Gene Simmons: “Napster’s Founders Should Have Been Treated Like the Nazis…”

by Sheme Jobs

You say that the music industry sued their fans, destroyed their goodwill, and failed to adapt. Gene Simmons says all of that is bull$%it: “I still think it’s a crime,” Simmons recently told MetalHammer (print only), referring to file-sharing and BitTorrent swapping. “The sad part is that the fans are the ones who are killing the thing that they love: great music.

“For fuck’s sake, you’re not giving the next band a chance.”

The question is whether a gigantic hammer would have worked. “Record labels should have stood together and made the Great Wall of China [around their content] and sued anybody who transgressed,” Simmons continued. ”How much have we lost through illegal downloading? It’s certainly millions. I don’t think it’s tens of millions, but it’s certainly millions.”

Simmons, once in training to become a Rabbi, has never changed his extremely strong anti-piracy stance, even after Metallica abandoned theirs. That was right around the time that Napster died, and the start of a near-decade of artist silence on the issue. “They should have bitch-slapped them,” Simmons snapped, referring to Napster’s progenitors. “Gone down with the FBI, seized everything and put everyone in jail.”

“But then they should have done what the Allies did with the Nazis: made them work for us.”

That didn’t happen: Napster co-founder Sean Parker went on to become co-founding president of Facebook, is currently a multi-billionaire, and carries a sizable interest (and influence) in Spotify. Shawn Fanning, perhaps the most famous Napster co-founder, has gone on to found a number of new startups, including the highly-successful Rupture. Former Napster COO Milt Olin was recently killed by a police officer while riding his bicycle in Los Angeles.

MegaUpload Successor MEGA Is Now Officially Live…

by Sheme Jobs

This has all the makings of an incredible embarrassment for Hollywood, not to mention the US and New Zealand governments. As the FBI’s case against MegaUpload and Kim Dotcom continues to weaken, Dotcom has gone and started a replacement: MEGA. It’s now live in beta, and available for your pleasure at mega.co.nz.

The timing of this is no accident. It was one year ago today that US authorities raided and shut down MegaUpload, though a sloppy execution and an extreme show-of-force could be creating a digital folk hero.

@KimDotcom: “As of this minute one year ago, #Megaupload was destroyed by the US Government. Welcome to Mega.co.nz”

The relaunch raises another extremely scary possibility for the FBI and US Department of Justice, not to mention Hollywood and by association, groups like the RIAA. That is, MEGA could become bigger than MegaUpload ever was, thanks to the very raid that tried to shut it down. You just can’t buy this kind of publicity, not to mention underdog emotion, and Dotcom is now pointing to extremely heavy uptake upon launch.

Meanwhile, the music industry may also be confronted with something scary: MegaBox. Just weeks before the early-2012 raid, MegaUpload unveiled plans to deliver the ‘artist-friendly’ distribution site that would give artists 90 percent of their earnings. But the concept, just ahead of beta in late-2011 with partners like 7digital, Gracenote, ROVI, and Amazon, never saw the light of day.

The strange timings eventually fed a conspiracy theory that major labels were also motivated to raid MegaUpload, if for no other reason than to squash a disruptive competitor. Indeed, major label artists like Busta Rhymes subsequently praised MegaUpload, will.i.am was a paid sponsor along with Snoop Dogg, Game and Kanye West, and Swizz Beats was even the company CEO. “Universal Music Group knows that we are going to compete with them via our own music venture called Megabox.com a site that will soon allow artists to sell their creations directly to consumers while allowing artists to keep 90 percent of earnings,” Dotcom said just weeks before the raid. “Yes that’s right, we will pay artists even for free downloads. The Megakey business model has been tested with over a million users and it works.”

Good News: The FBI Has Classified Your Fanbase As a Violent Gang…

by Sheme Jobs

Show me a band that thinks it’s ‘all about the music,’ and I’ll show you a band with 14 listens on Spotify. It’s just never that simple; the notes and lyrics rarely exist in isolation.

