The boss of Warner Music has made a rare public confession that the music industry has to take some of the blame for the rise of p2p file sharing.
“We used to fool ourselves,’ he said. “We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong. How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find and as a result of course, consumers won.”
Edgar Bronfman – speaking at the GSMA Congress in Macau.
“The sad truth is that most of what consumers are being offered today on the mobile platform is boring, banal and basic,” he said. “People want a more interesting form of mobile music content. They want it to be easy to buy with a single click – yes, a single click, not a dozen. And they want access to it, quickly and easily, wherever they are. 24/7. Any player in the mobile value chain who thinks they can provide less than a great experience for consumers and remain competitive is fooling themselves.”
I think he’s started reading and learning from John’s columns.
So when are they gonna dismantle the DMCA?
#1 Never, there are still too many dinosaurs in the record industry, the movie industry and the software industry to ensure that the DMCA, Bill Clinton’s Legacy, will live on.
They want it to be easy to buy with a single click – yes, a single click
….. dum de dum de doo de dum… *click*…. oops … what the? … WHAT THE? …. HEY!!! I didn’t mean to click anything! … CHRIST! … The Best of Hilary Duff? …. oh man, a 10 CD set?…… $200?………… Hey, wait a minute, I didn’t pay them and they don’t know who I am…. This one click purchasing is FANTASTIC!!!
Thank You, Edgar,,, I agree with you. I have one word. “iTunes” or something just like it.
He’s a clown and always has been. Has all the current buzzwords and catchphrases down, though. What’s more interesting, to me at least, is what he conspicuously doesn’t say – that CD prices were always, and remain, too goddamn high. When the MSRP of CDs comes down to, say, $10, and hi-res in the form of DVD-A and SACD is $14 or $15 – then I’ll resume buying… I ain’t holdin’ my breath, BTW.
Come back when you wanna talk substance, Ed baby and not an empty load of Industry babble.
And such an unfortunate gesture, to be photographed.
“we inadvertently went to war with consumers”
Inadvertently my ass. He’s still a jackass.
I don’t want to be considered as defending the idiots at the top in the music industry…but I am always amused by the complaints about CD prices.
Tell you what…take a look at the cost of books (paperback or hard cover) in say…1969, and today. Then consider doing that with anything else you can think of…comics, gas, movie theater tickets, milk…and on and on. Mostly approximately 10 times the price now as then.
Now…take a look at the price of vinyl lp’s..with a 35 to 40 minute max time. and look at a cd/s generaly 60 to 80 minutes. Now tell me again how “expensive” cd’s are. Either vinyl was highly overpriced 40 years ago , or cd’s , for the last 20 years, have been the best bargain in consumer entertainment……3 times instead of 10…way less than inflation dictates.
I’m open to hear if anyone else knows of of something that has gotten cheaper (after inflation) over the last 40 years?
#8
“I’m open to hear if anyone else knows of of something that has gotten cheaper (after inflation) over the last 40 years?”
Life has gotten cheaper and I’m not talking about the quality of it. I bet you can even pay as little as $200 to get rid of someone.
#8 Consumer electronics don’t last long enough to follow the natural inflation curve..
Intellectual property, in the form of digital music and images, was supposed to have a shelf life before it became public domain, no?
Either way, the genie is out of the bottle.
#6, now THAT’s funny. 🙂
One of the rare guys who “get it”.It has never been more true in our world.Change or die.
Making things buyable on cell phones and other devices with one click is better. But you would still have legions who would download free copies. Why should I pay $1 per tune when I can get everything for free?
No problem with the price of a CD. What I find disgusting is to pay the same price – sometimes even more – to legally buy a lower quality, DRMed version on line.
eBooks and eMusic should reflect the lower cost of production and distribution.
Quick, now that we have alienated our customer base, lets make some obvious statements about how the customer should be treated fairly and see if all can go back to the way it was in the good old days.
Suck it RIAA. Your fate is sealed, and you deserve what you get.
Now.. If we could just get Corporations to retire at age 65.
10…not quite relevant..I’m not talking about the hardware/reproduction end..but the software…30 – 60 minutes of music delivered to my hands in whatever form.
