Sony BMG now says ripping CD's to your MP3 player is "stealing"

[Michael]

I buy CDs by my favorite bands, and use torrents, etc. for checking out new bands. I see it a bit hypocritical for Sony to say that ripping CDs onto your MP3 player is 'stealing', when they are the ones supplying a lot of MP3 players themselves. What else are they meant to be used for?!

 

[Metal Ken]

^^ im the same way. I bought probably 3-4 Cds in the past 2-3 weeks, and i had all of them on my ipod first.

 

[DDDorian]

I buy CDs by my favorite bands, and use torrents, etc. for checking out new bands. I see it a bit hypocritical for Sony to say that ripping CDs onto your MP3 player is 'stealing', when they are the ones supplying a lot of MP3 players themselves. What else are they meant to be used for?!

I bought one of the Son MP3 Walkmans for my sister and the software that came with it would watermark everything you ripped from CD so that it could only be copied once and would change any media on the player to a format that wouldn't play on anything else, even other Sony products. Also, if you tried to copy a song downloadrd from limewire or the like you had to jump through a bunch of hoops to get it on there as the software would try to make you pay for it or just stop you outright

In the same vein, check this out: this woman didn't settle out of court and now has to pay $220,000 due to illegal downloading. Fuck that, she might as well go to prison, by the time she gets out none of these labels will even exist.

 

[Naren]

So, I must have stolen thousands and thousands of songs... FROM MYSELF. It's my fucking CD and I can do whatever I want with it. You know what? I never listen to music on CDs. I always listen to that music either on my computer (as MP3s) or on my iPod (also as MP3s). When I buy a new CD, I don't listen to that CD. I turn all the songs into MP3s and then listen to the MP3s on my computer and iPod. The CD is just the way of getting the music onto my computer and iPod.

This lady is just bitter and clueless.

 

[Lucky Seven]

I was looking at Sony BMG's page, and i find it funny that there's a direct link to executives and subsidiary labels, but no actual bands. THat in and of itself seems telling.

The only one i had even bought albums from before was Epic. So i decided to see what kind of stuff they have on there. Such provocative artists as:
Good Charlotte
Incubus
Jennifer Lopez
Jessica Simpson

Hey now, Incubus is a good band (that is, if you're talking about the death metal band )

 

[Beta]

This lady is just bitter and clueless.

Clueless? I think so. But I don't agree she's bitter.

She's attempting to put in place corporate rhetoric that sets them up for their future litigation efforts.

Sony is also phasing out their Connect music service, and their proprietary audio encoding format with it, in favor of a windows media based system. All their new devices will still support mp3s. Is transferring all of my mp3s over to a new device stealing, or is it OK because I just laid out a bare minimum of $99.95 for new hardware? Or are they willing to look the other way just this once because I didn't buy an Apple product?

Since they're getting rid of their own music store, and haven't announced anything that will replace it, how the hell is anyone supposed to use their devices without "stealing?"

Not only did Sony provide you with the storage device for your "stolen" audio and video, they provided you with software you can use to rip audio from CDs. It makes me wonder if there's any communication between the various Sony divisions.

Oh, and it's good to see Korn has come a long way from "Y'all Want a Single."

 

[Metal Ken]

Hey now, Incubus is a good band (that is, if you're talking about the death metal band )

No, i'm talking about the rock band. The death metal incubus is called Opprobrium now.

 

[TomAwesome]

Sony BMG is half the size, because when people realized they only wanted 2 songs off your shitty CDs, they stopped buying them. Release good music, and maybe your profits wont be so fucking dismal. You might want to try a better method, like signing good bands instead of lowering the price of a CD from 19$ to 16$.



I got a pair of nuts she can lick if she tries to stop me from copying CDs i PURCHASED from her label to my Ip...wait... I don't buy any discs from artists on Sony BMG, cause they don't sign good bands! thats right!

The fact that the artist only gets 1-2$ off every ced (if they're lucky) is way more of a rip off than the "pain" the record companies are feeling.

1) Sell CD's for a fair price
2) Stop signing shit bands
3) Accept your cut will be less and that the world is changing.

Fuck, I mean, I'd buy a hell of a lot more CD's if they were priced fairly, and if i knew i wasn't buiying shit.

And boo-fucking-hoo about record companies not making money from bands touring, or from merch. I mean, that's quite possibly the only way a lot of bands make their living.

Just because some music exec can't support a coke fueled lifestyle of doing lines of a hookers arse, and then screwing bands by putting it through their expenses, hell, I am not going to lose a lot of sleep over it.

