Music Exec: ISPs Must Pay Up for Music-Swapping

Advertisement (Why?)

Madness. This woman is off her rocker.

"A top music executive said on Saturday that telecommunications companies and Internet service providers (ISPs) will be asked to pay up for giving their customers access to free song-swapping sites.

The music industry is in a tailspin with global sales of Cd's expected to fall six percent in 2003, its fourth consecutive annual decline. A major culprit, industry watchers say, is on-line piracy. Now, the industry wants to hit the problem at its source -- Internet service providers.

"We will hold ISPs more accountable," said Hillary Rosen, chairman and CEO the Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) (RIAA), in her keynote speech at the Midem music conference on the French Riviera. "Let's face it. They know there's a lot of demand for broadband simply because of the availability (of file-sharing)," Rosen said. As broadband access in homes has increased across the Western world, so has the activity on file-sharing services. "

Click read-more for a special neowin moan :)

View: Story @ Yahoo News

(1 reply) #1 on 01 Jan 1970 - 00:00

#1.1 Mr magoo on 19 Jan 2003 - 00:21

no - if they promoted good music as opposed to the shite of recent times - we'd be better off. I mean come on - there is some shit music out there- and half of them just sing covers! I bet you if we binned $40 Million record contracts with people like robby Williams ( and Mariah Carrie

), got bands on the same scale as Nirvana etc rocking the planet again, then and only then would the music industry take off..

(2 replies) #2 on 01 Jan 1970 - 00:00

#2.1 Mr magoo on 19 Jan 2003 - 12:29

Well said - and welcome to neowin!

#2.2 Neobond on 19 Jan 2003 - 12:46

I agree but heres my thought (and has been from day one of this farce) If the RIAA made a point about the cost of media and how it is unreasonably priced (some western countries have even had CD suppliers in the courts over inflated prices) then the customer and your average Joe might be able to see it more from their and the artists POV. Instead they make no comments about the rising (and inflated) costs of CD media despite the promise in the late 80's that the price would come down after the technology was established. I recall seeing reports of CD's (in comparison to Vinyl) being way more expensive than Vinyl ever was in its day and theres more diversity and cheaper manufacturer cost! I am one that WILL buy a CD to support the artist if I like the music, these days however I have a choice, I can listen to it first before I buy and if its worth the immense cost I will purchase it (immense is a big word I agree, but lets agree the margin is too great) I worked at Sony years back when they still pressed 7" vinyl (it was in demand up till about '95) and the guys there told me it cost FL5.- (5 guilders which works out to less than 2 pounds English Sterling) to make, manufacturer and pay everyone to make a CD, the rest was profit. So to my mind RIAA is tackling the wrong side of the fence, they need to make CD purchase more attractive than discs that only look cool because of a anti-copy hologram. and welcome to Neowin! great to see an intelligent response to news (not that we never see it usually

)

Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!

Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.

Neowin.net