Stop me if you’ve heard this one…

There’s been a lot of buzz on the web about piracy, this time not affiliated with the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Johnny Depp, but… e-books.

Every news article about the potential e-book market is another can of gas on the fire:

• The petition against Google’s e-book scanning
• Apple’s impending i-book store
• The Kindle-killing (and horrifically named) i-Pad

Seems that e-books are the talk of internetville. But doesn’t all this talk sound familiar? Stop me if you’ve heard this one:

Sales are down! Piracy is destroying the industry! Lawsuits! Copyright!! DRM!!!

Oh yes, that’s right. We DID hear all this before. From the music industry. We heard it when the cassette tape format was invented. We heard it again when CD burners became a household item. And we got to hear it again when Napster + broadband internet connections made it possible to download an entire library of audio in minutes. And now that books are on the block, we get to hear it again from the publishing industry.

Yawn.

I’ll direct the publishing industry to read my Open Letter to Gene Simmons (of the band KISS) and the RIAA. Simply replace the word “music” with “e-book” and replace “Recording Industry” with “Publishing Industry”.

Oh, and replace “Pirates” with “Pirates”.

The Problem is Virtual

Until recently, artistic works such as music, video, pictures and stories required a medium to contain the art and transfer it from one person to another. That medium (Tape, DVD, CD, Book, etc…) had a production cost, a fixed physical expense that someone had to pay because that THING had to be manufactured, packaged, shipped, received, warehoused, and stocked.

For decades, we’ve been told how much it costs to make THINGS and to ship THINGS and to stock THINGS. And the cost of the THINGS keeps going up because of [fill in the blank].

But consumers were never buying the THING. People don’t really want a cassette tape. Or a book. Or a computer file for that matter. Consumers want the art that the medium carries. They want the story about Frodo and Sam. They want the song by Jagged Spiral. They want the picture of the pirate flag.

With the internet, the medium is all but removed from the product, leaving an intangible stream of ones and zeros. At long last, the products of art have been un-THING-ified. Virtualized.

One of the reasons consumers never wanted the medium in the first place was that it adds unnecessary cost to the art. Well, now the medium is almost completely gone, but where are the savings? We should be seeing prices dive for the virtual products, but the industries still try to justify the old prices.

This is a problem.

Price Check

Why is an e-book selling for $9 when the hardcover book is $13? Why in the Hells do they both list at $29?

Seriously. Twenty Nine American Dollars is the Publisher’s Suggested Retail Price for an E-Book? Is that supposed to make you think that $9 is a good deal?

I’m not the only one calling the publishing industry out on it’s bullshit. New York Times Bestselling Author Michael Stackpole lists plenty of other reasons publishers can’t justify their e-book pricing.

The industry holds the price up, because they won’t let go of the THING-ness of their product. They see every sale of a virtual product as a direct equivalent of the sale of a physical product. They think that every e-book sold is a physical book not sold.

Reality Check: Virtual products are not Physical products.

Truth is, the publishing industry should be thrilled to death about internet distribution. E-books may have a lower cost, but they have a far higher margin than their physical counterparts. If you don’t know what that means, ask an accountant. If you can’t make your business work with this new math, then hire a fucking accountant, and change your business to become profitable. The last thing you’d want to do is waste money on lawyers to fight the system. Ask the recording industry.

Why is the industry is down? Why aren’t people buying? Its simple. The product is virtualized, but the price is not.

Hey, it’s a free market, and it’s not against the law for businesses or even the entire industry to use business practices leading to their own obsolescence. It also isn’t against the law for them to starve to death because they refuse to adapt to the new technology.

But it looks like instead of taking advantage of the new technology they have available, the publishing industry has decided to try to force a square peg into a round hole. When that doesn’t work, they sulk and stare at the dwindling sales and blame…

Pirates!

Before you break out the flamethrowers, understand that I’m not endorsing piracy.  Piracy is unlawful and unethical. Google is evil for doing it, and so is everyone else who does it.

But I am telling you that it is entirely true that (music/movie/ebook) piracy is NOT “killing” the (recording/motion-picture/publishing)  industry. It wasn’t back when cassette tapes came out. It wasn’t back when the VCR was released to consumers. Author’s careers are not being destroyed because their books are available for free at the library, or borrowed from friends, or sold in used bookstores. Musicians aren’t going broke because their songs are played on terrestrial radio, myspace, and pandora at no cost to consumers.

The publishing industry is down because of many factors, but piracy is the last one to worry about. Wasting time on it is like rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship.  Keelhauling every pirate in the universe won’t fix what’s wrong with the publishing industry, the music industry, or any other industry, because Pirates are not a problem; they are a symptom.

Let’s look at the problem that causes piracy to become popular:

Free as in “E-Books”

Price a product high enough and two things will happen.

• Sales of that product will decrease.
• Customers will find other ways to get the product for less.

