A UK music industry trade body has proposed a tax on MP3 players that would not only ensure musicians and labels are paid their dues, but also that consumers who pay their way effectively have to cough up twice.
The tax has been suggested by the Music Business Group (MBG), an umbrella body that lists as its members organisations …
I dont know how any record company can claim with a straight face that a media tax is fair to artists.
I mean, who decides on the split? Do you use the Top 40/Billboard Charts? Are the folks buying the recording media a representative sample size of top 40 buyers? Or are they more likely to by niche items?
What if I never use my MP3 player to play music? What if I use it for Audiobooks? What if I use it to learn a forigen language, is it fair that money is being given to music artists for what is clearly an unsupplied product?
The Music industries current business model might be flawed, but this is even more flawed.
Such taxes would obviously be unfair to fundamentalist polygamist sects like the FLDS- they are only allowed to listen to the sermons of their imprisoned leader on their iPods. If they had to pay this tax, they would be forced to support evil heathen satan-spawn musicians!!!!
Seeing as it's about the ipod, time for piratebay to create an mp3 player in sealand, or the equivalent and sell it to the masses with no tax! Hurrah?
All this news, it's starting to really really end up being pretty bad PR for the music industry? Have their marketting and PR teams that they probably pay millions for ventured out into the world on a holiday and never returned? Looks that way. Otherwise rediculous proposals would have been nailed on the head before it even had the subject line added onto the email.
Fools. Neverbuyanothertune.com on it's way to a town near you!
Well, it does in my case. Without being able to rip CDs and play them on my Sansa when on the move, I wouldn't buy around 90% of the music I do, as there simply wouldn't be enough time to ever listen to it all.
There's also the issue that the player has podcasts on it, and music that I created myself, and I use it occasionally as a portable data drive....
Format shifting is ALREADY among your statutory rights -- it's called "fair dealing". It is a defence to a charge of copyright infringement that you were dealing fairly with the material.
If you are ever up on such a charge, insist to be tried in Crown Court. The jury is your friend. Where are they going to find twelve people, eleven of whom have never taped an LP or CD to listen in the car? Once you are acquitted, other people up on similar charges can cite your case as precedent. (There's a minuscule possibility that you could be sent down; but this would have consequences whose most probable outcome, barring the complete downfall of the government, would be formal legalisation and a royal pardon.)
The fatal flaw in this plan is the difficulty of getting to court in the first place. Possession of illegally-copied cassettes and CDs is generally only ever used as leverage to get a search warrant for a fishing expedition. When something juicier comes to light, the original taping is soon forgotten. If home taping is the only thing the police have against you, then you can expect a long wait for your appointment with the beak -- and the evidence to go walkies in the meantime.
Those scum sucking b@$t@rd$. The only hope left is for the entire music industy to collapse upon itself and rise from the ashes anew. I just can't believe these greedy pigs they have got to be making 10x the money they used to make. I mean what costs more to them: Manufacturing a CD and sending it stores for sale or putting an MP3 on server for purchase?
Just cause they were late to the party and didn't think digital music was for real that's their problem not ours. I am sick of hearing this Tax needed to help compansate the artists blah blah blah hey well maybe you shouldn't have been ripping them off to begin with.
It *is* unlawful to rip your cds to mp3s however only in a civil sense of the matter. Damages are determined during copyright infringement cases based on the harm done by them... in this case the harm is zero pence so they could get a judgement against you but no damages which makes the whole process rather pointless.
The law did work fine the way it was because people never worried about things that had no harm, but now they seem to understand the letter of the law rather than the spirit of it. As record companies have become so utterly stupid perhaps the law needs to be changed (it's already bad because the damages for commercial copyright infringement are the same as non commercial copyright infringement).
...because when my iPod tax is paid (for what, £10, £20 extra?), then this must surely mean I have just paid for all the music in the world and I am now legally allowed to fill it with 80 Gb of Pirate Bay. Sounds like a bargain, no?
am i right in thinking that i'm still being charged additional tax on blank cds as they seem to think all CDs are for pirating purposes :(
this is just theft - pure and simple - as said before i also have a lot of my vinyl ON CD - THEN MP3 - i used to dj a lot so why should i have to pay more for this??
the problem is that our government are simply wet - and uninformed :(
imho we all stop buying music - everyone get on mininova - let them dissappear up their own corporate fat arses.
if format shifting is illegal isnt M$ et al breaking the law by supplying methods of ripping music?
