No, after a long day at work I'm not coming up with a better
headline than The Register:
Big labels are f*cked, and DRM is dead - Peter Jenner
This is a wonderful interview with Peter Jenner, ex-manager of
Pink Floyd and The Clash, now secretary general of the
International Music Manager's Forum. Live, he's a very enticing
speaker, and he doesn't hold back in this interview either. Do not
read on if you object to explicit language:
You said that at In The City, the big label executives have lost
their faith in DRM - they don't believe in it any more.
They don't. Not anymore.
And that was done by Sony BMG - what the fuck was that [rootkit
DRM] about? The other was iTunes - and they've seen how kids don't
like it. The unitary payment doesn't suit the technology, it
doesn't suit how they're actually using downloads - which is to
explore and move around. You don't want to pay a dollar for each
track when you want to explore music.
Ranting about the music industry majors can be a bit gratuitous,
considering that everyone with an eyeball or two of their own can
see the sorry state they're in. But Peter Jenner actually knows
his stuff. Yes, it's a rant, but it's pretty well-founded. Whether
it's about blanket licensing, the broken business model of major
labels, or the sharing of profits -- Jenner gives us the works:
What's important is what's your bottom line, for Christ's sake.
The blanket licensing thing is obviously going to slash your unit
margin. The record companies have increased their margin on
downloads, because the costs have been ripped out. So they've cut
the artists royalties and raised their margin.
But because they've replaced an album with a single they've helped
destroy the retail industry, they're now in a position where
they're completely fucked.
No one's got any sympathy or love for them, because they've
systematically been shoring up their figures in the short run -
squeezing money into Universal to make up for their catastrophies;
Warner Brothers have been coping with huge debt; EMI have been
desperately trying to hold their stock price up so somebody would
buy them; BMG has been wondering how the fuck they're going to pay
somebody back money for whatever it was, so they don't go public -
and Sony are in a terminal mess.
So all of them have been draining profit. It's "get the money in,
boys, get the money in. "
So they've raped them. They've raped their whole business model,
and no one's got the time or energy to think about their
business.
I'd love to believe him that DRM is dead and blanket licenses for
music are just a few years away . But somehow I don't think it's
all going to come that easily. It'll take us a lot of work.
via drm.info