The music industry already learned this, but let’s look at how it pertains to the publishing industry, by examining these ‘other ways’ to get the product for less than the listed price:

• You can get every Dean Koontz book ever written for free… at the public library.
• You can get every Stephanie Meyer book for free… by borrowing them from your niece.
• You can buy the latest Stephen King novel for One Dollar…  on Craigslist. (In hardcover.)
• You can buy Scott Sigler’s latest for just a couple bucks… at the used bookstore.
• Ebay.com
• Swaptree.com
• Bookcrossing.com
• And you can get the latest of pretty much any e-book for free… by pirating it via bittorrent.

Care to wager that library usage is way up? Borrowing/lending? But you won’t hear about the publishing industry claiming that libraries are “Destroying the industry” or trying pass laws banning the sharing of books. That would be just as laughable as saying that pirates are destroying the industry.  It’s just one more way customers can get the product if they don’t think it’s worth the list price.

Am I suggesting that publishers are causing an increase in piracy by setting their prices too high? Yes. Just like they are “causing” people to check books out at the library, or borrowing them instead of purchasing them at the bookstore. Just like they are causing consumers to obtain the product through other methods, or pass on the product altogether.

Of course publishers have to fight piracy, or people will think they’re OK with it. But to declare that piracy is destroying the publishing industry is simply not true. Illegal? Yes. On the rise? No doubt. But look at the cause:

Your business plan sucks.

Here’s where you should be focusing. Not on pirates. Solve this problem, and piracy will diminish, along with borrowing/lending and library usage.

But, we doesn’t understand business or teh Interwebs!

I can already hear the publishing industry screaming at me that it can’t make a profit off what people are willing to pay for e-books. Sorry, but that argument does not fly.

You can price your product whereever you like, but products are never worth more than people are willing to pay for them. It doesn’t matter how much they cost to make.  Like I said, price it too high and people won’t buy it or they will find cheaper alternatives. Yes, including piracy.

This is the spot where I’d make a “buggy whip manufacturer” reference, but q.e.d. right?

The Solution

The solution starts by acknowledging the real problem.

The solution starts with letting go of the paradigm of treating ones and zeros on the web as a physical product. Virtual products are not Physical products.

The solution starts when people stop crying that change is bad, fighting against the new tech, and trying to cover up bad business models by blaming pirates.

I suspect the solution requires a generation of post-internet people growing up with virtualized products; people who weren’t born into a system of 100% THINGS and then had to suffer the paradigm shift to the virtual. These people will have a more intimate understanding of this “problem”, and perhaps when they grow up to take over for the current regime, they will arrive at a more elegant solution – one that works to Everyone’s advantage.

The Future of #TwitterRebellion

The Devolution of Twitter

The creators of Twitter will tell you that they didn’t know what the hell it was for when they released it. They created a way to send a txt message to the world and watched to see how people would use it.

Like several people I’ve dated, Twitter is fast and easy. The microblogging and public text-chat format is perfect for sharing links, updating status, asking questions or blurting out random props that don’t require the treatment of a fully-formed blog post. Way back in Feb 2009, I guessed what twitter might evolve into.

Unfortunately, twitter didn’t evolve. It devolved.

Automatic for the Tweeple

Automation is one of the cool things twitter had going for it. The open-source platform allows companies like youtube, myspace, facebook and others to tie in to your twitter account and auto-post tweets for you. In fact, this blog post here at conradzero.com will auto-post a link to twitter through the twitterfeed service. Saves me the time and effort of doing it myself. Coolness, right?

Kind of.

Automation is one of the suck things that is killing twitter. The open-source platform allows people to upload a spreadsheet of 10,000 senseless posts which automatically post to twitter on a schedule of about once per second. While the posts on twitter were already nearly mindless bits of fluff, now accounts drown twitter in completely mindless bits of fluff. The goal of these New Media Spambags is to post as many times as inhumanly possible. Post more = get seen more. Get seen more = get followed more. More followers = bigger market for your advertising messages.

Does this work? Of course it does.

Does it suck? Of course it does.

And of course, twitter only encourages that you follow people with lots of followers, because…that’s how you get more followers.

Invasion of The New Media Spambags

Classic Automated Twitter Spambaggery - Note he admits the pic isn't his either!

Of course the people who wreck almost all online things are those who REALLY REALLY want to sell you something. Whether their product is good or not is irrelevant – getting it out in front of people is all they care about. Using the automation I mentioned before, these Twitter Spambags stream continual posts – jokes, quotes, facts… and of course, repeated references to their product.

These are the same douchebags who use e-mail SPAM to sell their products. The idea is the same; a high volume of public contact will lead to a small percentage of click-thru, which leads to an even smaller percentage of sales. The higher the quantity of contact, the larger the number of click-thru, the larger the number of sales.

