“Microsoft [has] agreed to share revenue from Zune sales with record labels and artists. Forcing the issue was Universal Music Group, which at deadline is the only label named in the program. UMG refused to license its music to the Zune unless it could receive a percentage of each device sold, in addition to standard music licensing fees for downloads and subscriptions,” Jonathan Cohen and Brian Garrity report for Billboard.
“These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it,” UMG chairman/CEO Doug Morris says. “So it’s time to get paid for it.”
Cohen and Garrity report, “Microsoft is working with all major and independent labels to establish similar revenue-sharing agreements. According to published reports, UMG is expected to receive more than $1 for each $250 device and sources at UMG have confirmed that half of all the proceeds from the device’s sales will be shared equally among all its artists.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Michael Y” for the heads up.]
As there are no Zunes out there, it’s obvious that Universal Music CEO Doug Morris has basically just called iPod users thieves while accusing Apple of aiding and abetting thieves the world over by making 70+ million iPods that each come with “Don’t Steal Music” stickers. Morris has just joined a unique group of iPod thievery accusers that includes Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Real CEO Rob Glaser. Good luck snagging a doughnut at that group’s weekly propaganda planning meeting, Mr. Morris.
JupiterResearch on September 14, 2006 released a report,” Portable Media Player Owners – Understanding iPod Owners’ Music-Buying Habits..” The report’s author, JupiterResearch analyst Mark Mulligan, has blogged (see: Straightening the Record) the following regarding the report:
So this report got a lot of attention in the media, which shows how much interest there is in the topic. However some of the coverage has been quite selective in which parts it has highlighted and some have even used it as evidence for Apple-bashing. So for the record here are the key thrusts of the report (all of the below refer to Europe): MP3 player owners of all types (iPods included) don’t regularly buy much digital music. iPod owners are actually more likely to buy digital music than other MP3 player owners. Free online music consumption significantly outweighs paid, significantly more so for owners of non-iPod MP3 players. Device owners are much more likely to buy CD albums online than digital albums.
The facts: Most tracks on a typical iPod are not tracks that were purchased online. Most tracks on a typical iPod come from CDs that users have legally purchased and already own and ripped via iTunes. Tthe truth is that iPod owners are significantly less likely to steal music than also-ran MP3 player owners. iPod owners are “substantially less likely to download using filesharing software with only 7% of iPod people downloading illegally compared to 25% on average. And they’re more likely to be buying CDs, with your everyday iPodder buying 2.3 albums a month compared to the average of 1.8,” XTN Data reported in a January 2006 report. XTN Data surveyed over 1,000 UK and US music buyers to arrive at the data. XTN Data also found that 50% of iPod owners regularly download music from Apple iTunes Music Store.
Microsoft was either stupid, desperate, and/or sleazy by signing that awful deal with Universal. Imagine someone buys a Zune (farfetched, we know, but play along), but they never listen to a second of Universal-controlled music. Guess what, under Microsoft’s idiotic deal, Universal still gets paid for absolutely nothing; they just take the money anyway… kinda like stealing, huh? Who’re the real thieves here? The music labels do not deserve a cut of MP3 player revenues any more than television networks deserve a cut of TV sales. It’s stupid, illogical, and wrong. Microsoft’s real tag line for their Zune debacle should be: “Welcome to socialism.”
It’s time for Apple to start eliminating the middlemen.
Universal Music Group contact info:
email: communications@umusic.com
2200 Colorado Avenue
Santa Monica, CA 90404
(310) 865-5000
1755 Broadway
New York, NY 10019
(212) 841-8000
Related articles:
Did Microsoft have no choice, but to sign bad Zune royalty deal with Universal? – November 11, 2006
Following Zune deal, Universal expected to demand iPod royalties from Apple [UPDATED] – November 10, 2006
Microsoft attempts to poison Apple’s licensing deals with music labels – November 09, 2006
Microsoft to pay Universal for every Zune sold – November 09, 2006
Study shows iPod owners significantly less likely to steal music than the average person – January 13, 2006
Warner’s Middlebronfman: ‘We sell our songs through iPods, but we don’t have share of iPod revenue’ – October 05, 2005
Warner CEO Bronfman: Apple iTunes Music Store’s 99-cent-per-song model unfair – September 23, 2005
Real CEO Glaser calls Apple iPod owners thieves – May 11, 2006
Microsoft CEO Ballmer: ‘Apple iPod users are music thieves’ – October 04, 2004
I think Steve Job should tell Universal, fine Apple will pay the royality on every iPod sold, starting next year. By the way, we will stop paying iTune sales royality, since that will be double dipping on same songs.
