From boingboing.net: A new research report suggests that the convicted price-fixers at the RIAA cooked the books to create a nonexistent “piracy problem.” “So the record industry cut their inventory (and artist investment) by 25 percent and sales only dropped 4.1 percent, even though the economy is at rock bottom. There were almost 12,000 fewer new releases for the consumer to choose from in 2001 than 1999. The record companies are making more money per release than ever.” Also covered in The Register.

Update: Our US readers are invited to join the class-action lawsuit on the price-fixing claim.

As reported in a few places (including The Register), Universal are making 43,000 tracks available for online purchase – US$0.99 a track, around US$10 an album.

The gist is that it’ll be using the Liquid Audio system, which is proprietary, Windows-only and DRM-friendly.

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Rocknerd.org gets all sorts of things submitted through the ‘post article’ web form – lots of press releases, lots of faintly-disguised press releases, illiterate dribble from the single-celled variety of music fan, and every now and then something good enough to be worth putting up.

Today we got a Make Money Fast chain letter. Submitted through the web form. Rule 3, indeed.

Los Angeles Times Calendar Live posits that the real enemy of the CD market is not the Internet – it’s the DVD market. For US$20, you get a movie, commentaries, trailers and extra features; for US$18, you get two good singles.

Jim Urie, president of Universal Music and Video Distribution, pooh-poohs the idea that value for money matters: “We tend to ask how can we make more money and sell more product, not deal with consumer gripes.” Yes, that’s an actual quote.

Indeed. SmartMoney details the RIAA’s latest consumer relations plan: suing individual users of file-sharing networks. Unsurprisingly, Universal and Sony are the strongest backers of this tactic.

The record companies anticipate problems getting some artists to support such plans – Janis Ian, for instance, who declined an invitation to work with the RIAA against file-sharing. As she puts it in an excellent article on her website: “If a music industry executive claims I should agree with their agenda because it will make me more money, I put my hand on my wallet … and check it after they leave, just to make sure nothing’s missing”

After bringing suit in late May, the RIAA and NMPA have just obtained their dream settlement against Audiogalaxy: a strict opt-in system, where only approved tracks can be shared, and of course a huge wad of cash.

The suit against Streamcast over Morpheus is still pending.

Meanwhile, users looking for a spyware-free client for one of the remaining peer-to-peer networks might find what they’re looking for at Clean Clients, which offers de-loused versions of Grokster, KaZaA, Bearshare, Morpheus, Limewire and SongSpy. (And Audiogalaxy, for now-historical interest.)

Update: We hear tell the RIAA are apparently planning to sue someone over Gnutella … if they can find who to sue. Of course, suing the current developers (who are not the original developers) won’t do a thing to stop a fully open protocol with an open-source reference implementation available.

Kuro5hin has a nice history of Audiogalaxy up, written by one of AG’s programming team. Also talks about the RIAA suit in some detail.

(Kuro5hin has some good stuff. Read it.)

In its present form, in any case. The party’s well and truly over, guys. As laid out step by step in a New York Metro Magazine article of near-perfection.

“To a large degree, the music industry is, then, a fluke. A bubble. Finally the bubble burst.”

Tonight we’re gonna party like it’s … 2002.

Jupiter MMXI, the media survey organisation that two weeks ago released a report claiming that “the European record industry must act now to curb the illegal free downloading of music”, on Friday released a report stating that Internet file sharing boosts music sales.

The IFPI says this report contradicts a survey that found Internet downloads did eat into music sales – but that report is the previous Jupiter report. “The main blight on the industry is ‘CD burning’, where an individual buys a CD and then makes several copies for friends,” Mark Mulligan from Jupiter MMXI told Reuters at the time.

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No, really – late on the evening of Wednesday April 10th. You can read the original text on the NSW Parliament site, or from their Hansard search page.

It’s probably a symptom of demographic creep. After all, we’re already getting goth politicians coming through.

Regardless, Rocknerd offers a drink to the Hon. Amanda Fazio. And her little dog too!

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(2002, dir. Michael Winterbottom)

Factory Records and its bands occupied thirty to forty percent of my brain between the ages of sixteen and eighteen. I had the most appalling collection of Joy Division and New Order bootlegs. (To the point where the record shop guy granted me access to the box of UK bootleg cassettes under the counter, knowing how far gone an addict I was.) I didn’t get to the stage of dreaming of having my own FAC number, but it was damn close.

24 Hour Party People was a religious experience for me. Wonderfully realised and very amusing.

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First, let’s get into character.

Go find a mirror.

Look into it.

Go “grrrrrrrrrrruff!”

Now hold that look. Hold it … hold it … hold it for 90 minutes.

Congratulations! You are the Vampire Lestat. (Cameron Rogers)

Queen Of The Damned was made in Melbourne with as many local extras as they could scrounge up. A great many of these are posters to the Usenet newsgroup aus.culture.gothic. They had a few words to say concerning the premiere …

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The suit brought by California woman Karen DeLisle against Music City Records and SunnComm over Charley Pride’s A Tribute to Jim Reeves has been settled – with the plaintiff getting pretty much everything she asked for, including some legal costs.

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The recording industry, that fine and upstanding community institution of unimpeachable repute, has put its usual sort of deal on the Pressplay and MusicNet commercial download services: $0.0023 per download, according to an extensive article on the subject in the New York Times (free login required for access). Many artists are now attempting to have their music removed from these services.

“When their music is used in movies, in commercials and on Internet sites, artists are paid a licensing fee, which, after payments to the producer and the publisher, is split 50-50 between artist and label. Although Pressplay and MusicNet license the music, the bands are not paid a licensing fee. Instead, the labels pay their artists a standard royalty for each song accessed by a fan, as they would for a CD sold. This means that the artist gets on average less than 15 percent instead of 50 percent. But, out of that, 35 to 45 percent is deducted for standard CD expenses like packaging and promotional copies – expenses that obviously don’t exist in the online world.”

See also article mirror on Slashdot, and extensive and interesting Slashdot commentary. “When my one hit wonder song goes platinum and receives 1,000,000 downloads, I will have made a wopping 2,300 dollars, almost enough to compensate the recording studio for greeting me … I’ll bet Scientology wishes they thought of it first.”