I’ve included a screenshot of just such a Twitter Spambag. No particular reason I’m picking on this person, there’s thousands of profiles just like this one. But here’s some tips on how to spot a Spambag in the wild.

First, note the frequency of posts. No human can write consistent posts like this every three minutes (Exactly three minutes apart, mind you.)

Second, note the content of the posts. Two tweets of generic quotes or factoids, then every third post is a link to a “Make Money Now” page. Because links take up part of the precious 140 character twitter-post limit, services are used to shorten the post down to a smaller size. Because of the shortening, the links are hidden and you can’t see where they go until you click on them.  But notice that the link in the first post is repeated in the last post. If you scrolled down the list of tweets, you would see this particular Spambag alternating between two links over and over.

Third, note where the posts originate. In this case, they all come from API, meaning they are being sent through a third-party service. Likely, an automated one.

This is another spam artist turning the new social media into a quagmire of auto-babble. Is this illegal? Of course not. But it’s also not illegal for people like this to starve to death because no one buys their shit.

#TwitterRebellion - Putting Twitter Spambags Out Of Our Misery since 2009.

#TwitterRebellion – Block the Twitter Spambags

If no one clicked on the SPAM e-mails and if no one clicked their links and if no one bought the crap they sell, e-mail SPAM would stop. E-mail SPAMmers only continue to send e-mail SPAM because it works.

If no one followed the Spambags on Twitter and no one clicked their links, twitter spam would stop. Twitter Spambags only continue to spam twitter because it works.

Why follow Spambags? It’s time to take Twitter back to the Tweeple. But how?

Simple.  Block the fucking spambags.

If you see someone you’re following post once per minute of all hours, check their profile page and look through their tweets. If they are interlacing mindless quotes and jokes between links to their snake oil, Use the “Block and Report SPAM” feature. If enough people call a spammer on their BS, their account will be pulled, and you will have done a great public service.

It’s not hard to tell a human from a Spambag.  Follow the humans. Block the spambags. Rebel and take back twitter!

Yours Darkly,
Conrad Zero

A recent article written for the Future of Music Coalition left me with mixed feelings.

The Effects of Media Consolidation on Urban Radio by Eric K Arnold analyzes how the Telecommunications Act of 1996 has impacted “Urban Radio”. Don’t worry, I didn’t know what it was either. Here is the definition directly from Mr. Arnold’s article.

“Generally speaking, urban radio is defined as programming whose primary demographic targets people of color living in urban areas.”

Anyway, you could already guess the impact of governmental decisions on American business. Do you think it made things better or worse for big businesses? Do you think it made things better or worse for artists and small/indie businesses?

The effect is summed up in the first paragraph of the article:

“Let’s cut to the chase: urban radio sucks. You know it, artists know it, and programmers know it too. It offers little room for creative programming, tends to favor established artists at the expense of new voices, and kills any halfway-decent song that does manage to land in rotation by playing it as much as three times an hour. Most of all, urban radio sucks because it rarely meets the needs of the local community from which its listeners are drawn. “

I agree wholeheartedly with all of this, *BUT* try this simple test: Reread the quote and replace the words “urban radio” with your own favorite genre of music. Country? Metal? Adult Urban Contemporary? It doesn’t change the truth of the quote, does it?

The bigger truth is that All Terrestrial Radio Sucks, for the exact same reasons. The problem isn’t limited to Urban Radio at all.

So I have to take issue with Mr. Arnold’s narrowing of the problem to how it only affects his chosen genre of music. Don’t get me wrong, the article is truthful and accurate. But the conclusion we are left to draw is that the deregulation of terrestrial radio has ruined it for Black Urban America. It’s not wrong, but it is being narrow minded at least.

So I’m all for whatever positive change can come from his article, and he mentions several things that YOU CAN DO to make things better, but I have a hard time endorsing discrimination, especially from a ‘journalist’ who should know better.

One thing Mr. Arnold does not mention regarding Things You Can Do to help is to grow some balls and not sell out if you are running a radio station. This is a part of the problem that cannot be overlooked. The stations that “cared about the needs of the local community” and used to “play local music” are gone because the owners sold off to the large corporates, or they tried to compete/cash in and started playing what everyone else was playing, to get a piece of the bigger pie. Either way, they had the option to continue playing independent music BUT THEY CHOSE NOT TO.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 made it possible for large corporate radio stations to make buyout offers to the smaller independent stations, but it did not force any of them to sell out. The owners and operators who sold out are just as guilty as the government for what happened. You can look them up in the phone book and ask them why they didn’t stand up for [fill in the genre] radio.

Another thing you can do is open a radio station that plays local music. Then, when the big media moguls come around and offer you a fat wad of cash for your radio station, you can see what it’s like to be in their shoes, and see what kind of decision you would make.

Art Is Resistance
-Zero

The Current System does not work.

