Make the Majors History!

Make capitalism history!

What happens to the royalty fees paid? The major record companies take your money, keep most of it for themselves, their lawyers, marketing teams, and then divide the rest statistically based on the Billboard charts. That means that no matter what kind of obscure, underground music was played, most of the extortion money paid goes to whichever management company owns Justin Timberlake, or whatever the top 40 flavor of the month is. All other artists, including most of the ones whose music is actually played on stations like Radio Paradise, get nothing. Corporate America sticking it to you even if you don't listen to mainstream commercial radio.

and

That's not precisely correct in the details, but it's basically true. Just because we play Artist X, and we pay royalties to SoundExchange (the royalty collection arm of the RIAA) does NOT mean that Artist X is going to see their fair share of what we've paid, or - indeed - anything at all..

Radio Paradise Forum - eclectic online rock radio discussion
(you might have to go to page 2 or something...)

My Radio will be closed down... Fark

I fucking hate radio. I really hate it. Radio is an awful commerce infest pile of shite that plays the same commercial shite music over and over and over and over again. I used to love radio.

But there is still one station that I really like: Radio Paradise. And now, it will be probably closed down. And the owner will have to pay between $50,000 and $150.000 - retroactively!

Fark.

The US Copyright Office has released their new set of rates for the payment of royalties by Internet Radio, and they ignored all of the facts presented by webcasters (including RP) and gave the record industry exactly what they asked for: royalty rates so high that they will put RP and every other independent webcaster out of business.

I hate violence, as I have said before, but someone should break the legs of the CEOs of the major labels. And their kneecaps. And their noses. And their fingers. And cut off their testicles. And set fire to their SUVs and luxury sedans. And blow up their houses. And rape their children. And torture their dogs.

After that, the music business should be given back to the musicians and the people who love music.

Blue Screen of Death

This story really takes the Blue Screen of Death to a whole new level...

Most of us have stared in helpless despair at the dreaded blue screen; how much worse would you feel if that wasn't just your desktop gone but your combat display, and it really was the screen of death?

Surely we can't have our jolly tars let down by possibly untrustworthy, difficult to use kit such as Windows? Especially when you reflect that cost is not an issue. When you're buying destroyers at £1bn per hull, the price difference between 26 PCs and the same number of Sun workstations barely shows up.

Give the evidence to the MAFIA

[A] team of men wearing R.I.A.A. jackets was responsible for boxing the CDs and carting them to a warehouse for examination.

Hip-Hop Outlaw (Industry Version) - New York Times

Isn't this just grand? The police lets the R.I.A.A carry off the evidence. The ones who profit from a conviction. Fucking great.

But I think that the music industry has finally realized that the problem is not the consumer, it is the artists. Once there are no more artists, no more music and no more music "theft". Bravo!

(via fefe, in German)

Will they be in for a surprise

So the iPhone got introduced. Nice, I was waiting for this. Ok, I will be waiting some more time for it to be mine, but hey, this seems like a great product.

I noted two things while watching the iPhone Demo:

1. Steve Jobs used the Beatles song "With a little help from my friends" as the first song to demo the iPod inside the iPhone. Interesting, after all that trouble Beatles/Apple Records have given him. But "The Jobs" will prevail, I guess.

2. There was a clown the CEO from Cingular/AT&T on stage (at around 01:08 in the iPhone stream), who hadn't had a slightest clue what he was doing there ("The Jobs" is not stage because he is the CEO of Apple, he is on stage because he is the only one who can handle the Realty-Distortion-Field TM) and seemed mainly happy that Cingular bullied Apple into having the iPhone only working with them. Boy, will he be in for a surprise, exclusive contract or not.

As Steve said right after the AT&T business speach:

We come from pretty differents worlds, the telco industry, the computer industry and of course music with the iPod. And we love these guys!

Yeah, Steve loves AT&T, just as he loved the majors five years ago. This CEO-guy finishes his speach and one of the first things Steve mentions is music with the iPod, wink, wink? The iPhone will be to cellular carriers what the iPod has been to music companies. Just wait and see how Apple will bully them in their own Apple kind of way. Again, "The Jobs" will prevail. At least, that is what I hope.

And in the meantime, Microsoft is going to try to kill the iPod with its Zune, forgetting that Apple is actually killing the (old) iPod with the (new) iPod every year, and this year killing it in part with the iPhone.