Why are record companies so thick?

[granny]

Just read a couple of articles on the Reg, basically saying that at some point in the not-so-distant future all music CD's will have some form of copy protection on which will most likely have the side effect of stopping them from being played in (possibly) car stereos, PC cd drives, CD walkmans and certainly stop you copying them onto MD or your MP3 player.

I mean ffs, why would I want to buy a CD that was so restricted in use? If that was the case it would be *easier* for me to download the album in question using kazaa, winMX, whatever, and then burn it onto a CD myself to play in the car or copy directly onto an MP3 player or MD.

Whatever copy protection they come up with it'll get cracked. Instantly. Why can't they see they're going in completely the wrong direction to safeguard their own future?? Makes me despair, it really does :/

 

[prime1]

I was jsut reading that article before i logged on the forums, the response from EMI is classic, they arnt even trying to hide the fact that they hate customers.

The guy emaisl to complain that the genuine music CD he has bought, wont work on his nromal (non pc) music player.

They accuse him of being a pirate, tell him not to bother complaining about copy protection in the future, "because its here to stay"

I write email response as part of my job, i thought i could be harsh at timtes, but this takes the piss.

 

[dysfunction]

Well I just hope their sales plummit due to the implementation of their "security" devices on the CD's!!

It would be a good thing to see them wasting their money with these stupid efforts!

 

[whipped]

Yesterday's User Friendly probaby sums it up.

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20021110

 

[TedTheDog]

CD sales are down 25% or so, and its easier for them to blame an external source than the fact that they've completety failed to sign-up new talent.
If the record industry needs to know what the problem is, they should just sit down and watch TV in the evenings, and seriously consider if all these manufactored bands are really good for music sales. I cant believe they are.
But if I was greedy fuckwit record company boss I wouldnt want to blame myself, I'd jump at the chance of a scapegoat.

I dont doubt that music piracy impacts them in some way, but I also dont doubt that the music industry is using this as an excuse, not only to hide their own incompetance, but also to give them better tools and legislation to profit from in the future.

I wonder what bands think?
Do they want success, riches and universal appeal, or do they want an artificially restricted audience that resents the medium within which their music is "sold" ("rented" would be more accurate in the future I suspect).
I'm pretty damn sure that making music unplayable on a multitude of devices will actually encourage people to copy the music, if only to get the music into a usable format.

 

[MYstIC G]

To be honest I think it all boils down to this

"The public don't give a shit when multi millionares cry about losing income"

The End

 

[Insane]

Originally posted by TedTheDog
I believe they are greedy company boss myself, I'd jump at the scapegoat.
I wonder what they want, riches and appeal, or do they want a restricted audience which their soul is "sold" ("rented" would be more accurate in the future I suspect).
I'm pretty damn sure that making it unplayable on a multitude will actually encourage people to get into a forum.

Aha! we now know TTD's secret plot for Barrysworld!

(sorry for the bastardisation of your quote Ted, it looked funny when i started... )

going back on topic...

the music company are just alienating a lot of buyers now, especially since most new cars come with in-car CD players, or equivilant. they must not have realised the impact of what they are doing with this (most houses now have one computer minimum, how many kids would play their CDs through that when they are doing something like coursework or *cough* surfing the web *cough* )

my useless point is now done

 

[prime1]

i reckon piracy actually has very little effect on them at all, ultimately if someone is going to buy somethign they will, there are some people who will never buy something, and so if they pirate soemthing, it hasnt had an affect on anything, its certainly not a lost sale.

If piracy was somehow "stopped" overnight, record company profits would be unaffacted, in fact they may even fall, as many people use mp3s as a try before you buy, or a means of getting lesser known bands music spread around for more people to hear.

The fact we are in an econmimc down turn and that the music they are churning out is getting shitter and shitter explains enitrely whey thier profits are falling.

 

[Wij]

Buy tapes ppl !

 

[Trem]

I've had a couple of Sony protected cd's before(Arid being the most recent), whizzed in on my Plextor scsi reader no problems at all. Don't worry all will be well.

 

[nath]

IIRC:

According to phillips (the owner of the Compact Disc patent) has said that Sony are not allowed to label their new fangled copy protected disc's "CD's" because they aren't, they don't fall under the same category. Hopefully this will set a nice dividing line, thus you'll know that if you buy a compact disc, it will play in your cd player.

Actually, I heard of someone playing one of those new copy protected cd's in an apple mac (the new lamp post one) and it wouldnt eject. As a result, when the mac booted up, it tried to read the cd to load boot info and it didn't work. Voila, fucked up mac.

Apple told the guy to fuck off because he put dodgy media (i.e. something that technically isn't a cd) in his drive, thus his problem.

N1 Sony thx!!

(iirc)

 

[Lester]

h4x0r ffs!!111

 

[Scooba Da Bass]

A 25% drop is total bollocks, the figure is closer to 6% tops.

To blame totally the record companies is as stupid as blaming entirely file sharing. Factors; The era of massively popular boy/girl bands is over, 2001 (and by extension 2002) have been the first years for ages that a major boy band haven't released an album. When the biggest selling artists generally appeal to a less computer savvy audience the more copies of an album are sold. In contrast last year the biggest selling artists in the US were Linkin Park, a band who have a larger appeal to the traditional computer savvy market than artists like Westlife, who sold about 5 million copies. The FBI estimated that 4 million copies had been downloaded.

 

[Sar]

Personally I think sales are down because most (ooh say 90%) of music foisted upon the public by record companies is in fact complete and utter bollocks.

/wonders where the fuck Metallica have got to in all this...

 

[(Shovel)]

It makes me laugh so much. My CD player is my computer. I don't own a separate system. I have all my legal CDs in 320 kbps MP3 format running through WinAmp.

As soon as these Copy Protected CDs become the norm. the only way I will be able to listen to music is to download it from someone that has cracked the technology. It's absolutely hilarious.

 

[Sar]

Both the Ep 2 Soundtrack, and the Spiderman Soundtrack both copied for me nps. Music protection is bollocks. And if I ever come across one that won't copy I'll take it back for a refund, quite rightly stating that it doesn't work.

 

[(Shovel)]

I'm just going to have a preprepared letter to "Dear Mr Record Company" explaining my situation and reminding them how fucking stupid thier idea is.

Naturally I will send it without the obvious address givaway. Since they will immediately brand me a pirate.

 

[Nozzer]

If I can't listen to CDs I buy in my car/walkman/whatever, I'm going to be a lot more likely to pirate music so I can.

Good one big-wigs.

 

[Krazeh]

It'd help if they didn't try selling albums for vastly overinflated prices, not a lot of people want to be paying 16-17 quid for an album when they only really want a few tracks off the cd.

 

[stu]

I think a major contribution factor might be that there's simply more competing for young-people's cash nowadays. If you discount the Woolworth's brigade for a second (whose only real long term buying profile is 'whatever shite is out'), I'd suggest a big cut of the recurrent profits made are from the young-person enthusiast bracket. The kind of person that now also has things like DVDs and PS2 games to spend their cash on.