If you want to purchase the new Nine Inch Nails CD: “Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D” online, you have two choices:

• Piracy
• DRM-infected files.

I do not advocate Piracy. It is not OK to steal the work of others. I also do not advocate DRM. But this is the Current System: we have the IPOD for music and video, and we have Kindle for books. We have subscriptions for online newspapers, and paid access to the content of certain websites (you know what I’m talking about…).

But the system is not working: people are still pirating virtual products like graphics, music, video, books and software, and the creators of that content are not getting paid for their work.

Why is the Current System not working? I suggest three reasons. Not surprisingly, they are the same three reasons consumers need to purchase a product of any kind – Want, Cost and Convenience.

A New System For Selling Virtual (Soft) Products

I suggest a New System be devised, which takes these things into account. A new system that will reduce piracy, and increase the potential for artists to be fairly compensated for their soft products. The New System that takes Want, Cost and Convenience into consideration will succeed where the current system is failing.

1) Want – The consumer must want or need the product.

Why would consumers want DRM-infected files? Why should they pay for files that come with a list of restrictions on how they are used? Would you buy a car that came with rules for when and where and under what conditions it can be driven? Or a shirt that came with rules for what days of the week it can be worn, and what accessories must be worn with it? Of course not.

People use DRM-infected content from I-tunes because they either don’t know any better, or don’t care. People who do know or care pass on the DRM-infected files and opt for the non-DRM ones available through piracy. Neither of these solutions is acceptable.

Also, why should consumers tolerate products like Kindle that will only work with one supplier? I wouldn’t buy a CD player that only played CDs from a particular Record Label, but that’s exactly how the new Kindle from Amazon works. This is not an acceptable solution either.

The New System should let consumers use soft products the same way they can use the hard products: WITHOUT RESTRICTIONS.

2) Cost – Consumers must believe the product is worth the price.

There is an underlying rule which never changes: PRODUCTS ARE WORTH WHAT PEOPLE ARE WILLING TO PAY FOR THEM. You can set your price point anywhere along the bell curve, but the consumers ARE the bell curve. Accept it. It doesn’t really matter how much it cost to make the product; it never did. The consumer ultimately sets the price.

Hard goods aren’t a problem. People are willing to pay $30 for a Jagged Spiral hoodie. They know $30 is less expensive than the effort and materials it would take them to make it themselves. But for soft products like music and books, the internet has created a system where the product is an endlessly renewable resource, available from any internet connection, at any time, in infinite supply. Remember the laws of Supply and Demand? Worldwide, instant availability with negligible distribution cost has created a significant shift in what people are willing to pay. It truly has devalued soft products, and the current system has not taken this into account.

For example, you can draw a picture of your stupid kid with his tongue stuck to a flagpole in a Minnesota Deep Freeze, and hang it on the wall of the local coffee shop with a $200 price tag. But scan that same picture to a .jpg and post it on the internet. How much is that worth?

What is the cost of your picture done in Charcoal on Canvas, versus the cost of your JPG? Whatever people are willing to pay for them. The questions you *meant* to ask are: What are people willing to pay for Charcoal on Canvas, and what are people willing to pay for digital bits on the internet? OK, how much would it cost them to exactly duplicate your Charcoal on Canvas? Let’s see…Art Supplies, Art Lessons, then the time required to duplicate your every stroke, or possibly contract an artist willing to duplicate your work for a lesser price… OK, now how much would it cost them to exactly duplicate your jpg?

And song downloads from I-Tunes are a dollar each? So a 12-song CD that used to cost $12 is still…$12???? Why should people pay the same price for downloaded, mp3-compressed, DRM-infected files that they pay for the higher quality and unlimited use of the physical CD? Wrong, wrong, wrong. Some people buy the DRM-infected files because it’s convenient, or because they want the song badly enough, but they shouldn’t have to. The price is too high.

The New System will have to take this into account. The more the prices line up with what the consumer is willing to pay, the less attractive the piracy options becomes. If piracy abounds, that’s an indicator your prices are too high. That is why bands like Radiohead are jumping onto the model that Jagged Spiral devised: post the media online for free, and let the customer pay what they want. This might be the New System. It might not. But it holds to the rule that the product is worth what the customer is willing to pay.

It could turn out that artists are not able to make a living on this system, especially if their art is crap.

3) Convenience – The customer can’t get the product more conveniently anywhere else.

Which do you think is easier?

• opening an account on Amazon, entering your personal info and shipping address, agreeing to the No-Privacy Statement (without reading it, natch), entering your credit card info, verifying your e-mail address, going through the checkout line with your purchase…
• Downloading BitTorrent, install, type in the name of the album, and downloading to your hard drive?

