Tom Doyle

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Posts Tagged Music industry

RIAA win $1.92m from filesharer

Jun 23

Posted by Tom Doyle in Music

Image representing RIAA, Recording Industry As...
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It’s no wonder the RIAA continue to their shameless strategy of targeting small-time illegal filesharers.

When they are making $1.92m from a mother of four who was caught sharing sharing files to a firm working on behalf of the RIAA, there’s certainly no other way of making this sort of money, that easily.

More here – http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/19/copyright_victory_rich/

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TuneCore and Amazon Join Forces

May 27

Posted by Tom Doyle in Internet & Computers, Music

I’ve been harping on for sometime about the fact that music industry doesn’t focus enough attention on utilising the web as a means to increase revenues from sales of their recordings. They seem hell-bent on chasing individual music downloaders and ISPs in order to stop them from sharing music illegally.

For the first time ever, we seem to have one innovative idea ready to roll online in a joint venture between one of the Internets leading websites and an indepent record label.

Amazon and TuneCore have got together to offer a CD-Pressing service on demand. What this means is that an artist can create an account on TuneCore.com at a cost of $20 per annum, upload their music at 99 cents per track and instantly have the ability to sell their records online.

Amazon will sell physical copies of the artists music in return for 60% of the sale price.To some not involved in the music industry this sounds like quite a large chunk of revenue gone from the artists pocket. However most newly signed artists would be lucky to get that sort of % deal with a large record company.

I certainly don’t think this is going to solve all the issues with the illegal downloading of music, but at least it’s innovative – a lot more than what the larger record companies and music rights organisations seem to want to do.

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No music videos for UK YouTube users

Mar 11

Posted by Tom Doyle in Internet & Computers, Music, Rantings

YouTube, LLC
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Every executive in the music industry should be ashamed of themselves. It seems every day that goes by they get more ridiculous about this new thing – the Internet.

They probably all still sit around a desk with a pile of paper, with not a computer in sight. They’re main aim in life is to fight desperately to hold onto their crumbling piles of money. In the meantime they miss out on the opportunity to use the most powerful medium the world has ever seen to help grow their empire. That medium is the Internet. Yes I know I have said it many times here, but their ignorance to it continues to drive me insane.

I’m a musician and believe it’s only right that people pay for the use of any material I create. However, after working in the Internet industry for more than 10 years, I can see how beneficial the Internet could be to any existing artist or upcoming artist.

New artists dreamed of ways of getting their music in front of the masses for as little money as possible, in the early days, rock legends Metallica used to be happy for their fans to make bootlegged cassette tapes and give it to their friends, as it was a way to promote their music without paying any money. Now however, that is a different story altogether, they don’t like the Internet because it’s eating into record sales. Yet, they and their record industry bosses believe the only way to fight it was to bring lawsuits and prevent people accessing certain websites. For god sake – remember you all thought tape recordings were going to kill the industry???

For me it’s simple, if I could get my work out to millions of users through a FREE medium that promoted my work, I would personally see it as a God sent. The knock on effect to my music career would be immense and set me on a career for life.

Records bosses and bodies such as IRMA and the PRS feel that the only way to tackle the growing number of illegal downloads that is eating away at their bottom line, is to become censors or just be greedy.

In Ireland we have IRMA who have an agreement with Eircom to block any sites they want, which led to the start of the organistation BlackoutIreland.com and now in the UK we have the greedy PRS who want YouTube to pay them an “economically unsustainable” amount of money to be licensed to play their music. So pretty soon those poor souls in the UK won’t be able to view music videos through YouTube.

What a sad sad day…. Please grow up Record Industry and get with the times……

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Music Industry take note… How to increase record sales by 800%

Feb 24

Posted by Tom Doyle in Music

Music is something close to my heart, I studied it in college and always felt my destiny was to work in the Music Industry at some stage of my life. I still have those aspirations, but need to get other things up and running first.

I have to admit though that my respect for Music Industry bosses has diminished since the introduction of the web and the advent of “illegal downloading”. I have yet to see any record company face this head on and be innovative in how they can turn their sales figures around. Record companies seem to think the legal route is the only way they can stop this wave of “Boot Legged” music. But quite frankly, it’s not.

Most people in my age group can remember Boot Leg tapes that were on sale on every corner in Dublin City Centre, but most real music fans, those that bought music, tended not to bother with Boot Leg tapes.

