RIAA Sues 12yr Old Girl

It's so intertwined. Metallica may have their own "label" - for artistic and financial reasons (don't know if thats true or not) but Electra may be their source of distribution. A lot of big artists have their own labels, but larger record companies still back them.

The record companies - indie and large, rely on a small number of artists to bring in the money. But in turn those artists' on large labels get demanding (I told you ****it, if you don't bring in my favorite Sushi chef from that Japanese 30 star hotel in Tokyo, I will not play tonight! - kind of stuff.) It's true, most artist's don't make beaucoup dollars being signed. The smart ones do (or the ones with good lawyers that read the contracts.)
Now as far as cribs go, I don't think that stuff is on loan. Even crappy, no talent artists like 50 cent are millionaires from a few hits. Now they have to either maintain hits or take a closer look at reality before their "livin' large" lifestyle goes to "livin in hiding" from debt collectors.
If you want my opinion, the owners of those successful labels are multi millionaires and they don't get it from selling cd's at $5.00 a pop. They can afford to lower the cost of cd's and start thinking about increased volume in sales. The last time I checked discmakers was charging less than $1600 US for a thousand cd's. That equals $1.60 each. Now the more cd's you print the lower the cost. So if you are printing around $100,000 cd's at your own plant (which some of the large companies have - like Sony) then your cost goes WAY down. So from $0.50 to $20.00, where are the profits going? Your average joe smoe artist signed is probably getting about $2.00 out of that cd, if on a large label. Now if you are getting hits, then they will increase those numbers to keep you signed, and there are people in the middle collecting off that as well - producer's, engineers, managers, etc.
So yes the artist IS going to lose money because they rely on those sales to keep them in the game. Unless you get big, then you get ads, clothes and all that other crap to pay your way. But you have to realise most artists signed to a major label get a "credit" to get their product out. As long as they make money, then the label is happy, if you don't, then you owe it back. That is a typical kind of case.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Pganguly

Exaactly, and they haven't been. I mean, when did CD's come out?1985? Who the eff nowadays plans on creating a media storage device that they intend to be unchanged for the next 2 decades? Moore's Law, people, Moore's Law... [/CODE]

Yo I don't think it's about the new media storage because they could easily covert CD tracks on DVD for more songs etc. From where I saw from TVs etc. In some point of the future everything is going to be stored online, I know it sound a little absurd because all human history have been record through some kind of physical material. But if you just think about it, Online education, maybe all the students in the future just sit in the home browsing online on their virtual textbook, etc while they can also download music, video in seconds, even watch TV on the computer, and blah blah........ :D

all i can say is ... wtf.

wtf indeed.

Everybody brings up some good points.

But for one, If I were a band I wouldn't want people trading my songs over the internet, because for one thats almost like copyright fraud and another your loosing a **** load of money. If I were a 24 years musician playing for a band, and people baught half of what I sold last year I would be piss. Because one, the paycheck has just been cut in half, and over periods of time the price check grows lower and lower.

And also for people who do download music of off programs such as KaZaa, Morpheus, and imesh, just turn the damn sharing filter off. This way while your able to download songs of the internet go crazy and do so, because for long you wont have this option. If your sharing if off, theirs no way in hell that anyone can find you. So go nuts and download.

Also, people saying that they cant stop us from sharing their songs... think again. People who have KaZaa may realize that some of their songs that they download dont fully work, because the companys are putting hidden things on the cd's and when copied to your computer and shared a buzz will interupt the song, or some sort of noice. That has happened to me a lot. And once technology increases these people will find more creative ways stopping people from coping their music onto a computer and sharing them, and in the process loosing a lot of money.

Copy Protection on mp3s are just like anything. It can be cracked. So maybe you won't be able to just rip the mp3s, if that happens,then Stream Rips will become available therefore ripping a song while your listening to it and not ripping it from the cd. There will always most likely be a way around everything. Pirating has been around for decades. It's like the war on drugs,it really can't be stopped.

Eye,did you read above. Bands don't get **** from cds,only 1-2 dollars at most, and if you have to divide that within 3+ people they don't make nothing off the albums. It's touring and merchandise where they make their money. IF cd's no longer can make money,wich wont be for a very long time, then you know what, they will have to change the way they get their money. Maybe bands could throw their mp3s online, and then start touring and make money and cut out the greedy people who are only out to use bands to make more money then the band themselves.

Oh yea one last thing...they can't stop 10 million+ KNOWN people,thats an obscene amount of money to spend on lawyers for every case.. Heh just imagine all the people they don't know about?

If you are using Kazaa, they can find you whether you are sharing or not, as far as I know. You are still using the network, and they still have your IP address.

But like others said, they will never stop it. There will always be IRC and FTP like there has been for years, plus all of the lesser known networks.

But I'm sure these law suits will stop some people. The casual downloaders that don't really know much about it. It's pretty mainstream right now, and perhaps if the law suits scare some people, it will at least be underground again, rather than mainstream with everyone doing it "Because I can download it for free, why buy it?".

I think they'll give up after they realize that suing people is pointless and they can't catch everyone. Record companies need to invest more money in the quality of the cd than into paying lawyers.

Deker you said:

"I'm not in a band anymore, but I didn't care if people traded our songs on the internet. I'd be happy if they did actually. And so would every other musician I've ever talked to."

Unless you and your friends have a big ass money tree in your front yard you have to be kidding me.

If people were trading your songs on the net to about 1 million users and you did not get anything from that and could stay happy that way then create some graphics for me for FREE for a few of my clients.

Realize what your saying bro.

-Zwarte