However, all his other novels suck. All of them. Over the course of a few years I read as many as I could get my hands on, in the desperate hope of more Burgess greatness. Every single one was mediocre at best. Humdrum writing and story, lots of showing off, occasional attempts at epic, but nothing coming together properly. I can authoritatively state that A Clockwork Orange was a freak event: he accidentally wrote something that was significantly greater than everything else he did, and would never again get within a mile of it.

Here in the future, this is much easier. I recently heard a great track, “Herzlos” by Absurd Minds, a German EBM (bleepy “industrial”) band, on a compilation. Enormously interested by this, I went in search of more of their stuff. As it turned out, I had the opportunity to hear their complete works — every note they’ve recorded from 1996 to the present. All of it. The lot.

And guess what? That track was a freak — everything else they’ve ever done is mediocre at best and inept at typical. In fact, the original version of “Herzlos” also sucks — the good version was a remix by a third party. (And the lyrics, oh God. I’m glad they’re in German.)

The band is not important. The important bit is that even a burst of true brilliance will no longer let you get away with selling us pigs in a poke. This alone is why the majors are going DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, and musicians who still think the world owes them a living with them.

… except one group. Have a close look at the chart above — if you can’t spot who’s missing, p2pnet has the answer.

(Read more)

The furore started when the PRS demanded that YouTube pay them more money or remove their members’ videos, and YouTube removed their members’ videos. “It is clear they are too powerful,” said Feargal Sharkey, whose bank account died before he got old, “because they were actually able to just tell us to bog off. I am sick and tired of bogus outsiders who spout unworkable utopian visions. Instead, they should give us money because we want it. Just like the record companies used to … er, hold on, I’ll start again.”

(Read more)

Update: Yahoo has said it will compensate both its customers.

(So, did any reader of cassette-using age not have a pile of tapes from back when they didn’t have money for records? Anyone saying “me!”, I don’t believe you.)

“I made a list of the 22 ways to sell music, and 20 of them still require DRM,” said David Hughes, who heads up the RIAA’s technology unit, during a panel discussion at the Digital Hollywood conference. “Any form of subscription service or limited play-per-view or advertising offer still requires DRM. So DRM is not dead.”

No doubt NASA say the same thing about why faster-than-light travel isn’t dead. Clap your hands if you believe in DRM! Under whatever name.

Peter Lee from Disney told The Economist in September 2005, “If consumers even know there’s a DRM, what it is, and how it works, we’ve already failed.” So that’ll be failure, then.

And now, a story.

Its voice was so low that at first he could not make out what it said. Then he made it out. It was saying that it thought it could get well again if industry analysts believed in DRM.

Peter flung out his arms. There were no industry analysts there, and it was night time; but he addressed all who might be dreaming of the Fruit and Flowers, and who were therefore nearer to him than you think: boys and girls with straws up their noses, and naked office runners in their baskets hung from trees.

“Do you believe?” he cried.

The RIAA sat up in bed almost briskly to listen to its fate.

It fancied it heard answers in the affirmative, and then again it wasn’t sure.

“What do you think?” it asked Peter.

“If you believe,” he shouted to them, “clap your hands; don’t let the RIAA die.”

Many clapped.

Some didn’t.

A few rocknerds hissed.

The clapping stopped suddenly; as if countless editors had rushed to their offices to see what on earth was happening; but already the RIAA was saved. First its voice grew strong, then it popped out of bed, then it was flashing through the room more merry and impudent than ever. It never thought of thanking those who believed, but it would have liked to get at the ones who had hissed.

Only joking. The RIAA died. Because DRM doesn’t exist.

(The aim is to knock out the small players, leaving the six five four majors and Clear Channel. Now if only they can get rid of the Internet and ban computers, it’ll be fruit and flowers for all!)

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

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”

“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.

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.

This week’s further random links on the subject for your entertainment:

• Science fiction author Eric Flint talks of the beneficial effects of making his books available for free – and includes royalty statements to back up his arguments, and a mention of the same effect as observed for music swapping. “Does anyone have any real evidence that having material available for free online – whether legitimately or through piracy – has actually caused any financial harm to any author? The entire argument for encryption rests precisely upon this presumption. A presumption which has never once been documented or demonstrated – and which, to the contrary, has been cast into question any number of times.” See also discussion on Slashdot.
• A short history of the music industry from xiph.org, creators of the sexy, luscious, DRM- and patent-unencumbered Ogg Vorbis compression standard. (Supported by default in the latest standard or full download of Winamp. And I am currently reripping my CDs as Oggs instead of MP3s, and saving bucketloads of hard disk space.) “The current position and function of the music industry is an invented one.” See also old article from CNet.
• Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Pirated MP3s – an instructive entertainment for children.
• Slashdot discussion of the above report.
• Wilco prereleased their entire Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album online six months ahead, and it’s their best seller ever – 55,000 copies in the first week, debuting at No. 13 on the main Billboard album chart. Short report from Yahoo! (“Reprise Records let Wilco walk away from its record deal because executives said Foxtrot, an experimental pop album, lacked an obvious hit single and therefore wouldn’t sell”); full story from New Republic (“Wilco offered the album for free on the Web six months ago, and it has since been vigorously traded on peer-to-peer networks, making it the best test to date of the Internet’s culpability in the current record-industry slump”).

Among other conditions, the settlement says:

• Downloads of the music will be completely anonymous, and all information collected to date will be purged;

• People buying the CD second-hand will be able to download the files too;
• The companies will accept returns of the disc from people it won’t play for;
• The disc will include a warning that it doesn’t play directly in CD-ROM drives;
• The disc will include a warning that it can’t be ripped to MP3;
• The disc will list minimum system requirements;
• The disc will include a warning that the downloadable files can only be downloaded six times. (Though that wouldn’t seem to square with complete anonymity of downloads.)

While the settlement does not set a legal precedent, the defendants’ complete capitulation may indicate great fear of setting such an adverse precedent to any degree, and may be seen to set a first approximation of a workable industry standard.

Full settlement document here (PDF). Slashdot discussion here.

I’m not entirely happy that, using something like this as a template, record companies will be able to pass off cripplediscs as proper CDs. (Though it’s probably unavoidable, since it’s their disc and their copyright.) I do like the idea that they may have to warn you in detail just how crap the item in question is, though.

The SunnComm site is a goddamn nightmare of Flash. I gave up on even downloading the fucker.

“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.”