Ive noticed that some CD's have taken action against ripping CD's, for example! my friend told me about the new Korn cd (see you on the other side) HE CANT EVEN BURN IT ONTO HIS COMPUTER TO PUT ON HIS IPOD... its totally lame -.-

........If they charge stupid prices for CD's people are just gunna be like "screw it" and just download it....

they should be more like relapse records, I recently bought the new Dying Fetus album THREE DAYS after its release for 13.99$ (what a steal!) good price, good album, good deal in my opinion...
anyway (sorry for rambling on)
moral of the story is: charge decent prices and people will buy your music, dont be a greedy bitch!

all around. If the music is good, the albums will still sell! They like to blame MP3s, and yeah I'm sure that's part of it, but record labels are producing crappier and crappier music overall as far as I've seen/heard, and in any case, they overcharge for CDs (which makes the MP3 problem worse), and very little of that money goes to the artists. They shouldn't have any right to the money they get from merch or touring (unless the label made said merchandise or something), and they shouldn't be able to bitch about it.

...I like Incubus, at least their first few albums...

 

[Naren]

...I like Incubus, at least their first few albums...

Same here. S.C.I.E.N.C.E. and Make Yourself are awesome albums and I also really liked Fungus Amongus. Morning View was kind of mediocre and A Crow Left Of The Murder was a little boring, but the first 3 albums were really nice.

 

[leatherface2]

i have been ripping off artists since i got into music back in the 80s.it all started with those damn cassettes

 

[b3n]

Making "a copy" of a purchased song is just "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy',"

So... by this logic you couldn't even download a song to your iPod (or Sony Walkman) as this process involves copying the track to another device (PC to mp3 player)

Dumb.

 

[Nick]

take me in im guilty!!!

this is actually a joke, the record industry is in a shockingly bad state of affairs make no mistake about that however what others have been saying here is correct.

If you sign shallow bullshit artists with no ability that only have about 2 or 3 good tracks per record you are going to attract shallow bullshit fans who arent really fans but just people that like something to occupy their subconcious while they get on with whatever else they are doing. These people arent going to part with cash for this sort of thing because it doesnt mean that much to them.

If they signed good artists who put out quality music that spans a whole cd every time they are going to build up a quality fan base of people that are excited about the music and want to support their favourite artists. I download music but i also buy the stuff my favourite bands put out purley to support them.

The problem is that the record execs are all members of the first catagory not the second.

 

[Mattayus]

Rich Ward from Stuck Mojo/Fozzy put out the latest mojo album out for free online. I thought that was a good idea, because he explains that most of the time an artist won't see a single penny from the sale of an album. It's arguable though, not all labels are the same.

 

[maliciousteve]

People have been copying music from sources (Vinyl, Tapes, CD's etc) for years. That hasn't harmed music in a big way what so ever. It's downloading from places like Limewire, Napster etc that causes this 'harm' to the companies. I myself only download one or two songs from these places to see what the album is going to sound like. If I like it, i'll go out and buy the album. If it's shit, I'll delete them and not bother.

If I've put my hard earned money into buying a CD I will do what the fuck I want to do with it. Copy it to put on my MP3 player, Computer backup or whatever I damn well want.

If they want to change this they have to offer something CHEAP and easily available from the internet. Something like 50 pence or 50 cents a track, so something like a 10 track album will only cost £5. Sounds pretty good to me, I'm sure it would attract alot of people to do this. But obviously companies like Song BMG etc are too fucking stuck up and idiotic to realise this at this moment in time.

They need to get with the times, people are finding music their own way much easier thanks to the internet. A lot of people won't settle for the illiterate, ignorant Rap/Hip Hop bullshit they keep paying to have broad casted on MTV anymore.

 

[budda]

Funny story:

So 2nd week of college, me and my buddy went to go see A Wilhelm Scream. Great set, great vibe all around, and i sang along with every song i knew.

after their set, i went back to their merch table. wanna know why? to buy their cd's. Trevor, one of the guitarists actually thanked me for singing along with the songs (i was right in front of him the whole time, w00t)! he didnt mention that i had obviously downloaded the songs first since i was just buying the cd's after the set.. he was glad i was buying merch and singing along.

I'm pretty sure that at least a few bands just want to play a wack of live shows, record their new stuff so that their fans know the words next time the band is playing, and get paid enough to make it worthwhile.

i was hesistant about buying the new as i lay dying album, but the whole thing is streamed on their myspace page - i checked it out, deemed it worth my $$ and bought it. no complaints here.

peoples is stupid sometimes *sigh*

 

[BigM555]

Trevor, one of the guitarists actually thanked me for singing along with the songs (i was right in front of him the whole time, w00t)! he didnt mention that i had obviously downloaded the songs first since i was just buying the cd's after the set.. he was glad i was buying merch and singing along.