Admittedly, the online purchasing experience has gotten better. It would be better still if someone could devise a system where the consumer’s online ‘wallet’ was usable at all online locations. Consumers should not have to provide any personal information for a downloadable soft product purchase, and they certainly should NOT have to provide their personal info for each-and-every-website they do business at. You don’t have to go through all that bullshit when you go to a Burger King you’ve never been to before! You shouldn’t need a username and password to make a purchase at amazon.com, or any website! ID and Credit Card, that’s all!

Google, PayPal and Microsoft are working on this, but it just isn’t there yet. This is a major holdup to a New System that would reduce piracy, and there is no reason for it, other than businesses that are not willing to cooperate. They want that user info, they want those e-mail addresses. They want it to be difficult for you to purchase from somewhere else.

The New System should let you make your purchase quickly, securely, and conveniently, without setting up an account on the seller’s website.

Conclusion

When we look at the Current System from the perspectives of Want, Cost and Convenience, Piracy makes more sense; it offers better product for less money, and it’s easier to access. I’m not advocating piracy, I’m saying the existing system is fucked up, and here is why, so let’s get it fixed so I can buy music online at a fair price and without DRM restrictions.

No System is going to eliminate piracy, there are people who will pirate works simply for the fun of it. But a New System that takes Want, Cost and Convenience into account could significantly reduce piracy by filling consumers needs, and help artists make a living selling their works online.

Art Is Resistance
-Zero

The full article on billboard.biz requires subscription, but you can read enough excerpts from the Motley Crue fan club site to get the point:

Gene Simmons is an Idiot with a Capitalist I.

He really thinks that all of this “Free Music” nonsense could have been prevented if the Recording Industry had taken action from the beginning. Quote:

The record industry doesn’t have a f*cking clue how to make money. It’s only their fault for letting foxes get into the henhouse and then wondering why there’s no eggs or chickens. Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid’s face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there in the beginning. Those kids are putting 100,000 to a million people out of work. How can you pick on them? They’ve got freckles. That’s a crook. He may as well be wearing a bandit’s mask.

Gene Simmons must be the RIAA’s wet dream, so entrenched in “the way we’ve always done it” that it is simply outside of his understanding that the rules have changed.

Sorry that the internet has made things complicated for you, Gene. Here’s something for you to think about (when you can break away from the book you are writing about all the prostitutes you’ve slept with.) I can go online and view the Mona Lisa any time I want. For Free. I can also go to the Louvre and pay to see it for a short time. For slightly more money I can own a print copy. For an ungodly amount of money I could own the real thing.

Now, why on God’s Green Earth would people pay to see the Mona Lisa, or pay for a copy of the Mona Lisa, or pay to own the Mona Lisa, when they can see it online for Free? OH MY FUCKING GOD! HOW CAN THE ARTIST MAKE ANY MONEY WHEN YOU CAN ACCESS THE ART ONLINE FOR FREEEEEEeeee….. [insert sound of Gene Simmons screaming as he falls into the abyss of his own stupidity here]

Gene, here is another thing for you to think about when you aren’t reducing KISS to a laughable product (because we all need an electric toothbrush that plays “Rock & Roll All Night”): As a musician, I would rather give my music away for free (as a matter of fact, I do give it away for free) than to see a DIME go into the pockets of the Recording Industry. They are irrelevant. They are the middlemen who have leeched the money from the pockets of talented people for DECADES. THEY are the real thieves, and the internet has eliminated their usefulness. You think they still have some value because they helped make you rich?

It gets better:

Billboard: But some artist [SIC] like RADIOHEAD and Trent Reznor are trying to find a new business model.

Simmons: That doesn’t count. You can’t pick on one person as an exception. And that’s not a business model that works. I open a store and say “Come on in and pay whatever you want.” Are you on f*cking crack? Do you really believe that’s a business model that works?

Someone points the way out of Gene Simmons stupidity, and he asks them if they are on drugs. This is where it becomes clear why he is so upset; it isn’t about the music with him, its about the *Business* of music. Music is just a vehicle to MAKE MONEY. No wonder he is upset.

You know Gene, as a matter of fact, opening a store with almost negligible overhead, upkeep and distribution costs, with GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION and open 24 x 7 x 365 then asking for donations is a fucking phenomenal business model. How do you think wikipedia.org is still in business? How do you think the projects on sourceforge are funded? Are you aware that Radiohead are actually making an average of $6 per download by Giving Away their art and letting people donate what they want? And not a penny goes to the RIAA middleman. $6 average per sale, Gene. Do YOU make that much?

This is all overlooking the fact that that the music is more important than the money, but this is also outside Gene Simmon’s frame of reference:

Billboard: So what if music just becomes free and artists make their living off of touring and merchandise?

Simmons: Well, therein lies the most stupid mistake anybody can make. The most important part is the music. Without that, why would you care? Even the idea that you’re considering giving the music away for free makes it easier to give it away for free. The only reason why gold is expensive is because we all agree that it is. There’s no real use for it, except we all agree and abide by the idea that gold costs a certain amount per ounce. As soon as you give people the choice to deviate from it, you have chaos and anarchy. And that’s what going on.

