A good reason to not like the Zune
Have you seen the new Microsoft Zune? It is a competitor to Apple’s iPod.
There are quite a few things that people don’t like about the Zune, not the least of which is the DRM. On the Zune, even free content becomes copy protected. You can share it but the other person can only use it for 3 times or 3 days.
The issue that I dislike about the Zune is the deal Microsoft has with at least 1 record company. This deal pays the record company for every Zune sold. Presumably this is because they assume that if you buy an mp3 player you are stealing music and the record company isn’t getting paid for that stolen music. So, now they are getting some money for what they wouldn’t normally have gotten. Now, this is assuming everyone steals music and they are stealing this companies music (Universal I think it was).
My big issue with this is that I would bet that the record company doesn’t pass any of that money on to it’s artists, they are going to keep it all. Doesn’t sound quite right to me. The musicians have historically gotten screwed by the record companies and it looks like this is doing the same thing again.
Since most people are starting to download music and more music is being purchased online, I think more artists will go independent and start selling their music online without any record company. I think this would be a good thing as it’s a great scenario of our capitalist society at work. You like an artist and music, you go buy it from them. They get paid for what they do and you get music you like. If you are buying it online, they can offer it for a great price and still make more for every song sold than they would through the record company. Of course, they have all the responsibility of marketing and sales too.
I see more musicians starting to sell online. I also see the end of albums. Think about it. Right now you can buy individual songs online. If an album only has 1 or 2 good songs, you’ll only buy those and forget the rest. Artists will have to make every song they release something that people will buy and pay for individually. This will kill the album concept. We wouldn’t have 1 hit wonders but we would also have room for more artists as we could spend $20 but get 20 or more songs from a variety of artists that we like. Instead of spending $20 to get an album of 1 artist with only a couple good songs.
We’ll see, but I think the Zune may be the beginning of big changes because the individuals have enough power that the companies won’t be able to stop it.
p.s. - There was a recent lawsuit brought on by Tom Petty and others. This suit was trying to win back money from the record company. Why? The artists were still being charged about 15% breakage fee. This is for when a shipment of LP’s has some broken records, the artists pays for it. Ah, but, you wisely say, we haven’t had lp’s for many a year. Correct.