Your Favorite White Boy

I got an e-mail from my man Steve K over at OGHipHop who schooled me to his boys over at The305.com who had their website taken down for throwing up a reportedly “unauthorized” video – hosted on another site.  Here’s the summary:

“A few days ago I received a Cease-And-Desist letter from GrayZone, Inc and their legal team, stating that my Miami-based website, The305.Com, was infringing on copyrights by posting a stream of a recent music video for Flo-Rida’s “Right Round.” Their claims were that I was encouraging “bootlegging,” by letting the video stream. The video was not EVER available for download on The305.Com. It was simply embedded as a stream from a third-party video hosting website.

With that, my hosting company also received a letter from GrayZone and immediately shut my website down due to the actions and accusations. Yet, the video has stayed on the video hosting site untouched…”

Besides the questionable material (I kid – no shots), this is garbage.  Fortunately, The305 reached out to Atlantic Records – who was apparently unaware that a complaint was filed – and the situation was resolved.  But don’t for a minute think this is the end of it.  It’s the beginning.  As I mentioned previously, the labels are using the DMCA to squeeze ISPs in an attempt to stymie music getting out via bloggers and music websites.

Why are they doing this?  Because record sales are at an all time low, they’re hemorrhaging green and they think it’s because listeners are downloading music for free.  At one time they held a monopoly on distribution and release of new music.  If you wanted to hear a new artist, you had to go to the record label.  The Internet changed that.  And now they are having a hard time figuring out how to get their mojo back and make money off of it again.  Meanwhile, they’re going broke – and their lashing out at any perceived enemy.    And we’re priority one. 

On the heels of The 305 taking a body shot, DJ Xplosive used his blog to presented his ideas on how the industry can save themselves.  In both Part I and Part II,  Xplosive suggests that labels work hand-in-hand with bloggers – using them as a distribution system while creating their own downloading/sharing sites and effectively cutting out the middleman: zshare, megadownload, sharebee, etc.  Those are the guys making buckets of cash over the bazillion pop-up ads that users are subjected to on their way to downloading a song.

I think Xplosive has some good ideas and its great to see this added to the discussion going on in the raposphere.  Some might enjoy watching the label slowly destruct.  I take a different view: as long as record labels are losing money, they are going to look for a way to stop the bleeding, which means making life difficult for those on the Internet who want to share and discuss music.  Bad move.  Music bloggers love music – and hip-hop bloggers love hip-hop.  Going after the biggest fans won’t solve their main problem: their revenues are not matching their expenses.

Here’s my contribution:  I believe the pursuit of the “megahit” is what is killing the music industry.  The labels believe that the only way to make money is to sell 4 million LPs.  With their current marketing plans, that’s probably true.  They spend millions on magazine ad campaigns (despite declining readership), huge video budgets (even though no one is playing them) and other 1.0 promotion schemes.  Labels need to reformat their models so they don’t need to sell millions to break even.

I’m a fan of the “Long Tail” theory.  The Internet and technology is subdividing the public so it is possible to cater to niche markets and still be profitable.  If that means spinning off labels so they can focus on one type of genre, so be it.  That way, they can focus on specific markets, which means smaller budgets.  That way, they can sell 50,000 albums and still make a profit.

Bloggers can play a key role in that model.  As Xplosive says, we are the distribution system.  Labels can get a single or a snippet out with no cost to them.  They can build a buzz spending very little (if any) additional cash.  Now, that album still has to be dope – but if you’re focusing on one segment, you don’t need a “club track”, a “radio track”, “one for the ladies” and all the other watered-down garbage necessary when appealing to a broad audience.

Regardless of the future, there are three things that I know to be true: 1) Humans love music.  They’ll always check for it.  2) They are willing to pay for quality product. 3) As long as you make people pay $13.99 for essentially 2 songs, they will find a way to get it for free.  You cant change #1 and you don’t want to change #2.  So you need to focus on #3.

You know what your problem is.  Bloggers can be part of the solution.  If you let them.

Tags: Bloggers, Record Labels