“It’s all about the music…”

No, it isn’t. It’s a saying that needs to be deleted; a purist attitude that will kill a career. Because the most successful artists frequently go way beyond the music, in fact, they sometimes gain success in spite of their crappy and forgettable songs. This is about a package that includes looks, a connection to a scene, location, religion, or subculture, not to mention a certain celebrity factor. Guns n’ Roses wrote some of the greatest music of all time, but they also excited dirty sexuality, self-abusive indulgence, and everything your parents f—ing hated. They lived this life, it was dangerous.

Other, more modern examples aren’t hard to find. Adele lacks the supermodel look but that’s the point: she has emotional resonance, she has deeply-emotional music and a connection with all the inadequate-feeling non-supermodels. John Mayer has looks, the celebrity factor, and songs that excite female fantasies better than a Hollywood chick-flick. What we’re talking about is packages that contain an important musical component, not music in isolation. Even purist genres like classical and jazz go way beyond the virtuosities.

It’s not just fans, it’s everyone that has any emotional connection to a group. If you hate Insane Clown Posse, the Juggalos, and everything that goes with that scene, then you’re bolstering the cause and the band. Because Juggalo superfans are not only defined by their subcultural attitudes, but also the adverse reaction they get from mainstream society and authorities. Indeed, the Juggalos have been now classified as a ‘loosely organized hybrid gang’ by the FBI, up there with the Bloods, Crips, and Aryan Brotherhood.

There’s a sullied and complicated story here. But from the standpoint for building a cult-like following, you couldn’t ask for anything better. Because the world has now granted the Juggalos the highest form of ‘otherness’ and outcast (albeit voluntary) identity possible. Which brings us to last Friday, when ICP emcees Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope opened a legal defense fund to help Juggalos that are facing discrimination because of alleged gang affiliations. Everyone’s in this together, they’re going to fight the man, the Feds, the overbearing US Government together.

‘Us against them’ has never been so perfectly captured in a bottle. It’s dangerous, scary to authorities, attacked, and intensely bonding to members. It’s not mainstream, it may never be, and that’s also the point.

This isn’t the first time that a band has created an entire scene or even subculture. But it seems that the ‘everything else’ is so frequently missed by discovery apps and tech-driven musical ideas. Because algorithms don’t create stars, at best, they can spark something bigger. This is about inspiring the rawest of emotions, the most deep-rooted anger, longings for the most misguided love affairs and fixations we can’t shake loose. Not to mention psychological needs for association, identity, and definition from other groups. It’s what good music marketing and real fan bonding is all about, and what ‘discovery’ and technology usually isn’t.

70 Percent of All Music Piracy Happens Offline…

by Sheme Jobs

The FBI can’t raid this problem, you can hardly track it! In fact, most music fans would hardly call it piracy, yet offline sharing actually eclipses online sharing when it comes to the acquisition of music.

The slide comes from an RIAA presentation leaked to Torrentfreak, with researcher NPD Group breaking out the categories. And it shows that most swapping happens offline, with swapped hard drives and burning and ripping of others’ collections key culprits. All of which is technically illegal, but a legal nuance to those doing it (go ask a non-industry friend to confirm this).

Specifically, if illegal trading accounts for 65 percent of all acquisition, than 46 of that 65 is coming from swapped drives and discs. Which amounts to 70.7 percent of the illegal swapping pie.

Source: NPD Group
Presenter: RIAA
Year: 2011

Slide: “But the Majority of Music Acquisition Still Comes from Illegal Sources”

Illegal: 65%

Digital Lockers: 4%
Hard Drive Trading: 19%
Burning/Ripping from Others: 27%
P2P: 15%

Legal: 35%

Paid Downloads: 19%
Physical CDs: 16%

(The complete slide at http://goo.gl/1Avjy)

And, P2P amounts for less than 25 percent (ie, 23 percent) of illegal acquisition. And, that’s an amount that keeps shrinking, thanks partly to continued growth at Spotify, and more importantly, YouTube. According to separate research presented on the Google channel, roughly 40 percent of all YouTube views come from music videos, a massive displacement against downloads.