Gene, you almost figured this out. Things have Always been worth what people are willing to pay for them. Now, change a physical-product-CD into digital-bits-on-the-internet, and stir… Calling this change “chaos and anarchy” is incorrect. It is Change – change from one system to another system, one that you don’t like because you can’t see how it will make you money.

Gene, as a young boy, I looked up to you as a Hero, and now you tell the world there is no real use for music unless you sell it to make money.

Blow me, Gene Simmons, you’re a fucking idiot.

You worked hard, and made some good music and you made some good money using the system you had available at the time, and it worked out well for you. You got yours. Hooray for you. But the system has changed, and it’s time for you to shut the fuck up and let people work with the system they have.

Art Is Resistance
-Zero

The full article on billboard.biz requires subscription, but you can read enough excerpts here and from the Motley Crue fan club site to get the point:

Gene Simmons is an Idiot with a Capitalist I.

“Free Music Nonsense”

In a recent interview with Billboard magazine, Gene Simmons admits that all of this “Free Music Nonsense” could have been prevented if the Recording Industry had taken action from the beginning:

Simmons: The record industry doesn’t have a f*cking clue how to make money. It’s only their fault for letting foxes get into the henhouse and then wondering why there’s no eggs or chickens. Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid’s face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there in the beginning. Those kids are putting 100,000 to a million people out of work. How can you pick on them? They’ve got freckles. That’s a crook. He may as well be wearing a bandit’s mask.

Gene Simmons must be the RIAA’s wet dream. He’s so entrenched in “the way we’ve always done it” that it is simply outside of his understanding that the world has changed.

Pirates are way cool.

And blaming the industry’s poor earnings on pirates instead of the RIAA’s own short-sightedness? Classic. Good luck with that, or haven’t you heard? Johnny Depp and Keith Richards have made pirates cool again.

Sorry Gene, that the internet has made things complicated for you. Here is something for you to think about (when you can break away from your book about all the prostitutes you’ve paid to have sex with)

• You can go online and view a picture of the Mona Lisa any time you want. For Free.
• You can also go to the Louvre and pay to see the real thing  for a short time.
• For slightly more money you can own a poster copy.
• With all of the money Gene Simmons has made, you could own the real thing.

Now, why would people pay to see the Mona Lisa, or pay for a poster-sized copy of the Mona Lisa, or pay to own the Mona Lisa, when they can see it online for Free? OH MY FUCKING GOD! HOW CAN THE ARTIST MAKE ANY MONEY WHEN YOU CAN ACCESS THE ART ONLINE FOR FREEEEEEeeee….. [insert sound of Gene Simmons screaming as he falls into the abyss of his own stupidity here]

As a musician, I would rather give my music away online for free (as a matter of fact, I do give it away for free) than to see a dime go into the pockets of the Recording Industry. Until they wise up and change their business practices to work with the technology available they are irrelevant – by their own choice, or lack thereof.

Hey, it’s a free country and it isn’t against the law for them to maintain business practices leading them into obscurity and uselessness. It also isn’t against the law for them to all die of starvation because they refused to change.

You think the system still has some value because it helped make you rich? Perhaps we should all go back to using cassette tapes, so the cassette tape manufacturers can stay in business?

Meet the RIAA’s new way of doing business… Oh wait, it hasn’t changed

Billboard: But some artist [SIC] like RADIOHEAD and Trent Reznor are trying to find a new business model.

Simmons: That doesn’t count. You can’t pick on one person as an exception. And that’s not a business model that works. I open a store and say “Come on in and pay whatever you want.” Are you on f*cking crack? Do you really believe that’s a business model that works?

Someone points the way out of Gene Simmons stupidity, and he asks them if they are on drugs.

You know Gene, as a matter of fact, opening a store with almost negligible overhead and upkeep, ZERO manufacturing and distribution costs, GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION and open 24x7x365, and then asking for donations is a fucking phenomenal business model.

How do you think wikipedia.org is still in business? How do you think the projects on sourceforge are funded? Are you aware that Radiohead are actually making an average of $6 per download by Giving Away their music and letting people donate what they want? And not a penny goes to the RIAA middleman. $6 average per customer, Gene. Do YOU make that much?

I’m not saying the industry should adopt Radiohead’s buisness practices, but at least Radiohead are willing to try something, because it seems like the recording industry would sooner destroy the internet than to learn how to profit from it.

I wonder if the RIAA got this upset about the invention of electricity. “OMG! Electricity is going to ruin our industry! People will stop going to concerts! They are going to stay at home and listen to music broadcast over radio waves for FREE! How will we ever survive? PI-RATES!”