They need only do two things to make things right...
!. Wake up and smell the coffee
2. Fuck off and die from Ebola
I think the musicians will still manage to get heard (and importantly, paid) without these utter cocks pretending they're somehow giving the muso's a living.
Paris cos even SHE can get seen and heard when people would rather she didn't.
I know where they got the idea. All these dumb teenagers buy a CD, then want the song on their phone as a ringtone, so they pay twice the cost of a legal mp3 (of a song they already own) to get a 30 second version.
If people are dumb enough to pay more for less of something they already have, then getting them to pay more for the right to make a low-quality version of a CD must be even easier.
I notice that they haven't said how they plan to divide up their new tax money with the small independent labels. Something tells me that only the fattest pigs will be eating from that trough.
I use my iPod for podcasts only - listening to it whilst walking and on the bus to and from work every day. Why podcasts? Because it's 1 hr 40 minutes a day and podcasts are always different - I'd have to have an awful lot of music to give me 8 1/3 hours of variety a week. I don't want the player to be taxed - I have already paid for the podcasts because they are from the BBC and I am a UK TV licence payer.
Charges on CDs are unfair - you might not transcode it - and charges on players are unfair - again, you might not be transcoding from anything. Clearly, there needs to be an alternative solution taking payment at the point of transcoding, or no charge at all.
I always thought that "paid-for" ringtones were a stupidity tax for people who couldn't work out how to use the sound recorder on their mobile.
Again, making a ringtone from a CD you own is probably fair dealing, because only a small portion is reproduced (after the first couple of bars, you are going to answer the phone) and this is unlikely to be enough to count as copyright infringement.
The music industry has got it all wrong, the problem is a lack of decent material - the stuff that is being produced today has little to no artistic merit - it is all about hype (as a result Xfactor type program, Louis Walsh type bands etc), It is all manufactured music (and they would make it in china if they could get away with it).
As a result, people buy fewer CD's (I have a collection of 500+ CD's bought over the years, but I have probably bought only 10 disks in the last 8 years!!!!!)
So we have what is called in Ireland "Dublin Bus Economics" - Dublin Bus used to put up the prices everytime it's passenger numbers fell, thus causing it's passenger numbers to fall further etc etc..... In this case we have a worsening product being sold to fewer people for a higher price..
Rhetorical question: How many bands that formed in the last 5 years will be around in 30 year???? - I suspect probably 0 but maybe 1 at most.
I lived in Germany in the mid 1990's and there the music industry anounced that they were going to raise the price of CD's to 50DM (approx 25 euro) as they felt the market could support that. They never got over 30 as surprise surprise sales started dropping.....
Another issue is the amount they pay big bands - the invest a huge amount of capital upfront into bands that might or might not pay off - REM went through years of producing rubbish until Accelerate!!!
So over priced junk, and paying too much to artists is the music industry's fundamental problem, they can complain about mp3 players etc etc but until they sort these things out "the only way is down baby"
1. I want to see a software levy. Lots more software gets illegally copied than Garth Brooks.
2. I want to see a news levy. Lots of people read the news online, robbing the news industry of revenue.
Lets get some things straight.The UK is actually one of the few places in Europe which doesn’t have a levy.There is pressure to make *not* charging a levy, and attempting to circumvent it, a *criminal* offence across Europe. Be sure of one thing– it will come to the UK.
In sunny Belgium, where I reside, I pay 2.20 euro per month on my cable connection as “levy” for just having the infrastructure which would allow me to illegally copy content. With that levy, I have no additional rights – i.e I still have to buy a CD or DVD, and downloading off of BitTorrent could well see fully armed cops breaking down my door and hauling me off to jail
I also pay about 60 cents levy – separate from the 21% VAT – for a blank single sided DVD; yes – that’s a lot more than the manufacturing cost of a DVD. Hence I don’t buy blank DVDs in Belgium. Note – it is illegal for me to order blank media from the UK for instance without paying the levy.
For 2006, the levy netted Auvibel about 25 million Euros. Remember, that’s just Belgium.