Why? Well for me owning a copied tape was never the same as having the original recording. Others will say it was all about the quality, but that’s not an argument anymore unless you have a really good ear for music as most MP3s sound exactly the same as the original.

The bottom line for me is if I hear an album that I like, I’ll go out and buy it, it’s as simple as that. When was the last time I actually bought an album? Late last year. Why haven’t I bought anything since? Basically, there’s nothing worth buying anymore. The lack of truly great albums on the market is shocking. But that’s another days work altogether.

There are so many ways record companies could increase sales if they embraced it as a marketing tool and not treat it as an enemy. For example, Blip.fm – make sure all you tracks are on sites like this so everyone can hear them. But that’s me thinking for 5 minutes. How much do they pay their marketing guys who are clearly missing this channel.

Sky News had an interesting report this morning about games like Guitar Hero. They suggested that if an artist has their track on one of these games, sales are likely to increase by as much as 800%. The theory around it makes so much sense. With game sales being bigger than record sales now, the tracks are being played to people who generally wouldn’t listen to their genre of music and in turn they are gaining new music fans.

If I think back to when I started using the web for music, there was one band who grew in popularity nearly overnight because of the Internet.

I was playing a game of Unreal Tournament when someone suggested I have a listen to a band called Limp Bizkit. At this time, you couldn’t get their records in Ireland, so I had to go and download a copy of their album. I was instantly hooked.

And guess what? I bought all their albums thereafter. OK bad decision on my behalf in the end, but none-the-less – if it wasn’t for the Internet, I probably would never have heard of them until they were in the mainstream and at that stage, I wouldn’t have been interested in them anyway!

So music industry, it’s time to stop wasting your time trying to ban downloads. Focus your efforts on how you can use the web to promote your acts – it’s the most powerful medium available to us today!

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Eircoms new deal will put innocent surfers at risk

Feb 3

Posted by Tom Doyle in Internet & Computers, Rantings

eircom Group plc.
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There’s been great debate going on over at Boards.ie about the agreement made between Eircom and IRMA to tackle illegal music and movie piracy on their broadband network. Read more here

A few great points have been made and one that has risen it’s head most of the time is the one about Eircoms extremely poor security hole.

There is a reference to a blog post I made sometime ago, when I mentioned that it seems Eircom don’t seem to care about their little security hole that allows their wireless routers to be hacked in seconds. I suggested that Eircom have done little to sort out this security flaw other than release a nice press release telling their clients that they should update their router settings. It was suggested in this post that they did more than this and also sent a letter to each subscriber. Well all I can say to that is that they must have missed my whole family and friends, because of all the people I know, not one of them received this letter. Anyway, that’s another days work.

Let’s look at the situation and the agreement in place between Eircom and IRMA at the moment. Eircom have agreed to disconnect any user who had been found to be downloading illegally through their networks. The users will not be outed by Eircom and their will be no detection or filtering software provided by Eircom. It will be up to IRMA to supply the information on those pirates to Eircom. Warnings will be issued by Eircom to the offending pirates if they are found to be downloading illegal music.

Now, that’s all well and good if Eircom can categorically say that their wireless routers can not be breached, but the sad thing is, they can easily be. I’d suggest that you all take a minute to do a test here – but I’d probably get done for inciting people to break the law. But if you want to try at your own peril, go off and download Damo’s WEP Tool - when installed, go looking for an Eircom connection. I guarantee you that it won’t be long before you find an Eircom connection that is easily hacked and then you will have free Internet access (illegally I might add) to do what you like.

So let’s turn that scenario around to that poor sole who knows little about the Internet, someone who constantly refers to the Internet as “on the website”. These are the people I feel really sorry for. They would never in their lifetime cop on that they have been compromised or that someone is sitting outside in their car downloading the latest series of Lost from their broadband connection. Yet, potentially, these are the poor sods who could have their broadband disconnected for illegally downloading music/movies.

Maybe Eircom know bizarre the whole situation is and were happy to make that agreement with IRMA who clearly don’t seem to understand the Internet and how it works.

That brings up another point though, I’ve always said it and will say it again. The music industry needs to take a serious look at their business model. The current one obviously isn’t working anymore, so they need to be a bit more creative now rather than just sitting on their bums like they did in the past. Targeting little kids or innocent broadband users is not the way to get their business back together.

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