Why not pay a Dollar to all music companies? Why just to Universal? I think the other ones will knock on the door shortly…
The music labels do not deserve a cut of MP3 player revenues any more than television networks deserve a cut of TV sales. It’s stupid, illogical, and wrong. Zune’s real tag line should be: “Welcome to socialism.”
Something like this on a economic scale is exactly what the Socialist Democratic Party is all about.
People who play by the rules; they buy their music, cars, clothes and other needs from their hard work and efforts have to pay a tax for those who refuse to.
I refuse to buy a Zune, Apple provides the devices, it’s people’s actions, and the high cost of cd’s and record label greed that motivate people to steal.
Socialism has failed before, it will fail with the Zune.
It’s time for Macintosh Records. !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Microsoft is the only form of Cancer that never dies!!!!!!
Currently deleting Limewire.
Why do that when we can steal the songs like they are accusing us of anyway? It takes a real idiot to push an idiot’s ideas.
“Why not pay a Dollar to all music companies?”
How much of an investment did the music comopanies stick into research and development of the players? Or why only give half of the dollar to the starving musicians when they could really be honest and give it all to them? The musicians are the creators not the executives. This article sound like someone (music execs) else is standing on the platform while the train left days ago.
I’m tired of the music labels BS. They think everyone is stealing. It’s getting old….fast. My iPod has 40 gigs of music on it, and 98% I didn’t get from the ITMS. I bought it on CD.
I agree with MDN’s take.
I have over 9000 songs in my iTunes library. I have purchased maybe ~ 150 songs total from the iTunes Store. The iTunes / iPod combination has provided me (and I’m sure many others as well) a new way to listen to my music. I began ripping my CD’s into iTunes in Sept. 2001 when I bought my first Mac. I didn’t buy an iPod until almost 2 years later! Even before the iPod, I had forgotten about some of the CD’s that I already owned. Once I had the capacity I needed, I began ripping the entire collection. The iTunes / iPod experience has definitely changed the way I listen to my music! And to this day, I have NEVER downloaded any song from the Napster / Limewire (or equivalent) sites. I just haven’t wanted to or needed to. If I hear a song that I like, I buy it from the iTS.
The record companies are crying “sour grapes.”
All other considerations aside, which of us personally knows more than a handful of people who have actually spent twenty or thirty thousand dollars on their record collections? That said, which of us does indeed personally know a substantial number of people with double digit gigabytes of music on their hard drives?
Just saying. I think we ought to at least be honest when we discuss this issue.
Ever since they started making blank recording tape, people been recording music, theirs or someone elses. Nothing new here.
I remember one recording label big wig talking on TV about people stealing music. “When people play these [blank tapes] all they get is hiss, they’re putting something on them.”
Kinda chuckled, because all I bought them for was to record music that I already owned, so that I could play it in my car. To buy music on tapes was just a crap sounding medium anyway, so I had to re-record them onto tape to get a better sound than what the record labels provided, no matter how they tried.
So some of us are truly stealing music, but that is unlikely to change in the near future. They’ll figure something out and we probably won’t like it.
“Trying”
MDN this is a stupid interpretation on your part, yet again, but that’s why I keep coming back.
He clearly is referring to the MP3 player in general and, as you like to ignore, Ipod makes up barely 50% of the WORLDWIDE market.
What an inferiority complex MDN has, grow up. There’s another @45-50% matket of OTHER PMP’s.
The only thieves I can think of are the very record labels that rip off their own music artists!