I hate the music industry, and have done the vast majority of my adult life. I don’t buy CDs, or download (legally or otherwise) music. My hatred of the music industry is so strong, I don’t actually *listen* to much music (that and there’s next to no modern music I like). I will on occasion go to a live concert.
Yet, the audio/video industry has successfully managed to gouge about 10% of the pre-tax cost of my internet connection. So, gun toting, homophobic, drug taking, child molesting no-talent “stars” and their fat cat media conglomerates can rest easy – the gravy train is gonna keep on rollin….
Personally, I’d rather have a “news” levy. I’ve stopped buying newspapers as I get my daily fix from the free online versions. The newspapers have clearly suffered as I now get for free content I used to have to pay for. And as the “press” is a cornerstone of democracy – it makes infinitely more sense than a levy on recordable media.
Oh, and as an IT professional – I want to see a code levy. Shed loads of software gets illegally copied; more than music/video by unit cost I’d say. In 50 years time, when I’m in my rocking chair – I want to see the money rolling in for that one-hit wonder code I wrote back in the 90s!
If the record industry (and if this goes ahead, I?m sure that the film industry will want their share as I have a couple of DVD's copied to my iPod) wants to charge us for transferring the music from one format to another, surely they are getting into the realms of selling us the rights to the music. Therefore if I have an accident with a CD, they should be required to replace it (at no cost to me) as I have purchased the right to listen to the music, independent of format, and not just brought a CD that I currently have to replace if I gets damaged.
Also, if a new format is launched e.g. Blueray I should be able to upgrade at minimal cost as I have already paid for the right to watch/listen to the material. This could be a good thing for the consumer, although I doubt that the industry will go this far.
"...including the many layers of middle management and the extravagant contracts given to artists..."
Most artists get peanuts, basically. You need to be consistently in the top 40 to have a chance at any decent money.
This is because the payment to the artists usually has a boatload of expenses deducted from it. So a million dollar advance will have recording studio fees, touring expenses, and so on deducted. In the end the artists are lucky to break even while the distributor makes a mint.
I don't really think that music has gotten worse. What is happening is that what music is marketed is based solely on what's a safe bet.
In the 80's there was a LOT of complete and utter crap. In my estimation, it was crap. But the variety of what was available was huge so there was also some fabulous stuff there too. In my estimation.
However, the stuff I thought crap was loved by someone else and what I thought great was their cruddy pap.
Now there's no longer the real depths of awfulness but then again, there's nothing of sublime beauty either. And what remains is mere pablum. Everyone can listen to it but there's no deviation. So when you've heard one boy band ballad you've heard them all.
When something "new" turns up, it's played to death. Duffy was quite good and I enjoyed listening to it on the radio. For the first twenty or so times. Now I reckon I have no need to buy the CD at all because it's been played so much. And when it's been so long since it was played I'll be thinking "well, I liked it, maybe I ought to buy the CD so I can hear it again" it's no longer produced. Because the return on investment isn't high enough.
So it isn't that there's only crap on, but that there's only mediocre on and after a while it ALL seems to be crap. We used to have stuff rated 0-10 (crap to fantastic). Now we get a range of rates 4-7 (meh to meh).
Stupidest thing I ever heard and I've heard Paris Hilton speak
So what about people who actually pay for their music legitimately (FTR, I'm not a paytard)? Firstly, they'll be paying a tax for an MP3 player to ensure record companies/recording "artists" get their royalty/cut just in case he or she who buys the MP3 player pirates their music; then when they pay for the track/album, the record companies and recording "artists" get yet another royalty/cut.
The only people who'll benefit from such a stupid idea will be the record companies and the recording "artists". Obviously, paytards i.e. those doing the "right thing" will be the losers.
Surely this proves that no good deed ever goes unpunished.
What's next? Will DVD/Blu-Ray players/games consoles/TV sets/computers* be taxed even further to ensure that the motion picture companies/video game developer/satellite TV providers/software devlopers* are paid whatever royalty are entitled to?
* delete as appropriate
Paris because even she would be hard pressed to suggest something so stupid.
Register
A UK music industry trade body has proposed a tax on MP3 players that would not only ensure musicians and labels are paid their dues, but also that consumers who pay their way effectively have to cough up twice. The tax has been suggested by the Music Business Group (MBG), an umbrella body that lists as its members organisations …
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Any Media tax is inheritly unfair to artists.
