Now that I have that out of my system, please allow me to take a little stroll down memory lane.

They say that history always has a way of repeating itself, and if you know your history you remember a little invention called the radio. This little invention led to a rise in families spending their Sundays at the theaters. Life was good and then BAM!

The television was created, and the theater became more or less a dinosaur. The powers that be, or the radio gods tried and tried to explain to the public that television would never catch on. After all it didn’t have any sound…

Back to the Present – The powers that be are saying that the big bad Internet is killing the video star. Oh the poor artist are being ripped off and cheated. Hmmm lets jump back in our preverbal time machine for a moment.

Back to the Past – Remember when the music industry gave credit to such individuals as Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis Presley, who were cash cows created by the music industry who “STOLE” material from other artist and didn’t pay them a dime. They then allowed their cash cows to record the stolen material and made millions. In fact they are still making millions from their infamous cash cows.

Back to the Present – ahhh the poor music industry is reaping what the sowed. It was all fun and games when you were the robber.

You guys (the music industry) have played the artist and fans for fools for long enough.

The Internet is one monster that the entertainment industry will never be able to stop. The sooner you realize that the Internet is like the Borg and resistants could be futile the better off you will be. If the music industry wants to survive you must bow down and join the collective. If not the music industry as we know it will be disassembled.

The ignorant and fearful may call the information found on this blog mere ramblings, from the mouth of a mad man. Those that truly understand would say that this blog is an excellent example of freedom of speech from someone with a firm grasp on the future technology known as the Internet.

To you dear sir I say, “touché”. I take my hat off to you!

No there isn’t - remove the copyright material from these sites and there’s virtually nothing left. It’s YouTube that has cut off its nose by not facing up to the issue.

Warner Music has become the first major label to formally license its content to YouTube. Last month, YouTube announced an advertising deal with Warner Music as the start-up’s first partner for its new Brand Channel advertising to promote the new Paris Hilton album, this new deal will see video content from Warner artists available on the service and will allow users to incorporate music from Warner’s catalog into the videos they create and upload. Both parties will share revenue created by advertising, which will be featured around the videos. YouTube said it would use a new advanced content identification and royalty reporting system, set for release by the end of the year, to identify the music videos and help manage payment to the record labels. This announcement comes under a week after Universal Music’s Doug Morris labeled YouTube “copyright infringers” who he said owe the music industry “tens of millions of dollars.”
http://today.reuters.com/news/articleinvesting.aspx?view=CN&storyID=2006-09-18T043049Z_01_N18228928_RTRIDST_0_TECH-YOUTUBE.XML&rpc=66&type=qcna

But labels build the brand of an artist and MTV/ You Tube/ My Space reap a lot of the financial rewards. Obviously a label wants the videos to run as ads (and couldn’t afford to buy the ad space for a video to play as much as high rotated video would) but at the moment labels pay £100k+ for a superstar artist’s video (Timberlake/ Aguilera in your example) they give these to MTV/ MySpace to use drive traffic and ad revenue. At least MTV pay a PRS rate to the artists when they play videos. Not something My Space or You Tube do (MySpace may have permission to use the vid purely for promo but You Tube doesn’t). Labels are paying for the content that other companies business is built on. They were stupid enough to fall for it with MTV, they’re doing their best to get stung again in the same way

However, they continue to behave like spoiled children - there should be reciprocity, throwing toys out of the pram isn’t the solution

I’ve seen some blogs that have been directly contacted by music companies - telling them to take down the videos on their sites - when the blogs are essentially promoting them for nothing. New artists that need the promotion.

That’s what you want to do: tie the hands of the fans and the people able to distribute videos on a wide scale, because you see them making money from them. But what they’ve really done is create a central place to see the artists of ALL record companies (no one would watch a channel or visit a site that deals in a single company’s artists.. it’s too time consuming and confusing. “Who is that new artist signed to?”)

And in the second case you tell the fans to stop talking about the music.. reason being.. greedy paranoia.

They might show it to friends and the friends will show it to friends and we won’t collect a buck from any of them.

When you think of the video as a promotional tool for an artist, which it is.. this ‘we must wrestle control of our videos’ mindset is like telling people to talk about me only if I tell you to or if you pay me.

That’s the dumbest smart thing I’ve heard in awhile.

You ramblings are getting the better of your senses. You neither understand the economics of the music business nor do you know copyright 101. The more I hear your rants - the more it is obvious - your only interest is in getting some attention by saying something widly popular without any logic. If you ever get around to it, sit with one of the people who sat on the Copyright Commison appointed by President Ford, and see where it all began - the Record Labels are not only right about their thinking, it is the only way to protect the artists and their works under the LAWS OF THE LAND.

The Major Record Labels are public corporations who have to answer to their shareholders on why thier assets are being degraded by some YouTube Superstar wanabee…. Ever hear of Shareholder Class Action Lawsuits for not managing a company’s assets properly… I did not think you do. Start with a Yahoo finance page… you might be enlightened!

As for capitalizing on Social Networks, there are initiatives already underway by the Record Labels to capitalize on the fan base in way that benefits not just the consumer, but the entire value chain. And, of course by the time that happens you will have moved on to the next attention grabbing topic….and probably will not even make even one mention of this on your Buzz Machine - or is it “Rant Machine”

Perhaps i’m thinking too narrowly about the music/ record industry

I’m not sure the myspace sales model works though, the 50/50 split for MP3s kinda works for garage bands/ electronica but so few bands come fully formed. Labels (indie and major) spend a lot of money developing & recording records (often waaaaay to much, so they’re on a hiding to nothing from the start but thats another argument) palatable to the mass market. News International/ Myspace take half the revenue from the sale, plus all the revenue from advertising which doesn’t seem an equitable swap for the label or the artist.

Big Media certainly needs to change its business plans; You Tube and My Space do represent excellent promotion and marketing (if not yet viable distribution and sales - its pretty difficult to equate my space “friends” to sales, and unproved how many of those friends will fork out hard earned if they have to pay for something) but in the flurry of excitement about user generated content and the ability to free up art its easy to over look where investment in new cultural capital will come from

Obviously the music industry continues to be its own worst enemy, and as great a promotional tool myspace and youtube are i can understand them/ the artists feeling like someone else is getting the fruit of their labours and making the advertising buck from it. MTV built their empire on the back of convincing labels to spend big on lavish videos to give them value added to sell to advertisers and the industry is pretty bitter about it still.