With this brain dead logic, why stop at iPods and MP3 players? If music players are a repository for stolen music then so are computers. So why not have Dell, HP, SONY, Apple and all the others start paying the music companies a royalty for every computer sold?
This, I’m sure, makes sense in the empty head of a music executive.
Microsft and Socialism now there’s a thought. Sounds more like facism to me.
They need to charge automakers, too. And all music hardware makers. And all people with ears for having the audacity to hear their music should it be played out loud. Furthermore, God should pay them because his laws of physics allow the stealing of music by people with ears because he allows sound waves to travel. Oh, and…
MS’s fee paid to the record labels sounds very much like the tax on recordable media (including blank CD’s, DVD, Hard drives and iPods) in other countries (like France) where it is as assumed that people will steal music and put them on the device. The tax then (supposedly) goes to the record companies or artists to offset their losses from theft.
I do not steal music. If I find a track that I like, I buy it. That’s fair and right. I could have purchased a lot of music from certain Russian music “stores” or just traded them with friends etc. But I don’t. Most of my music comes from my CD collection, some from iTunes.
HOWEVER, if I am going to pay a fee or tax because I am judged a thief, I will act accordingly. If I am going to pay for music I didn’t get because I am assumed to have stolen it – ok then I will. Why should I pay a record company for music I DIDN’T get, all the while they are condemning me, their customer, as a thief?! If the economic model that the record companies want is for me to pay a fee on the portable device assuming I will go and get my music from others for free, well, ok, but they won’t have it both ways.
I haven’t really had a negative feeling towards record companies until now. I always believed they were just normal businesses trying to make a profit while providing a service for their customers (the artists and people like me). But now I see this isn’t true. All they are interested in is making as much money as they can while screwing their customers (both the artists and people like me). I also think they are afraid of the future. Soon, very soon, artists won’t need big record companies to get their music into the hands of people who like it, and are willing to pay for it, and who will be appreciated by the artists for their purchase. Digital music, affordable yet powerful recording and editing systems, the Internet and electronic commerce will soon make record companies irrelevant (for current and new artists anyway).
Record companies are dinosaurs… their extinction can’t come soon enough for me.
Oh, and I think Steve will tell them to pound sand if they ask for an iPod tax.
here in Canada, there’s an absurd copyright evy on blank recordable CDs – more than 20cents/disc depending on what kind – the thinking is that people are stealing music so the gov’t should collect this money from consumers and distribute some of it back to the Canadian artists (yeah, right…) for a while, they even had a crazy levy on MP3 players, based on capacity – I think I paid $15 or $20 on my original 3rdGen iPod – but thankfully a federal court ruling repealed that one, and refunds were given.
basically the assumption is that all people with a CD burner must be music thieves, forget about fair-use, by the way. the loose interpretation of this levy to some people is that it must therefore be ok to copy music, because we’re paying this levy. and of course, the gov’t IS giving it right back to the artists, right? (wink, wink). oh, and you pay this levy whether you’re using your CD-Rs to back up just data, or copy non-Canadian music, or whatever. the gov’t doesn’t discriminate
will the Univeral-MS Levy have a similar interpretation by the consumer – that’s you’re compensating Univeral already (because they think all of you are thieves anyhow) so go right ahead and copy?….
anyhow, it’s probably a moot point if only a couple thousand Zunes are ever sold…
Doug Morris Is Stealing the Limelight
“UMG have confirmed that half of all the proceeds from the device’s sales will be shared equally among all its artists.”
This is a complete load of horse s**t – the artists in their stable will get exactly what’s in their contracts, and any new revenue from Zune sales or anything else, I guarantee, will not be passed out like birthday cake over at UMG.
I would really like to see iTunes become a label…
Hey Marko – how about “Apple Records”
I just thought of that name!
; ^)
I think the other ones will knock on the door shortly…
Then let ’em them knock. MS just sprung a huge can of worms on themselves. Every studio out there will definitely want their $1 too.