A Lesson In Value

Billboard: So what if music just becomes free and artists make their living off of touring and merchandise?

Simmons: Well, therein lies the most stupid mistake anybody can make. The most important part is the music. Without that, why would you care? Even the idea that you’re considering giving the music away for free makes it easier to give it away for free. The only reason why gold is expensive is because we all agree that it is. There’s no real use for it, except we all agree and abide by the idea that gold costs a certain amount per ounce. As soon as you give people the choice to deviate from it, you have chaos and anarchy. And that’s what going on.

Damn Gene, you almost figured this out. Things have always been worth what people are willing to pay for them. Now, change “Physical CDs” into “Bits on the internet”, and let’s see what happens…

When the value of the product decreases, the sticker price should also decrease. But that isn’t happening. The cost of a physical CD with 15 songs is around $15.00. The price of 15 songs on I-tunes is around… $15.00

And you want to know why people aren’t buying?

And you want to know why people are turning to piracy?

Change is Good… just not yet

Gene, calling this change “chaos and anarchy” may be your perception, but in reality it’s just Change. Change from one system to another system, one that you don’t like, because you don’t know how it will make you money. Your diatribe is just another dying gasp from an industry that is choking itself to death, because it isn’t smart enough to move to where the air is.

And blaming pirates. Honestly.

Gene, I know you worked hard using the system you had available at the time, and it worked out well for you. Congratulations. But the rules have changed. Clinging to the old way won’t help. And if people like you and the RIAA won’t figure out how to use the new way, others will. And it will seem like “chaos and anarchy” to you.

We don’t need people like you complaining that “change is bad.” We need people adapting to the change and figuring out how to make things better for both artists and consumers.

Yours Darkly,
-Conrad Zero

Open Letter to the Coca-Cola Corp.,

With more and more things changing from status as a Product to a Service (software, music, media, etc…) I thought you might like to change your line of beverages from a product to a service as well.

Please run a line of Diet Coke to my house, and bill me a flat rate for the service like my cable bill. If I exceed the amount allocated by your Basic Plan, please call me repeatedly and ask if I’d like to be upgraded to a Platinum Plan.

I’m actually surprised your overpaid marketing executives overlooked this blatantly obvious income opportunity. If you are interested in a new marketing CEO, I would be more than happy to help you out. Trust me, I got plenty more where that came from.

Do you have an employee discount?

KTHXBYE,
-CZ

Sounds like it’s only a matter of time before you get rid of DRM and the idiot who signed off on it. You don’t have a choice really, you simply are not going to stop file sharing.

Remember when CDs came out and people could make high-quality copies of new releases from CD to cassette tape ? Remember how you cried yourself to sleep thinking of all those lost dollars? What did you NOT learn from that experience?

Remember Buisness 101 Law of Supply and Demand? Until the price of songs comes down to meet the demand, people will simply P2P their music, or pass on it. Its a mixed blessing: the internet has INCREASED THE ACCESSABILITY of music, and DECREASED THE VALUE. Accept it, and bring the prices down enough that your customers will gladly pay to download the song from you, rather than to try and figure out how BitTorrent works. Hell, if songs were a quarter apiece, I’d pay you to download it instead of walking out to the car to get the CD!

Instead of crying about how the price of music has gone down, rejoice that your distribution costs have reduced exponentially! Rejoice that you can reach markets you never dreamed of, in countries where CDs have to be sent in by carrier pigeon or camel-ed across the desert!

Where are the New Bestsellers?

Now that that’s all cleared up, where is the next “Hotel California”? Where is the next “Jagged Little Pill”? Where is the next “Nevermind”? The crap you put out now is the ‘Reality TV Programming’ of music. You are quick to push shitbands like The Fray, but have you even heard of Vampire Hands? Jagged Spiral? Nothing Gained? Betty X?

Where is the imagination? Where is the experimentation? Is Trent Reznor the only Visionary you could find? You need to MAKE new genres, not try to copy ones which were designed to poke fun at you. Let the kids have their “Indie”, and make something they haven’t even dreamed of.

Stop wasting your resources fighting a losing battle AGAINST YOUR OWN CUSTOMERS, and spend them on making it even easier to get music to your customers!

Get in bed with companies no one else could imagine. Fire your marketing staff, and hire some 16-year olds to run the think tank. Give away free mp3 downloads with Happy Meals or Apple Jacks or Little Debbies.

Figure out why people can’t buy a song the second they hear it, anywhere, anytime. If there was a “MINE!” button on your radio, and it cost a quarter to push it, and whammo-o! people could own a copy of the song they were listening to… If there was a way to access the song purchase via cell phone… If there was a simple way for people to provide access to your downloads through links on their own website or e-mail signatures…

If you diverted your funding away from lawsuits against your customers and into ideas like these… can your tiny minds grasp how much money you would make?

