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We get a big kick out of picking on the RIAA here at Switched. And with good reason. There are few organizations out there as openly hostile to its customers as this front for the recording industry. When the group isn't busy suing file sharers, it's spreading propaganda and pressuring Congress and universities to crack down on piracy. While we don't approve of illegal activity, the RIAA hasn't earned itself much sympathy, thanks to its combative behavior and regular practices of suing little fish. So we can't help but take a little bit of schadenfreude when we heard that the organization was spending tens of millions of dollars to recover only a fraction of that amount in piracy fees.According to an RIAA-tracking blog called Recording Industry Vs. The People, the industry association dropped an astounding $64 million on legal fees from 2006 though 2008, and only recovered a measly $1.3 million in awards from file sharers. In 2008 alone, it paid roughly $16 million for lawyers and "investigative operations" while pulling in only $391,000 from piracy recovery. There's no reason to believe that the tens of millions of courtroom dollars were only spent on prosecuting pirates, but, since prosecution is one of the RIAA's primary functions, it's safe to assume that a large chunk of that cash went towards finding and suing music thieves. Maybe if record labels weren't paying a largely ineffective organization tens of millions of dollars a year to create a PR nightmare for the music industry, they wouldn't be crying so much about how much money they're not making. [From: Recording Industry Vs. The People, via: Download Squad]
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Comments
22
Subscribe to commentsdickn2000bJul 17th 2010 2:25PM
schadenfreude? Whatever happened to English? It sounds like, pretty soon, no more RIAA!
NINgurl1Jul 17th 2010 3:08PM
Dickn 2000b, there's no English equivalent to schadenfreude. It's German (loosely translated) for 'happiness at the misfortune of others.'
JustinJul 17th 2010 3:19PM
FYI: the English language is already an amalgam. Something like over half of the words we use come from other languages; a few examples being cliche (French... and btw, about 30% of English words come from the French language), burger (German), coliseum (Latin), sky (Norse), boom (Dutch), flounder (Danish), guitar (Spanish), piano (Italian), alcohol (Arabic), horde (Turkish), paprika (Hungarian), mammoth (Russian), chocolate (Nahuatl), schmuck (Yiddish), kamikaze (Japanese), shampoo (Persian/Indian), etc...
Since the English people were a mix of Anglos from Denmark, Saxons from Germany, invading Vikings, local Latin and Celtic peoples, and Normans, who were Vikings that had settled in France, the English language has always been full of loanwords. Plus, whenever there was something we came across that we didn't have a word for, like kamikaze, for example, we borrowed it from a foreign language. Schadenfreude is very much one of those; a uniquely German word...
J.A. SmithJul 17th 2010 2:29PM
If people were stealing products from a Wal-Mart, for example, I doubt there would be any bitterness if they went after the "little fish" who were shoplifting... However, when customers steal intellectual property from musicians, many of which make only a tiny fraction of what giant retailers like Wal-Mart make, they are somehow the bad guys. I'm 27, and I came from the last generation that actually bought music. Now kids think it's owed to them for free, and many of my younger relatives laugh at me when they find out I actually buy my songs on iTunes. They don't realize that they are responsible for destroying the music industry that they think is so weak to begin with. The quality of music is undeniably at an all-time low, but no one ever connects the dots. It at least is partly due to the abysmal record sales. When you can't make money doing it, half of the artists who would've been making music are forced in to doing other things, so they can actually pay the bills. Plus, if you have to rely solely on touring to make money, there's not a whole lot of time left to write new (good) music.
theguitarkidJul 17th 2010 4:44PM
Amen. I am a working musician, and very few of us ever get "rich" off of our music. We practice during the week and work all weekend, and hopefully make enough to pay our mortgage. I am 28, and as you mentioned, proud to be part of the last generation that payed for our music.
wilsman2Jul 17th 2010 8:01PM
The problem with legal downloading and the way that the music industry is presenting it is the cost. They could be making billions if a song cost 10 to 25 cents, instead they charge 2 dollars or more. You get raped for 10 songs. The music industry needs to clean house and bring in new blood at the top. Anyone with an ounce of vision can see that people would be willing to pay for downloads if the cost was reasonable. Currently if a someone wants to fill their MP3 player it would cost thousands, who can afford that? At 10 cents a song you could buy a 1000 songs for $100.00 and be more willing to be continually updating your library. If you add up all those 10 cent songs for every download in america and elsewhere there is lots of money to be made. But instead the record industry spends millions making examples of little girls and college students. They are just so backward in their thinking.
BILLJul 19th 2010 2:52AM
Just wondering J.A. Smith in the time period you are referring to....... are you saying you never made a cassette copy of a album. Say to share with a friend or carry in the car..... or those great mix cassettes or cd's to jam on. Did you pay each musician every time you made a copy. I doubt it so sounds like you are being a bit hypocritical. All that is happening now is sharing a album someone purchased in the first place. This author is saying keep the millions that the RIAA is losing plus the many more millions they are paying them as well. Then use the internet and payment programs to sell tickets instead of paying ticketmaster and livenation plus the conveince fee customers pay. Then you can lower ticket prices and more people can attend shows.
angelcalifJul 17th 2010 3:22PM
Good post J.A. agree. Im from the pay to play generation myself. Oh I have downloaded my share of free tunes. Coughing up outrageous cash for a couple of great tunes on cd.. resulted in generation x'rs & millenials to seek alternative free downloads. Somebody got rich from those sales back in the day anyway and it wasn't the artist. It was the producers and promoters. The media mogul pimps. There is still some great music being made by way too many artists now. There is just no one pimping them because the pimps have had to make cut backs since their greedy little fingers are gettin greased no mo.