Obviously Trevor hasn't fried all of his brain cells and hasn't taken a corporate dick up the arse. He seems to realize that you wouldn't have been there in the first place without having heard his tunes.

People seem to forget that old school radio seems to be dying these days. In the past that was how people were introduced to new material. Sure, you can still listen to regular radio but fewer and fewer people do because the formats SUCK!

Ironically, a lot of the radio play lists are reportedly controlled by the same corporate idiots that green light crap albums and complain about "lost sales".

 

[Drew]

IIRC music copyright law works pretty much the same as computer software copyright law. It is based upon the principal of one purchase allows one person to use it at a given time. So, if you make copies of your CD, or rip it to your iPod, then you're in the clear, because you cannot listen to two things at the same time. However, if you rip it to your iPod, and then lend your CD to someone else, you are breaking the law, because you and the other person could be listening to the same thing at the same time.

It's actually even more liberal than that, Dave. The courts have historically upheld the right to make a limited number of copies of a copywritten work under "fair use" laws, defined as the number of copies a person could make under the reasonable demands of personal use. Taping a tape you own to have a copy for the car or a "backup" copy in case something happens to the original, making a mix tape or CD from tracks off CD's you own, and even the mp3 itself, I believe, have all been defended under fair use guidelines sucessfully in a court of law.

Fuck, when Sony started releasing copy-protected CD's, they were limited to ten copies before the anti-copy software kicked in. This "One copy of a CD you own is theft" would be an absurd about-0face even if Sony didn't make portable mp3 players.

I agree with whoever said that this chick's just a bitter idiot - anyone with even a PASSING familiarity in intellectual property law and how it pertains to music copyrights wouldn't be nearly so stupid as to make that argument and actually mean it.

Fuck sony. Most of the bands I like seem to be on small indie labels anyway.

 

[stuz719]

I'm probably one of the few people on this board old enough to remember the British Phonographic Industry's campaign "Home taping is killing music" where they actually seriously campaigned to have a levy placed on each blank cassette sold to be paid to their members (i.e. major labels) as compensation for their lost sales.

That failed, and similar DRM-type ventures are doomed to fail because the recording industry has failed to move on from the days in the 50's, 60's and early 70's where:

1) National Service was coming to an end in the West
2) Economies were booming
3) People had plentiful disposal income to spend on leisure - i.e. listening to music
4) Technology was expensive
5) The only way to access recorded music was on vinyl
6) Vinyl couldn't be copied at home

Now technology has moved on:

1) People have even more disposable income
2) People have more leisure time
3) Listening to music has to compete with innumerable other leisure pastimes
4) Technology is cheap
5) Music is easily copied from one medium to another

But the business model hasn't evolved to cope with this. The labels have had things so good for so long that they just can't see that:

1) If they offer varied product they can tap niche markets
2) If they add value (interactive CD-Rom's etc.) people will feel their products are better value, and hence be more prepared to spend their money on them
3) There is such competition for leisure activity time that simply offering numerous Beyoncé/Whitney/Kelis/whoever this week's #1 is clones simply won't hold people's attention spans (although they are starting to grasp that the general consumer's insatiable appetite for disposable pop can keep American/Pop Idol going for a few years churning out yet another bland karaoke star...).

I can remember the days when you bought a record - now, apparently, you "license the music".

I'd also take anything Sony BMG said a lot more seriously if they also weren't the company responsible for dumping trojans on people's PC's.

 

[metalfiend666]

Anyone else reminded of Courtney Love's speach about copyright theft at the time of Napster? You know, the one where she was supposed to tell everyone that downloading music was bad and going to hurt the music industry etc. What she actually said is that copyright theft is what happens when you get signed to a label. The label STEALS your copyright to the work you've created.

Music is the only art where this happens. If you write a book or play, make a film, take or paint a picture etc YOU retain the copyright to YOUR work. For the record labels to get on their high horses about copyright theft makes my blood boil.

Downloading music is a convienient scapegoat for the record lables as it allows them to blank out the real reasons their profits are disappearing. They simply aren't listening to their market, they're still trying to tell us what to listen to and force-feeding the public the same bland, pre-packed, rehashed soulless shit. With the modern ability to access whatever media we want, people simply don't want to buy the music they're putting out and certainly not at the prices they charge.

 

[Pauly]

Dear Sony, suck my cock kthxbai