DISQUS

I was there when Seymour was speaking and to be fair to him, to frame it against the context of his speech, he was wistfully observing the cyclical nature of things, and reminding the audience that the precursor of the major label was as a hardware manufacturer. And since they required content, they inevitably moved into the content business too. And here we are again, with Apple starting off with hardware and moving into music. And yes, it is wishful thinking on Seymour's part, but that was all it was....not an analysis of the majors' recent follies

An examination of the iTunesless situation in China can be read here: iTunesless iPod Faces Music Piracy in China (http://www.music2dot0.com/archives/113)

Matt, agree with you here. As Sandoval has conceded that labels only manage to achieve profitably with roughly 5% or less of their roster, surely something is wrong with the way they manage the rest of it? And this is a business model that we should be aspiring to?
It's time that labels are more discerning in what they want to achieve in a focused manner and also in terms of marketing, be more focused on niches and the Long Tail instead of a scattergun approach

I just added a few more quotes below from Gene Simmons interview for context- basically, he meant that the record industry messed up in the first place, though I disagree that suing everyone off the face of the earth was the solution.
But now that the deed is done, the next best solution might have already been suggested by Simmons when he stated that up to a million might be put out of work - yeah, maybe all these dinosaurs might need to make way for fresh minds and thinking to better utilize the opportunities presented by the digital world. We've already lost 7 years with little progress. Mp3.com was sued in 2000 and now, mp3tunes.com with an updated model faces the same fate.

Gene Simmons:
"The record industry is in such a mess...
There is nothing in me that wants to go in there and do new music. How are you going to deliver it? How are you going to get paid for it if people can just get it for free?.....
The record industry doesn't have a f*cking clue how to make money. It's only their fault for letting foxes get into the henhouse and then wondering why there's no eggs or chickens. Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid's face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there in the beginning. Those kids are putting 100,000 to a million people out of work."

Robert, for a leader of the blogging community, it is disappointing that you have a childish, one-dimensional response,
"NASDAQ should delist Baidu immediately in retaliation, if this is true. The USA should pull out of the Olympics next year. China is counting on that to make a ton of great PR and make China look like a world leader (which it is, but things like this set it way back in my mind). We shouldn’t enable the American media to be used with the Olympics if this turns out to be true."

1) “"NASDAQ should delist Baidu immediately in retaliation”. And exactly for what crime? NASDAQ has not de-listed Baidu for the more obvious crimes of blatant massive copyright infringement with it’s direct mp3 access machinations, and with American interests including Goldman Sachs involved, the duplicities are apparent.

2) “The USA should pull out of the Olympics next year….. We shouldn’t enable the American media to be used with the Olympics if this turns out to be true”
Every wrong (or perceived wrong) by China has an obvious response with no sense of perspective whatsoever– boycott the Olympics. What a spoilt brat kind of response is that? The Olympics has simply turned out to be a stick to hit China with to make other nations force China to carry out their whims.

3) “China is counting on that to make a ton of great PR and make China look like a world leader (which it is, but things like this set it way back in my mind).”
We all know that George Bush undertook a great PR and political stunt this week by giving China an obvious slap in the face. Why is it that I’m not expecting to see other world religion leaders feted equally and queing up to receive their Congressional Medals of honor. An obviously politically motivated act will be met with an equally political response, and I’m going to sit out that one, but we all know that politics can get ugly.

I work in China, and have been greatly inconvenienced by the numerous internet access problems not all of which I agree to, but please do have a sense of perspective and listen to more voices than that of Rebecca McKinnon and Global Voices Online who with all due respect, have their accompanying viewpoints as their functions and roles dictate. Comments like the following are just broad brushstrokes that do not befit the status of a respected Scoble blog. “This is a reminder that China is a communist country where the people aren’t really allowed to own things and where businesses don’t really need to play fair.”

I think that sometimes the debate about the bit rate of the Radiohead downloads is misplaced. iTunes has been distributing 128kbps quality tracks for ages which the market in general was accepting, and Radiohead decided that the time was right to up the bitrate to 160kbps. Of course as stated on this blog, there are the obvious dissenters but surely that responsibility cannot be placed on Radiohead's shoulders alone - they have done enough to bring the evolution of music distribution to another level and it is surely the responsibility of all the others in the space to step up. Russia's allofmp3.com already carried the mantle of being the most sophisticated online music store in the world with its breathtaking range of formats - here was a forward looking store that innovated by investing some of their so-called ill-gotten gains (this piece is not about the rights and wrongs of allofmp3.com and I'm not getting into that either) into consumer-friendly service and yet, not one of the major prominent online retail stores saw it fit to adopt some of these features and product formats that allofmp3.com introduced. And surely it is too much to ask of Radiohead to pander to everyone's varied tastes at first time of asking - they are still basically a band first, and in time, I'm sure their retail offering will evolve. After all, as Jonny Greenwood stated in an interivew (http://gothamist.com/2007/10/10/jonny_greenwood...), their 160kbps has already raised the bar "We talked about it and we just wanted to make it a bit better than iTunes, which it is, so that's kind of good enough, really. It's never going to be CD quality, because that's what CD does."
So the gauntlet should be laid at the feet of the iTunes, Yahoos, Napsters, Rhapsodys and all other retail store pretenders, it's about time to wake up and offer more to consumers, as Ian Rogers of Yahoo Music stated in his now famous blog at http://www.fistfulayen.com/blog/?p=127 .

For more about this development in the light of Radiohead and statements by EMI's and Yahoo's respective chiefs, you can read it at http://www.music2dot0.com/archives/58.

Despite the preponderance of the internet, a good CD distribution network is still needed to reach fans who do not have access to or are averse to the digital medium. Thom Yorke himself did mention in an NYT interview that "The truth is that the traditional medium is still there, and you need it". So in the Darwinian scheme of things, we have to be thankful that at least progress has been made with Radiohead's recent exercise but an overnight radical change in habits might be too much to expect.

Music2dot0.com (http://www.music2dot0.com/archives/47 )has found out that the pitch is happening this weekend with the following as the main contenders:

1) ATO or Side One Recordings - Billboard and Hits considers them a front runner for the deal, with the common thread of Coran Capshaw owner of Red Light Management who also co-owns both ATO and Side One Recordings.

2) EMI - after 6 albums with Radiohead, of course they would try to be in the running for at least distribution outside of the US, though one wonders how much of a negative contributory factor they were in pushing Radiohead to strike out on their own.

3) Warner - has been faithfully flogging the dead horse trying to get Radiohead on their books since the latter’s early EMI days, so they would seem to be simply making up the numbers on this pitch

4) XL Recordings/ Beggars - They are not only in the running despite not having been mentioned anywhere else, but Music2dot0 also feels that this is the darkhorse of the lot - not just due to their pro-artist philosophy but also the fact that this is the home of Thom Yorke’s Eraser solo album.

If Radiohead is looking to further their innnovative approach, they would be well off considering the two independents, but if they were simply looking for a brute force functional distribution deal devoid of creative ideas - ideas which Radiohead have already shown great aptitude for - the two majors would certainly be suited for it.