Also, get people to think about music when they are NOT near their computer, because if you read http://lefsetz.com/ he will tell you that radio simply isn’t doing it.

No charge for this advice.

Love,
-CZ

PS: Abolish Dashboard Confessional. In fact, abolish the entire Emo genre. It is the open chancre sore on the the face of music history.

The fight is on.

Gizmodo has declared March of 2007 Boycott the RIAA Month

Check the Manifesto here. It explains what the RIAA is, what it does, and why it is harmful to artists, consumers, and the music business as a whole.

If you purchase music at all, whether in CD or download form, and ESPECIALLY if you have an I-Tunes account, you should read this.

Blog on,
-CZ

An open letter to companies of virtual “products” that are actually “services.”

We are way beyond the magical year 2000 now. Turns out Nostradamus didn’t know shit. The world did not end, and I’m still paying for the end-of-the-world party I had in 1999. (still slightly hungover too…)

So here we are in 2007, and there are 3 things that Should Be, but Are Not:

1- Flying Cars

Where the hell are they already?

2- Virtual Reality

We been looking forward to Virtual Reality ever since seeing the Holodeck on Star Trek, and the closest we ever got was this crap. Oh yeah, and SecondLife. 

3- Software as a Service, not a Product

Alright, so we ain’t been waiting on this one for near as long, but I loaded up the new Adobe Reader 8 and I’m wondering how is this different from version 7? Version 6? Version 3?

What Adobe Reader changed from previous versions is to hide all the buttons people used to use (Like ‘Save A Copy’? Yeah, glad you got rid of *that* useless button) and replace them with things like BEYOND Adobe Reader. Seriously? What the fuck is Beyond Adobe Reader? BEYOND Adobe Reader? And a meeting button? In Adobe Reader? WTF?
The casual user doesn’t use any of those ‘Value Subtracted’ features. They use it to view PDF files. Let me rephrase that in a parable for Adobe:

[Setting: The Pearly Gates]

God – “Alright mortal, before you can enter Heaven, you must answer this question, and answer it honest and truthfully, or shalt thou forever burn in a fiery pit of, um… of Fire!”

Adobe Reader User (terrified) – “Yes Lord.”

God – “What is the purpose for Adobe Acrobat Reader?”

Adobe Reader User (sweating) – “Um, to read PDF files?”

God – “Correct!”

It isn’t just Adobe. Microsoft Money and Intuit’s Quicken programs haven’t changed functionality in a decade, but they have continued to release new versions every year. And Windows? Exactly what I am talking about. These companies have bought into the paradigm that a Software Product is a living, breathing entity, which ebbs and flows like the tide, continually morphing into new and exciting user experiences under the guidance and direction of their marketing department…

…but they are wrong. Sorry, into the fiery pit of Fire with you.

If you can’t write a piece of software and call it done then you don’t have a Product. You have a Service. If customers buy your software off the shelf, install it on their computers and never look back, then you have a product. But what we have instead is a mindset I call Version Release Syndrome.

It isn’t hard to understand why. You have hundreds of people working on the project. For months. Years. You fine tune, and you beta test, and you work work work. Suddenly, the shareholders scream in unison. The press has been notified, the preorder checks have already been spent, and the market is buckling under the stress of waiting. The drop dead date is etched in bits on the internet. The bloggers scream! “It’s gonna suck!” “It’s gonna rock!” There is no more time, and not enough caffeine in the world.

Somewhere a file is transferred to the duplicator. You just went gold.

After the programmers come out of their comas, then comes all the frustration of shoulda/woulda/coulda. Shoulda added this feature. Woulda got more user feedback. Coulda done more QA testing. If we only had more time.

And now we sit here, in this big money-making-machine, and it’s a shame to shut it all down now. I mean, what are all these talented people going to *DO*? The juggernaut pauses for just a breath. It would be SO DIFFICULT to shut it down, and SO EASY to…

Keep going.

The beauty of the internet has only enabled this attitude. Software companies can ship unfinished and untested ‘product’ and provide patches later. Just slip in a clause into the EULA, and bam! You can make money today on software that isn’t even finished! Game companies are the most notorious for this, but at least They draw the line on their releases at some point, so they truly are a Product. Imagine if music or movies did this! (although with DVD re-releases and CD remasters this can be done to some extent)

This is NOT the way.

What companies will eventually realize is that software in all its forms, movies, music, e-books, webpages, RSS News Feeds, blogs, and even operating systems should be distributed as services, not products. Charge a subscription for them. In case no one noticed, they already are, but it’s about the clumsiest system I can imagine.

Instead of trying to trick your customers into upgrading to the new version, get them to sign on as subscribing customers. Which method do you think will make more money? Think long tail. AOL understood this. Give the software away. Free. Charge a subscription for the service, like a utility.

This IS the way.

Blog on,
-CZ