Panorama: Are the net police coming for you?

[dhicks]

Last time I knew any representative numbers (given that was a three or four years ago now), artists/bands didn't often receive more than about 10% of revenue generated from sales.

Exactly - so now bands can cut out all the excess and simply sell direct to the public via a website.

--
David Hicks

[andyturpie]

The programme was a tad embarrassing to say the least and every time that Timms MP fella came on it, he gave me the creeps.

I have no sympathies with the music and film industries as they have not moved with the times. As im a vinyl collector, I love my old dance 12"s for the artwork and the physical look of the item (and for the analogue sound but thats another arguement lol). The same goes for the old cassette and CD theres always been a physical media and feel as if your getting something for your money.

I feel MP3's etc cannot be related to as a physical item hence why humans cannot relate to audio file=pay for it.

Imagine paying something in the region of £31,600 just to fill your Ipod classic 160gb There is also the solid proof that downloaders spend twice as much as people who don't.

The poor old musicians need to realise that making music maybe is not a viable way anymore to put food on the table and pay the mortgage, just as the same happened to the miners and shipbuilders in the eighties

and even if this bill is brought in, if the torrent sites cannot be used, people will just mail external HDD's with collections onto each other via the postal system...That until the postal system gets the blame for Lily Allen not being able to meet her monthly mortgage repayments.

Until then, I will keep buying my oldskool 12" vinyls.

PS here is a thought - If certain companies wish to sue individuals for illegally downloading their material, should we have a right to sue these companies who enforce their drivel on our eardrums with out our consent??

Cheeribye

[patty04]

Even if you loved it, as in, music was all you've ever wanted to create and devote your life to because nothing else gives you the same pleasure and feeling of sharing and achievement, would you do it for just 2p per song?

Even at 2p you get 10,000 downloads that £20,000 alone on one song being downloaded. then they release more songs they get more from them sales then they have gigs on top which they get paid a fair bit i say.

to many artists live outside their budgets.

[Domino]

Even at 2p you get 10,000 downloads that £20,000 alone on one song being downloaded. then they release more songs they get more from them sales then they have gigs on top which they get paid a fair bit i say.

to many artists live outside their budgets.

Er - maybe for lady gaga or similar, but do you realise what the average rock band gets from a gig?

somewhere between little and nothing once the tour manager, promoter, sound and tour crew, not to mention record company have taken their share.

And you're assuming that iTunes or however takes nothing of that. and the distributor.

[tech_guy]

Do you remember the really gritty, pithy journalism on Panorama back in the 70s and 80s? Wtf happened?! And World in Action, remember that? Excellent program that was as well back in the 70s and 80s - some excellent journalism.I remember my parents letting me stay up to watch both in the 70s as they wanted to let me see the world as it was, warts and all.

[mattx]

Do you remember the really gritty, pithy journalism on Panorama back in the 70s and 80s? Wtf happened?! And World in Action, remember that? Excellent program that was as well back in the 70s and 80s - some excellent journalism.I remember my parents letting me stay up to watch both in the 70s as they wanted to let me see the world as it was, warts and all.

I've got a World In Action DVD somewhere at home with some classics on.
Panorama was good back in the 80's - now they get some pillock with a cheap OB unit and away they go. And with that whiney moron Jeremy Vine - it's reminds me more of a Fox News / The Day Today / Sky News car crash viewing.

[tech_guy]

Goldfish journalism I call it.

[jamesb]

Even at 2p you get 10,000 downloads that £20,000 alone on one song being downloaded. then they release more songs they get more from them sales then they have gigs on top which they get paid a fair bit i say.

to many artists live outside their budgets.

If you ever open a bank, I want an account.

At 2p on 10 000 downloads you get £200. Minus taxes you get maybe £150. For a small band of three members, that's £50 each. Now assuming that this is a full time job, and that you're very lucky and get 10 000 downloads of each song you release per year, that's £50 per song per year, so you only need to release 400 songs a year for a reasonable return.