I dont know how any record company can claim with a straight face that a media tax is fair to artists.
I mean, who decides on the split? Do you use the Top 40/Billboard Charts? Are the folks buying the recording media a representative sample size of top 40 buyers? Or are they more likely to by niche items?
What if I never use my MP3 player to play music? What if I use it for Audiobooks? What if I use it to learn a forigen language, is it fair that money is being given to music artists for what is clearly an unsupplied product?
The Music industries current business model might be flawed, but this is even more flawed.
Obviously Unfair to FLDS!
Such taxes would obviously be unfair to fundamentalist polygamist sects like the FLDS- they are only allowed to listen to the sermons of their imprisoned leader on their iPods. If they had to pay this tax, they would be forced to support evil heathen satan-spawn musicians!!!!
Brilliant stuff this....
Seeing as it's about the ipod, time for piratebay to create an mp3 player in sealand, or the equivalent and sell it to the masses with no tax! Hurrah?
All this news, it's starting to really really end up being pretty bad PR for the music industry? Have their marketting and PR teams that they probably pay millions for ventured out into the world on a holiday and never returned? Looks that way. Otherwise rediculous proposals would have been nailed on the head before it even had the subject line added onto the email.
Fools. Neverbuyanothertune.com on it's way to a town near you!
Format Shifting Promotes Sales
Well, it does in my case. Without being able to rip CDs and play them on my Sansa when on the move, I wouldn't buy around 90% of the music I do, as there simply wouldn't be enough time to ever listen to it all.
There's also the issue that the player has podcasts on it, and music that I created myself, and I use it occasionally as a portable data drive....
Extortion
This is extortion, plain and simple.
Format shifting is ALREADY among your statutory rights -- it's called "fair dealing". It is a defence to a charge of copyright infringement that you were dealing fairly with the material.
If you are ever up on such a charge, insist to be tried in Crown Court. The jury is your friend. Where are they going to find twelve people, eleven of whom have never taped an LP or CD to listen in the car? Once you are acquitted, other people up on similar charges can cite your case as precedent. (There's a minuscule possibility that you could be sent down; but this would have consequences whose most probable outcome, barring the complete downfall of the government, would be formal legalisation and a royal pardon.)
The fatal flaw in this plan is the difficulty of getting to court in the first place. Possession of illegally-copied cassettes and CDs is generally only ever used as leverage to get a search warrant for a fishing expedition. When something juicier comes to light, the original taping is soon forgotten. If home taping is the only thing the police have against you, then you can expect a long wait for your appointment with the beak -- and the evidence to go walkies in the meantime.
This is why I will never buy music again
Those scum sucking b@$t@rd$. The only hope left is for the entire music industy to collapse upon itself and rise from the ashes anew. I just can't believe these greedy pigs they have got to be making 10x the money they used to make. I mean what costs more to them: Manufacturing a CD and sending it stores for sale or putting an MP3 on server for purchase?
Just cause they were late to the party and didn't think digital music was for real that's their problem not ours. I am sick of hearing this Tax needed to help compansate the artists blah blah blah hey well maybe you shouldn't have been ripping them off to begin with.
Format Shifting and the Law
It *is* unlawful to rip your cds to mp3s however only in a civil sense of the matter. Damages are determined during copyright infringement cases based on the harm done by them... in this case the harm is zero pence so they could get a judgement against you but no damages which makes the whole process rather pointless.
The law did work fine the way it was because people never worried about things that had no harm, but now they seem to understand the letter of the law rather than the spirit of it. As record companies have become so utterly stupid perhaps the law needs to be changed (it's already bad because the damages for commercial copyright infringement are the same as non commercial copyright infringement).
Looking forward to it...
...because when my iPod tax is paid (for what, £10, £20 extra?), then this must surely mean I have just paid for all the music in the world and I am now legally allowed to fill it with 80 Gb of Pirate Bay. Sounds like a bargain, no?
ffs
am i right in thinking that i'm still being charged additional tax on blank cds as they seem to think all CDs are for pirating purposes :(
this is just theft - pure and simple - as said before i also have a lot of my vinyl ON CD - THEN MP3 - i used to dj a lot so why should i have to pay more for this??
the problem is that our government are simply wet - and uninformed :(
imho we all stop buying music - everyone get on mininova - let them dissappear up their own corporate fat arses.
if format shifting is illegal isnt M$ et al breaking the law by supplying methods of ripping music?