That being said..it still doesn’t work. All of the devices I have for delivering that said entertainment to my ears and eyes (cd, dvd, hdtv) is much more expensive than it was in 1969…..^_^
15 That’s why we can call this guy a hypocrite. Instead of talking about how they were “moving at a glacial pace” at a meeting of his peers, maybe he should be hanging around the office implementing those plans that he believes may save his industry (or at least his company). It’s not like they would have to expand office space to hire bright new people….from my understanding there are plenty of open desks at all the majors. The only problems I can see is that they consider the up and coming new young management talent to be in their mid 50’s…most of whom seem to be just about figuring out email…. (not a dig at all 50 year olds…but we are talking people who have been in management for like a quarter century…so they are right away working with a handicap….^_^)
“We were wrong to go to war with consumers”
Yeah, no shit Sherlock.
The caption under that picture should say, “my dick is this long.”
“1 click away… 24/7… quick and satisfactory…”
is he talking about p2p?
Sounds like description of i.e. bittorrents lol
Be nice is mircrosoft would get the hint. WGA is nothing more then ghestopo tactics that agitate legitimate customers!
Dang nabbit NappyHeadedHo beat me to it … fardles!
So Edgar, when are you going to stop suing music fans? You seem to have forgotten that detail in your little infotainment piece. I’ve switched to buying or trading used CD’s. No money for the MAFIAA. One of the reasons CD sales have cratered is that a lot of older music fans have pretty well replaced the vinyl and tapes in their collections in the last 25 years with CD’s. At least replaced the ones they cared enough about to buy. Another reason is that an awful lot of the stuff that is being released over the last few years is corporate formula crud. If the record companies really want to continue to suck a buck out of the older stuff they have, they should take the multitrack master tapes and release CD quality (16 bit, 44 kHz ) copies of the individual instrument tracks on DVD sets for around $5 so fans could make their own custom mixes of songs they like.. And you better do it before your core customer base gets too damn old to care about getting them and making their own custom takes of their favorite artists. I mean, face it, if they ain’t made their nut off those first couple of Beatles albums by now, they never will.
Apparently a lot of you weren’t around when CDs were first introduced – and there was only one pressing plant in the US.
“Oh, we realize the price is high,” our Industry friends sympathetically noted, “but when new plants come on line and production ramps up, the price will go way down. CDs’ll be cheaper than LPs!”
But since consumers started buying them up at the initial price levels, the execs noticed this – and as their unit cost plummeted, they held the MSRP constant, and their profits consequently soared. And over the years they have developed a conviction that they are entitled to that huge markup and they’ll cling to those margins with a death grip, even on the way to Sales Hell.
Greed, and nothing more, causes the brightest marketing guru to forget their first-year lessons about addressing reductions in volume by lowering prices to a level where consumers are again willing to buy. They’re the monkey in the hollow-coconut trap who would sooner be trapped than unclench his greedy little fist and go free.
Come to think of it, Edgar there does look like a minkey, don’t he? 🙂
No need to get nasty pedro.
#24, GetSmart,
So Edgar, when are you going to stop suing music fans?
Actually, they haven’t. The lawsuits originate from the RIAA, not the individual record companies. While yes, Warner is a member, the same analogy would also apply if I blamed you personally for tapping my phone illegally when it was your government that did it.
*
OK, he recognizes the error. Now, let’s see some action and a new business plan.
#24, GetSmart,
So Edgar, when are you going to stop suing music fans?
Actually, they haven’t. The lawsuits originate from the RIAA, not the individual record companies. While yes, Warner is a member, the same analogy would also apply if I blamed you personally for tapping my phone illegally when it was your government that did it.
*
OK, he recognizes the error. Now, let’s see some action and a new business plan.
Your analogy is invalid, Fusamente; [1] there are not 300,000,000 members of the RIAA, there’s a handful, [2] it’s not a democracy – the biggest players have the most influence by far, and Warners is one of the very biggest, [3] the US govt doesn’t get together with citizens and agree to tap phones, the RIAA sits down together (well, the lawyers) and works out agreements on how to fuck the consumer, and [4] those same lawyers act directly on the orders of top brass, such as Eddie-baby.
If Ed and his ilk didn’t want to sue consumers, the lawsuits would come to a screeching halt as of yesterday…