That's only 33 a month. Easy!

So long as you spend nothing on publicity. Even at 20p per download, you're still going to struggle, and this is for bands who get a lot of downloads.

[thedogswassits]

i welcome this law, i download alot but what interests me about this law is that if ur isp knows u are downloading and can stop you then surely i can sue them for allowing malicious viruses through. the government is putting this law in place to make us buy music n movies ect so they can tax us 4 it but it means your isp is admitting it can control content and because of this it can also control the fraudsters and now make the isp liable so bring it on and let the legal battle commence.

[andyturpie]

Seems like the goverment are hell bent on this, more hell bent than protecting children on line?

[srochford]

it means your isp is admitting it can control content and because of this it can also control the fraudsters and now make the isp liable so bring it on and let the legal battle commence.

I think this is what the lawyers call a "non-sequitur" - ie just because the ISP can detect particular kinds of traffic does not mean it can detect and block all kinds of traffic.

Given that very many people with current virus scanners can't detect some viruses I suspect there's little hope of any ISP being able to block the bad guys.

That doesn't mean that they couldn't do more than they do but I don't think you'd have much chance of winning a law suit against your ISP because they let viruses through but please don't let that stop you - I reckon you could make some lawyers very rich while you try :-)

[localzuk]

The law is poorly conceived, poorly written and, as with most laws in the UK of late, will be executed poorly.

[Edu-IT]

I had to laugh at this program, or more so at the professionals, who seem to come up with only screengrabs of torrents. Oh, wow, so much investigating there! Kids should have made it more difficult by deleting the stuff from the uTorrent, at least they would have had to do some work then.

[Jon]

The music industry are never happy it seems,

For as long as I can remember (1970's) they have been banging on about how piracy is ruining their income.

At first it was the increase in sales of blank cassette tapes (remember those?) they were convinced that these were going to sap all income from record sales, either by people recording the top 40 from the radio on a Sunday afternoon, or simple recording their LP's and sharing them with their mates.

They were so paranoid about this that they lobbied government for a tax to be levied on each blank cassette sale.

The next thing was DAT this was only invented, they said, to enable people to pirate music.

After that it was of course the recordable CD that was to bring forward their downfall.

And so it goes on now with illegal MP3 downloading ... Despite all of this for the last 40 years the music industry has done pretty well for itself.

I think that the current crisis is brought about my music industry figures such as Simon Cowell and his ilk. It seems that at the moment to become a successful artist you have to be "discovered" by one of them on some reality TV show ... If they spent more time, as used to happen, scouting out raw talent from small gigs in pubs etc. and then promoting them I feel that the music industry would once again become as relevant and essential as it used to be back in the day.

[jamesb]

Just had a thought. Streaming doesn't work since they can't get enough money for it. A subscription service for the hardcore fans doesn't work as most fans don't care about the extra content they get from this.

So, what about a service whereby you could charge £1 a month, or £12 a year, or some similar amount, to 'sponsor' a band. In return you get their music sent to you on release. You could also get a discount (small) on bandwear and similar as well as access to video footage of their shows (streamed from the site, and set up to only be available to those users who are subscribed, not downloadable).

This wouldn't be a be-all and end-all, but would offer the following benefits for bands:
- 10 000 subscribers becomes viable financially. You're getting £120 000 a year at that many users. For a small, amateur band who might have 1000 'fans' (still generous, but plausible) you're getting £12 000 a year, plus any money from live shows, merchandise and so forth.

Its just an outlandish thought, but people might be willing to pay £1 a month for quite a few bands purely for the convenience of having the music sent to them directly (or downloadable easily from a legit site with no risks of malicious payloads attached to the file), along with the extra benefits. It dodges the current issue of subscription services, since you're subscribing directly to the band and funding the band, so there's no iffiness with splitting the revenues between lots of different people.

Still far from ideal, but possibly a starting point for amateur bands at least.

Someone's probably already set it up.