No tellin what the future holds for musicians. Great things are still happenin music wise tho. People demand to be entertained now, not just through music but in the show. An Army friend of mine told friends he was gonna see Pink in Nurnberg. We all dissed him. During one number Pink fell from the harness onto a barricade. Now THAT'S entertainment! btw she's ok..just bruised!
MCJul 17th 2010 3:32PM
Todays music is so crappy who would even want to steal any of it. It's so bad they should just give it away for free.
BrandonJul 17th 2010 4:30PM
I'm so sick of "schadenfreude." Everytime I hear it I think of the stupid musical that made it popular. It's actually means "Malicious Joy" rather than the long phrase you people are translating it to.
mikeJul 17th 2010 4:30PM
The invention of the cd killed the music industry for a number of reasons....artist were forced to make a whole cd of songs that usually stunk....by only cutting/releasing one 45, you left the people "wanting" more...and then the anticipation of the release of the album.....radio stations usually had one cut ( a single 45) from an artist that they played it to death and therefore "made" the record a hit....sometime, "less" is "more".
hello ascaJul 17th 2010 4:57PM
maybe they will realize that money would be better spent on trying to find a way to prevent future music theft than these massively financially ineffective lawsuits.
dickn2000bJul 17th 2010 5:10PM
This is for NINgurl1 and Justin: Ningurl1...I am well aware of the definition of schadenfreude. I took German as a required course while working on my Ph.D degrees in electrical engineering and Applied Physics. I am fairly fluent in German. My point was why not just say what you mean instead of trying to be cute about it. AND justin...The English language is an amalgam of other languages...You Think? But hey, thanks for pointing out the obvious. Oh, by the way I also have a Master's degree in anthropology (one of my my minors), with specialties in archaeology and linguistics.
NazzTeaJul 17th 2010 6:19PM
The recording "industry" has always been about making money for the industry, not for the artist. If a band was wildly popular they became millionaires but so did all the A&R and others in their record companies; and those same million (sometimes billion) aires dinked over the lesser artists under contract to them. John Fogerty got messed around with, but not as much as, say, LaVern Baker.
I'd say it's karma for all those bad albums that were put out in the 70's and 80's that you couldn't return unless they were grossly defective (contents not included).
BuzzbyJul 17th 2010 6:52PM
I don't know why the industry didn't have fits back in the day when people had cassette tape recorders and would record music right off the radio. And stores even sold tape to tape copiers built right into the boom box. If someone bought a cassette, they could make copies and pass them out to friends. I don't remember any complaints or even a peep back then about this. I attempted to do it the legitimate way by purchasing from I- Tunes. However, when I got a new computer, I couldn't move the songs onto my new computer. I couldn't even copy them onto a CD to play in my car. I bought the songs, but could only listen to them on my old computer (which I wanted to get rid of) or Ipod. Now they let you copy it on 3 computers. Big deal. What happens in ten years when I'm on my fourth new computer? And I don't think you can copy them to a CD to take in the car. Why should I pay over a dollar for one song and then be limited where I can play it? Stuff like that is why the file sharing still continues.
RobwayzJul 17th 2010 7:09PM
The reason that record companies didn't get too irritated when you made copies of recordings on cassettes is because the price of every blank cassette included a "royalty tax" imposed by the RIAA. This fee was also imposed on DAT recorders as a way to recover lost revenue by record companies and artists. The same is not imposed on blank computer media as it is difficult to determine if the media is going to be used for data or music but if you remember a few years ago when blank CDs for music were marketed, they contained a royalty to RIAA.
LIVE FREEAug 4th 2010 11:06PM
Very well stated !!!
roznessJul 17th 2010 7:03PM
I worked in the Recording Industry for almost 30 years. It is amazing how many companies would never survive a "real" audit! Royalties were never really paid to artists, song writers, publishers, etc. It was a "cash" and "perks" business. The creative people in the early days got the shaft when it came to royalties. They were given "advances" against "royalties" but rarely saw an accurate royalty statement and could never get a correct one because the royalty departments were grossly
under paid people who rarely really understood the points in an artist or writer's contract. Companies who were sued, usually "settled" out of court and artists
were happy to see any money at all. The industry as a whole, was arrogant and thught they could buy anyone. Technology got way ahead of the suits and they
have yet to catch up. I can't cry for the RIAA, ony for the artists and writers who never got their fare share of all the money that was flung around at CEOs, CFOs,
disc jockeys and hookers.
WhiskeyJul 17th 2010 8:29PM
Good Lord... That kind of money for those kind of results? Anyone for the RIAA out there... If you need another attorney, give me a shout. I'll cut you a deal: $1,000.00 an hour and I'll even return 1 out of every 10 phone calls you make... That's if I have time between downloading songs off of Frostwire and burning CDs.
dickn2000bJul 17th 2010 9:21PM
And this is for Tom Hill who has seen fit to call me an asshole, which seems to have gotten past Switched's censors (if any). Tom ol' boy I'll say this to you in a language you seem to be familiar with: You can bend way over and kiss my fat, red, Irish ass, you ignorant, rednecked trailer trash cretin.