Unlimited Legal Music Downloads for $3.95 a Month?

fishmasta writes "I'm at a major university studying the music industry, so we get to regularly talk to executives in the major labels. In a recent talk with someone working at Warner Bros, she brought up an idea they want to try where all file sharing is legalized by paying $4-5 a month through an ISP, all downloads are permanent, and you can get them from any source, and do what you want with them. It seems like some in the industry are starting to 'get it.' I was just wondering what Slashdot thinks of this idea. Would you be willing to pay a small fee each month if you could get all the music you want and have no legal liability?"

El-Man has another take on that subject replacing "unlimited" with a set number of licenses: "I believe that people are basically honest (maybe a failing, but it's how I feel), and are quite happy to pay for something of value. With music downloads, the only solution the recording industry has come up with is wrapping digital files with onerous, incompatible DRM systems, suing those whom they say have illegally distributed music (what is it, 13000 people and counting? Surely the courts have better things to do!), and generally not doing themselves or music lovers any good. How about a system, whereby a user can purchase a license for [n] amount of digital music files? Numbers can be, 10, 50, 100, 200, etc. Doesn't matter what the files are, as long as the number is not exceeded. There'd be a lot of details to thrash out, but is this something that is ultimately workable?"

If you were an executive of a medium-to-large sized record company, how would you handle the potential of the Internet?

The only "It" they're getting is your money

[Anonymous Coward]

Just think about it. A mandatory $56 fee (a tax) per ISP customer. That's many millions of customers, equaling billions of guranteed dollars, with almost no work required of them to get it.

Isn't that just another form of the Piracy tax?

[Dracil]

Like the kind they put on burnable media in certain countries?

sounds good in theory...

[musonica]

But I don't see how the artists can make money from such a scheme after the labels take 90% of the profits?

I'd buy that for a dollar!

[supersocialist]

If it actually rendered all mp3s legal and copyright liability-free, I'd be happy to pay that tax. I hope it would make music easier to find, too. I can't even get my hands on the Mister Rogers theme song. How sad is that?

If....

[countach]

Yes I would pay IF I could easily obtain good high quality mp3s. Half the mp3s on limeware are rubbish - skips, and other flaws. If you're going to pay you need guaranteed quality.

interesting ideas, but...

[pennyher0]

I think the "pay $4-5 to make it all legal" idea would only work if all record labels participated, and all ISPs participated. You'd have to basically force every ISP to add this "music-download tax," and implement it across the board... otherwise customers are going to be flocking to the competition that doesn't include this tax, and continue downloading things for free.

Really, we're all whiny brats when it comes to our cable bills, so few of us (especially us poor college kids) are going to be ok with a $5 increase...

The idea of buying a license is interesting though. How would that work for those of us who have multiple copies of files on different machines or different music devices. I don't see how this could be enforced either... all p2p networks would have to participate and count how many files you downloaded, or check some kind of secure file that had a universally readable mp3 file count on your machine.

Both are interesting ideas, but I don't yet see how they could work.

This is a step in the right direction

[denissmith]

I don't know if this is the right price, and the details need refinement, but in a word, yes. This is a good idea, but there needs to be a mechanism for artists to get adequately compensated. The notion that the RIAA members would get to decide how the artists got paid out of this is far more frightening than P2P. The record executives used to be thought of as close to mafiosi, but we now know they are much,much worse.

Re:I doubt it...

[TheOtherAgentM]

While I don't like much new music, I can think of a lot of old stuff that I would want to get my hands on legally. Just look at a group like The Beatles. How many compilations are out there? I would be more than glad to pay $4-5 a month for that. The problem is, that's not much money. What record label is going to give up their music if they know it's good?

I'm Skeptical

[YourBlueRoom]

First, and perhaps I'm too cynical, but I have a hard time believing the same industry people that set retail prices for a single CD at $18 would be willing to sell an unlimited (or even reasonable) number of songs for a flat fee per month. Second, the artists themselves will probably not like it, because it would change the economics for how they get paid. If Britney Spears has the #1 selling album, she's probably entitled to more money than your local indie band (though I'd argue which is actually worth more, ha). Is the industry going to have some sort of tracking in place to determine what is the most popular? Would this even be possible on such a large scale without any sort of DRM in place? Third, there are those that scoff at paying one red cent for their music. I personally don't get it, but no matter how pretty the package or distribution model is, these people won't bite, and they'll destroy any potential for the rest of us. Hopefully I'm wrong!

This makes sense for ...

[Bin_jammin]

the record labels financially. There are many many more people connected to the internet every month that would be paying $4-5 for this usage tax than there are illegal file sharers, and suing file sharers doesn't recoup anywhere near the real or inflated costs of downloading copyrighted music. Lawyers, court costs, etc, avg. settlement. I personally don't download very much off p2p content wise, and when I do it's usually to backup songs on damaged cds. If I were being handed a mandatory license to go hog wild, I'd have every tv show, movie, and song I'd ever wanted. If I'm going to get charged for it, I'm going to drain the well.

How does this support the artist?