They need only do two things to make things right...
!. Wake up and smell the coffee
2. Fuck off and die from Ebola
I think the musicians will still manage to get heard (and importantly, paid) without these utter cocks pretending they're somehow giving the muso's a living.
Paris cos even SHE can get seen and heard when people would rather she didn't.
I know where they got the idea
I know where they got the idea. All these dumb teenagers buy a CD, then want the song on their phone as a ringtone, so they pay twice the cost of a legal mp3 (of a song they already own) to get a 30 second version.
If people are dumb enough to pay more for less of something they already have, then getting them to pay more for the right to make a low-quality version of a CD must be even easier.
I notice that they haven't said how they plan to divide up their new tax money with the small independent labels. Something tells me that only the fattest pigs will be eating from that trough.
Podcasts
I use my iPod for podcasts only - listening to it whilst walking and on the bus to and from work every day. Why podcasts? Because it's 1 hr 40 minutes a day and podcasts are always different - I'd have to have an awful lot of music to give me 8 1/3 hours of variety a week. I don't want the player to be taxed - I have already paid for the podcasts because they are from the BBC and I am a UK TV licence payer.
Charges on CDs are unfair - you might not transcode it - and charges on players are unfair - again, you might not be transcoding from anything. Clearly, there needs to be an alternative solution taking payment at the point of transcoding, or no charge at all.
@ Ringtones
I always thought that "paid-for" ringtones were a stupidity tax for people who couldn't work out how to use the sound recorder on their mobile.
Again, making a ringtone from a CD you own is probably fair dealing, because only a small portion is reproduced (after the first couple of bars, you are going to answer the phone) and this is unlikely to be enough to count as copyright infringement.
Not the point
The music industry has got it all wrong, the problem is a lack of decent material - the stuff that is being produced today has little to no artistic merit - it is all about hype (as a result Xfactor type program, Louis Walsh type bands etc), It is all manufactured music (and they would make it in china if they could get away with it).
As a result, people buy fewer CD's (I have a collection of 500+ CD's bought over the years, but I have probably bought only 10 disks in the last 8 years!!!!!)
So we have what is called in Ireland "Dublin Bus Economics" - Dublin Bus used to put up the prices everytime it's passenger numbers fell, thus causing it's passenger numbers to fall further etc etc..... In this case we have a worsening product being sold to fewer people for a higher price..
Rhetorical question: How many bands that formed in the last 5 years will be around in 30 year???? - I suspect probably 0 but maybe 1 at most.
I lived in Germany in the mid 1990's and there the music industry anounced that they were going to raise the price of CD's to 50DM (approx 25 euro) as they felt the market could support that. They never got over 30 as surprise surprise sales started dropping.....
Another issue is the amount they pay big bands - the invest a huge amount of capital upfront into bands that might or might not pay off - REM went through years of producing rubbish until Accelerate!!!
So over priced junk, and paying too much to artists is the music industry's fundamental problem, they can complain about mp3 players etc etc but until they sort these things out "the only way is down baby"
My 2 cents worth...
We need more levies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/09/blank_media_levy_report/
1. I want to see a software levy. Lots more software gets illegally copied than Garth Brooks.
2. I want to see a news levy. Lots of people read the news online, robbing the news industry of revenue.
Lets get some things straight.The UK is actually one of the few places in Europe which doesn’t have a levy.There is pressure to make *not* charging a levy, and attempting to circumvent it, a *criminal* offence across Europe. Be sure of one thing– it will come to the UK.
In sunny Belgium, where I reside, I pay 2.20 euro per month on my cable connection as “levy” for just having the infrastructure which would allow me to illegally copy content. With that levy, I have no additional rights – i.e I still have to buy a CD or DVD, and downloading off of BitTorrent could well see fully armed cops breaking down my door and hauling me off to jail
I also pay about 60 cents levy – separate from the 21% VAT – for a blank single sided DVD; yes – that’s a lot more than the manufacturing cost of a DVD. Hence I don’t buy blank DVDs in Belgium. Note – it is illegal for me to order blank media from the UK for instance without paying the levy.
For 2006, the levy netted Auvibel about 25 million Euros. Remember, that’s just Belgium.
