time in their core product. When you set up your subscription service around "we'll be less annoying," you've now given yourself a perverse and dangerous set of incentives. You now have the incentive to be more annoying in your core product in a push to get people to sign up for the less annoying product. Effectively, it's nagware, which may work for some segment of the market, but is not about providing more positive value, but about minimizing negative value. That's not a growth strategy.

Filed Under: business models, hulu, subscriptions, television
Companies: hulu

Forbes Recognizes That There Are Better Business Models Than Pure Advertising

from the about-time dept

We've been making this point for years (and living it with our Insight Community offering), but it appears that other media providers are finally recognizing that there really are other business models than "advertising" or "subscriptions." There's been this theory out there for the longest time that those were the only possible ways to make money in the publication space. Thankfully, it looks like more and more publications are recognizing there are other options as well. A few folks sent over news that Forbes appears to be making the same point, noting that advertising is a commodity, but services are not. Thus, they're launching a "reputation tracker" for companies.

While Jay Rosen was kind enough to compare Forbes' new offering to our Insight Community, I'm not sure it's quite there yet. It looks like Forbes' offering is more just about getting feedback from people, rather than really leveraging the strengths of the community. Frankly, it still amazes me that more media publications don't do more for their community (and in some cases, actively fight their own community). The whole reason media works as a business is because it brings together a community, and then does something with that community. The traditional model was to just sell their eyeballs -- which only gets you so far. I think models that focus on actually using the intelligence in that community to do something useful seems a lot more powerful. Hopefully, Forbes' step in that direction is an indicator that more media publications are realizing there's more to a business model than advertising and subscriptions.

Filed Under: advertising, business models, journalism, services, subscriptions
Companies: forbes

More And More Musicians Embracing Free Music With Subscriptions For Support

from the improvisational-business-modeling dept

mrharrysan sends over the news of musician John Wood who is experimenting with giving away free music, while setting up a subscription to support him, as he creates a new album every month. It's not just a new album, but a pretty cool website called Learning Music Monthly which includes some cool artwork as well (and, hey, the music's pretty good too).

Wood isn't yet making a living from this effort (though, I imagine an Associated Press article won't hurt), but it's cool to see another artist build on some of the ideas we've seen from others -- like Jonathan Coulton's song-a-week project, or Olafur Arnalds song-a-day for a week project -- and then build a subscription offer on top of it, similar to what Matthew Ebel has done with his subscription offering. Basically, what we're seeing is a lot of very creative people experimenting -- not by all doing the same thing, but by trying different things, sometimes inspired by others, sometimes arrived at independently, but all doing something cool.

In many ways, all of this business model experimentation is similar to the kind of experimentation these musicians do in the music itself. That is, they take ideas they have themselves, combine it with ideas inspired from others, and come out with something wholly unique and creative, which best matches with their own community. It's improvisational business modeling.

Filed Under: cwf, john wood, music, rtb, subscriptions

After Three Months, Newsday's Grand Paywall Experiment Has 35 Paying Customers. Yes, 35.

from the no,-really.--35 dept

Like many, we were amazed at the decision by Cablevision to try charging $5 per week (yes, per week) for its paywall to Newsday content online. The newspaper itself is not particularly good and doesn't really provide all that much in the way of excess value compared to what else is out there. And $5/week is extremely high. Yet, even so, we're a bit surprised that after three months, the paper has a grand total of 35 paying subscribers. Yes, 35. I'm sure that extra $175/week comes in quite handy. Oh right, they also saved on the salary of their popular columnist who quit, rather than have his work hidden behind a paywall.

To be fair, Cablevision never really seemed to view this much as a direct source of revenue, but rather as a churn reducer for its cable subscribers, who can get to the Newsday website for free. Still I doubt there are really that many people who decide not to drop their Optimum Cable service just because they get free access to Newsday online. I can't imagine that the $175, in any way, makes up for the drop in visitors and ad revenue. According to multiple online tools, the general estimate is that Newday has lost 50% of its web traffic since putting up the paywall. And in return, they get $175/week. Nice one, Cablevision.

Filed Under: newsday, paywall, subscriptions
Companies: cablevision, newsday

The Act Of Subscribing To A Publication Feels Limiting

from the i-choose-you....-and-no-one-else dept

Gina Chen has written up a fascinating column on her reaction to Nielsen's decision to give up on Editor & Publisher, where she makes a point that I think many people may agree with implicitly, without even realizing it. And, it's a point that any publication that is thinking about putting up a paywall needs to consider. It's that, these days, with the wealth of information available online, subscribing to one publications almost feels like you're limiting yourself. Obviously, that's not directly true. You still have access to those others, but the act of making such a commitment to a single source does have a mental notation suggesting that you need to spend time with that source, at the expense of others:

The truth is, for me, not subscribing -- either in print or online -- has little to do with money. It's about commitment. And I think that's the problem many news organizations are facing as they try to bring their products online.

In the old days, I paid for E&P because if I didn't, I'd have no idea what was going on in the industry. I wasn't paying for news; I was paying for the chance to be in the know in my field.

Things changed with the web. Now, if I choose one magazine to subscribe to out of myriad sources, it feels like I'm limiting my options in a way. I don't want to commit to one publication, one source, one newspaper, one magazine. Why? Because the publication has become less important than the news itself. I want to be free to surf, reading dozens of different newspapers, blogs or magazines that I may visit just once or twice. I enjoy the synchronicity of happening upon a publication I have never heard of and will probably never visit again.

This is, in many ways, related to the concept that rather than finding news, for more and more people, the news finds them. Committing to a single publication, or a small group of publications does feel limiting. Now, some people will obviously disagree, but the more familiar you become with reading multiple sources on the web, the less and less it feels sensible to pay for a limited subset of them. And, even if you don't find that to be true for yourself, the fact is that more and more people do feel that way -- and for anyone trying to build a business model based on getting subscribers, they may find that to be quite difficult for this very reason. It's asking for commitment to a single source in an age where sources are abundant. That commitment is costly not just in money (which might not be very costly) but in the mental commitment needed. For a very large number of people, that commitment is way too costly, no matter what the monetary price.

Filed Under: limitations, subscriptions