[Paddo_Aus]

Any system which doesn't involved the money paid by the consumer being attributed to the artist who creates the work is flawed. If I pay my 5 dollars, and download 30 songs, does the system ensure that all 30 artists get compensated with a proportion of my payment? And why should an artist get less for their effort just because I want to have 30 songs this month instead of 5? The major problem with the current system is that the record label is getting so much more than the artist, then the RIAA is trying to invent schemes to increase income which doesn't relate back to the artists. If the RIAA actually supported artists instead of the big labels, people might care what they have to say.

Re:To quote Ace Ventura, Pet Detective,

[bersl2]

I believe that the quote is "Gee, let me think... Um, sure." [favewavs.com]

</pedantic>

Re:I don't get it

[YrWrstNtmr]

Isn't this basically just stealing from people who don't illegally download music off the Internet?

How so? Just have it as an extra cost item in your service.
"Do you want to include the $3.95 music download fee in your broadband subscription? []Yes []No"

If my broadband bill went from $50 to $54, AND included actual, legal, reliable, fast downloads? Hell yes.

Not that this will happen anytime soon, but yeah,I would.

Kinda...

[mobiux]

It may be considered that if everyone that subscribed to the ISP had to pay regardless of downloading music or not. But if only those that signed up to the p2p option had to pay the extra 4.95 or whatever it is, then no it wouldn't be.

Hell, I'd take a piracy tax on my blank media any day, if it means I can copy music. Since now that I have an ipod, i don't buy any blank media any more. Well, maybe a single 50 pack a year or so.

Absolutely not

[RingDev]

Socializing the entertainment industry will not improve the consumer experience.

1) They (WB) can not remove all liability for all music, because they don't own the rights on all music. They can remove the liability for their music but that's it.

2) The market would no long drive the industry. who determines which royalties to pay? Some execs get to chop 90% off the top then spread the last 10% across admin and authors? What happens the the lesser known bands?

3) This removes all incentive for labels to pick up new artists. Why add more music to a $4.95/month library when you can spin off a subsidiary label and release new music under it. Then once that library has grown for a few years, release it under another $5/month contract. Now the consumer is coughing up $10/month for full access to both labels, not to mention any competitor labels.

All round this is a bad idea. Get the industry to agree on a standardized DRM (See JE at:http://ask.slashdot.org/~RingDev/journal/126947 ), and make it easier for consumers to get legal content then illegal.

It's all a matter of convenience. If consumers have a choice between paying $1 for a song, or downloading it for free with the risk of being sued, the vast majority will go for the $1 option. Provided the $1 version is compatible with all of their entertainment equipment (Windows, Linux, home entertainment, xbox, ps3, car stereo, etc...)

-Rick

Re:sounds good in theory...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's worse than that. You'd be paying the big record companies a welfare check every month, even while they become less and less relevant. The payment would not actually be tied to which music you found worthwhile enough to pay for - you could be downloading entirely independent artists that don't get a cent from their mortal enemies, the big record companies - but you'd still be paying the executives wages while the artists starved.

This is, most likely, what the record companies are going to wind up asking congress for. It fits perfectly with their welfare-ho philosophy as evidenced in their press releases and court documents so far.

Re:The Question Is:

[ZachPruckowski]

$3-$4/month for file sharing? fuck yes.
$3/$4 per month per RIGHTS holder? Fuck no.

There it is. They're talking only about one label. Assuming all the labels went for this, it'd be a pretty penny for the 4-5 big ones, and then a lesser sum for the smaller ones.

That's one of the main advantages of piracy, as I see it. Pirates can get all the content in one place, and as we've seen with TV stuff, it's almost more work to track down which network is with which service, and getting an iTMS and Google Video account, and have to manage 4-5 accounts. If the content industries united behind 2-3 stores that had all the content, it'd help them fight piracy a lot.

Re:I doubt it...

[Randall_Jones]

What record label is going to give up their music if they know it's good?

they're already giving it up for free--on bittorrent, on emule, etc... the idea is to provide a legal alternative that costs a reasonable amount of money. Even people as stupid as record company executives must be able to understand that making some money of internet downloads is better than making no money.

Re:I don't get it

[Trogre]

At first I thought "hell yes, this is what I've been waiting for!"

But then I considered this:

Where does that $3.95 or $10 or whatever go? Directly to the RIAA, and filtered down to the actual label and eventually the artist.

Now what happens to all the minor labels, the ones that aren't part of the RIAA? I'm not talking about companies like Magnatune that distribute low-bitrate recordings for free, but labels that charge per download?

Since this initiative will inevitibly result in an "I've paid my monthly dues so I can download any music for free" meme, the small labels will be forced to either give the music away for nothing or join the RIAA to get a piece of the pie. Of course this will effectively give the RIAA a total monopoly on music dollars.

I'm not saying free downloads are necessarily a bad thing, but it's just something to consider.

Re:Oh Canada...

[A beautiful mind]

and in Hungary. Except that I don't buy blank media, just harddrives. They don't tax them here with that levy.