I hate the music industry, and have done the vast majority of my adult life. I don’t buy CDs, or download (legally or otherwise) music. My hatred of the music industry is so strong, I don’t actually *listen* to much music (that and there’s next to no modern music I like). I will on occasion go to a live concert.
Yet, the audio/video industry has successfully managed to gouge about 10% of the pre-tax cost of my internet connection. So, gun toting, homophobic, drug taking, child molesting no-talent “stars” and their fat cat media conglomerates can rest easy – the gravy train is gonna keep on rollin….
Personally, I’d rather have a “news” levy. I’ve stopped buying newspapers as I get my daily fix from the free online versions. The newspapers have clearly suffered as I now get for free content I used to have to pay for. And as the “press” is a cornerstone of democracy – it makes infinitely more sense than a levy on recordable media.
Oh, and as an IT professional – I want to see a code levy. Shed loads of software gets illegally copied; more than music/video by unit cost I’d say. In 50 years time, when I’m in my rocking chair – I want to see the money rolling in for that one-hit wonder code I wrote back in the 90s!
Digital Rights
If the record industry (and if this goes ahead, I?m sure that the film industry will want their share as I have a couple of DVD's copied to my iPod) wants to charge us for transferring the music from one format to another, surely they are getting into the realms of selling us the rights to the music. Therefore if I have an accident with a CD, they should be required to replace it (at no cost to me) as I have purchased the right to listen to the music, independent of format, and not just brought a CD that I currently have to replace if I gets damaged.
Also, if a new format is launched e.g. Blueray I should be able to upgrade at minimal cost as I have already paid for the right to watch/listen to the material. This could be a good thing for the consumer, although I doubt that the industry will go this far.
@Too Slow
"...including the many layers of middle management and the extravagant contracts given to artists..."
Most artists get peanuts, basically. You need to be consistently in the top 40 to have a chance at any decent money.
This is because the payment to the artists usually has a boatload of expenses deducted from it. So a million dollar advance will have recording studio fees, touring expenses, and so on deducted. In the end the artists are lucky to break even while the distributor makes a mint.
...Ronny
Re: Not the point
I don't really think that music has gotten worse. What is happening is that what music is marketed is based solely on what's a safe bet.
In the 80's there was a LOT of complete and utter crap. In my estimation, it was crap. But the variety of what was available was huge so there was also some fabulous stuff there too. In my estimation.
However, the stuff I thought crap was loved by someone else and what I thought great was their cruddy pap.
Now there's no longer the real depths of awfulness but then again, there's nothing of sublime beauty either. And what remains is mere pablum. Everyone can listen to it but there's no deviation. So when you've heard one boy band ballad you've heard them all.
When something "new" turns up, it's played to death. Duffy was quite good and I enjoyed listening to it on the radio. For the first twenty or so times. Now I reckon I have no need to buy the CD at all because it's been played so much. And when it's been so long since it was played I'll be thinking "well, I liked it, maybe I ought to buy the CD so I can hear it again" it's no longer produced. Because the return on investment isn't high enough.
So it isn't that there's only crap on, but that there's only mediocre on and after a while it ALL seems to be crap. We used to have stuff rated 0-10 (crap to fantastic). Now we get a range of rates 4-7 (meh to meh).
Stupidest thing I ever heard and I've heard Paris Hilton speak
So what about people who actually pay for their music legitimately (FTR, I'm not a paytard)? Firstly, they'll be paying a tax for an MP3 player to ensure record companies/recording "artists" get their royalty/cut just in case he or she who buys the MP3 player pirates their music; then when they pay for the track/album, the record companies and recording "artists" get yet another royalty/cut.
The only people who'll benefit from such a stupid idea will be the record companies and the recording "artists". Obviously, paytards i.e. those doing the "right thing" will be the losers.
Surely this proves that no good deed ever goes unpunished.
What's next? Will DVD/Blu-Ray players/games consoles/TV sets/computers* be taxed even further to ensure that the motion picture companies/video game developer/satellite TV providers/software devlopers* are paid whatever royalty are entitled to?
* delete as appropriate
Paris because even she would be hard pressed to suggest something so stupid.
Ridiculous.
Pure and simple. Another ridiculous idea by a ridiculous group of middlemen.
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