Man, it seems like these guys have hit the bottom of the barrel.

Hehe, just kidding. Now they want to get paid for the 30 second previews used to sell their music.

Although the purchasing public continue to fund them, the recording industry doesn’t let appreciation get in the way of suing the very same people that line their pockets.  This though, surprised even me and I’m not shocked by much that they do.  Charging people to listen to a thirty second clip so you can sell them an overpriced album?

Fantastic!

Beginning around Halloween, they’re going to release 44 songs, again all will be available for free.  For those that wish to support the band, they will package them in 4 song EP’s, totalling(if my math can be trusted) 11 albums you can buy.

I really hope they consider a boxed set, as Paypal is likely to freeze my account for suspicious behavior if they make me buy each EP separately.

I totally support them and don’t want to be the one to cast derision towards any group that steps away from abusing their fans but I have to admit that I’m more than intrigued to see how they decide to market a 44 song release spanning months.  It’s what I would consider at the very least an eclectic method of music marketing.

That’s beside the point.  During my search, I found this fantastic article. In it, the CEO of EMI Records laments that while he knows that a divide exists between EMI and it’s customers, he’s not sure what he can do to lessen that gap.

You guys remember that about a year and a half ago, EMI was taken over by some hip non-industry types and things were going to change!  They stated that they would cut(or altogether end) funding to the RIAA because they didn’t think suing their customers was the way to sell an album.  ars technica went so far as to speculate that it might be the end of the RIAA.

So what happened during that time?  Well, they sued every entity that they could think of.

Seriously.

I’m not shitting you.

It’s mind boggling really.

But it’s the truth.

It’s really quite impressive that a group of people that foretold the death of the old system ended up not only embracing it, but damned near rewriting the book on it. See, they go after innovators.  Entities that are trying to change the face of music delivery.  If it’s groundbreaking, you can almost rest assured that EMI is suing the group that brought it to you.

And in spite of all of this, Mr. Leoni-Sceti isn’t sure what he needs to do to to make things right.

I promise not to tell if you don’t.

Well, the Pirate Bay is no stranger to being attacked.  Christian Engstrom, part of the pirate party decided to sit down and pen a thoughtful piece, concerning what he’s fighting for, why it’s important to everyone and what could turn the train wreck that is copyright and IP around.

Rick Carnes, head of the Songwriter’s Guild, wrote a rebuttal, which is a fantastic read.  Not because his points are interesting but because he completely twisted almost every single thing Christian wrote and then addressed the new points, that Christian never made.  The fun part is that he did it so transparently that it makes him look like a bit of a tool.

The best part of the piece though?  We find out that a man that failed at making a living as a songwriter is the head of the SongWriter’s Guild.

A little less.

Werner Music Group is in a pickle.  They want you to start buying their music again but they also think that DRM isn’t quite restrictive enough. Sure, they already tell you what players you can listen to your music on, they tell you how many times you can listen to it and on how many different devices.  They even have the ability to take away those rights at any time with a simple shutting down of a DRM server when they don’t feel like honoring the license agreement any more.

As I’m sure you’d agree, WMG feels that you have too much freedom with your purchased music.  To help curtail the rampant piracy allowed by previous draconian measures, they’ve come up with LaLa.  What is LaLa?  It’s simple. With LaLa, you can pay ten cents per song.  You then get absolutely nothing.

Seriously.  You pay them ten cents and they will allow you to listen to the song from a browser tab on their site.  Much like you listen to a song on M-TV or the radio, only that’s free.  This allows you to pay for that privilege.  You do feel privileged, don’t you?

While Michael Roberts is more diplomatic than I am about the whole affair, he doubts it will fly.

Imagine that.

You might remember that very recently, Microsoft announced that it would be shutting down the DRM servers for the now defunct MSN Music and any music purchased through that service would no longer be able to be moved to other computers(or reactivated if you upgraded your current computer). This meant that all the customers that bought music through the MSN Music service got the shaft. Big time. That’s what you get for renting music.

Fresh on the heels of that announcement, Microsoft began heavily advertising the music collection you could rent via “Zune Pass”. For less than the price of a CD per month (if you purchase cd’s for the ridiculous MSRP), then you can borrow millions of songs, from thousands of artists. You don’t actually get to do what you’d like to with the music, you just rent it. Kind of like satellite radio, I guess only with the added benefit of typical MS bloatware and the hassle of dealing with DRM approved players and such.

Initially, Zune’s giant-killing feature was going to be the ability for the Zune to “share” data with other nearby Zunes. The problem is, people aren’t willing to buy the player in numbers large enough for the suckers owners to find others that made the same mistake in the immediate vicinity, so the ads that touted that feature were quietly swept under the carpet.

So, the whole “Zune social network” thing didn’t fly and instead, they’ve begun pushing a music service shortly after shafting all of their customers that bought into their last music service. They’re hoping of course that you don’t notice. If you did happen to notice, Rob Bennett of Microsoft wants you to know that they wanted you to have DRM free music. It was the labels that didn’t want you to have it. As Rob so smoothly put it:

“We want to make it easy and as painless for our customers as possible. We really feel, in the long term, what’s best for people who want to buy music from Microsoft is to move to Zune.”

They’re doing everything they do for you, the consumer. No need to thank them.

The tears in your eyes are thanks enough.

You’ll remember that Metallica was one of the main proponents in the initial lawsuits that brought down Napster. Now, they’d like you to know that it was never about downloading music.  They just, you know…. didn’t want you to do it then.  Now it’s ok of course, because Trent Reznor made an assload of cash doing it.

What really happened is this:  Metallica got caught hugging an antiquated music distribution system.  When the fear of sales dropping touched their wallets, they lashed out.  Over the years, they’ve held their stance, because nobody else broke the mold.  Now that bands like Radiohead, Trent Reznor and others have proven that you can sell a lot of music this way, they’re willing to try it.  Oh, and hey, let’s just forget about that whole “attack our fans” phase we went through.

Hey, who am I to judge?  I’ll download their new album…. If they offer it for free.

Hey, I’m no pirate.

Oh, and everyone that legally purchased music from the now defunct MSN Music, who has decided to shut down the DRM servers, thus locking you into the same 5 computers for the life of your music. Upgrade your OS or change computers, and kiss your music goodbye.

Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t feel an iota of pity for those that bought into this payment scheme for music they can never own.

I just like this story because any time DRM fails, an angel gets his wings.