As for getting paid by device…I don’t get it. Talk about thievery and money-grabbing. What next, the studios get paid $1 for EVERY music-playing gadget? Why not $1 for every PC that can store & play music? Ohhh why not pro-rate the capacity of every music-capable PC? One penny per song of capacity across a few dozen open gigs would make for some good revenue.
Many thanks to the marketing geniuses at MS for giving the music companies another foothold. Here’s to Apple holding out while they milk MS.
Jobs and Apple have almost single-handedly pulled the Recording Industry’s collected “chestnuts” out of the fire. With the first successful digital music sales and delivery model, Apple breathed life into a decaying, decadent group of of companies. The greed of the recording industry is what brought them to the brink of failure before Apple, and the greed and utter stupidity of Universal CEO Doug Morris and his ilk will destroy them for good. With slime like him running the “big music” industyr I say GOOD RIDANCE!
No DEALS for these guys. Royalties on music is business, royalties on iPods is extortion. It won’t hurt me a bit to stop buying Universal/Vivendi product. But they won’t be in business long if everyone who owns and MP3 player quits buying their products (and I mean all movies, games and music that they produce). It won’t take a day before Universal’s artists find a better home when that POS company declares bankruptcy.
Hrmph!
2318 tracks on my iTunes and ALL of them from my own CDs or bought legally.
Tobacco companies pay for death and injury owing to government hypocritical sanctioned tobacco use.
Firearm manufacturers are sued to pay survivors of murder victims.
Alcoholic beverage manufacturers intimidated to pay survivors of drunk drivers.
Restaurants and food processors are threatened with lawsuits for obesity and diabetes.
The obvious trend is that you go for the group with the deep pockets, not the actual offender. And you’re surprised that honest and law abiding citizens conducting lawful businesses are <strike>extorted</strike> expected to pay a tax because criminals steal music?
The music distribution industry has simply turned the tables and is using the same philosophy to reach into the collective accounts of music fans. Now, you, the honest consumer, has to share the pain by paying for more expensive products and services. As long as individual responsibility and culpability are supplanted by collective punishment, you had better get used to the idea of more pain and aggravation.
SHAME
Not one track on my iPods is stolen. They all have been paid for.
I say I’ll pay the stupid record companies for each and every record that I buy! As for my CDs, they’re paid for at the CD store.
MDN word: matter – what the heck is the matter with these money mongers!?
over 8100 songs. not one illegal.
if Doug Morris doesn’t shut the hell up and get a clue, he may find his sales dropping and there will be no one to blame but himself. moron.
Had the music industry dropped the price of CDs to reasonable levels, as they promised at the beginning of the CD era, they wouldn’t be in the state they are now. Music stores like Tower Records wouldn’t have gone out of business either.
It’s pretty foolish to insult your customers by calling them thieves.
What if UMG is getting $1 per Zune because they think the Zune is going to fail miserably. Perhaps this was their “If you want us bad enough you’ll have to pay us for the priveledge to sell our music.” approach to someone they really don’t want to deal with.
I can only assume the conversation went something like this:
MS: We want to sell your music through our Zune service.
UMG: (After laughter stops) Not a chance! You guys really think you’ll sell a lot of Zune’s?
MS: Of course we will….eventually.
UMG. We’ll only agree to let you sell our music if you give us $1 per device. Either that or no deal.
MS: Um…sure. We lose money on each unit anyway so what’s another $1? We’ll make it up on Vista.
UMG: (After laughter stops). Deal!
This is bogus. You can either have a flast tax on music devices like Canada…or pay for eeach music item like the USA. It’s wrong to do both. I’m sure we in the sus already pay some hidden tax for music…I probably just don’t know about it.
Also to reply to this post by “gwm”:
All other considerations aside, which of us personally knows more than a handful of people who have actually spent twenty or thirty thousand dollars on their record collections? That said, which of us does indeed personally know a substantial number of people with double digit megabytes of music on their hard drives?
Just saying. I think we ought to at least be honest when we discuss this issue.
Hello GWM…nice to meet you. In my life I purchased and accummulated over 900 CDs. At an average price of $15/cd…that’s $13,500 of legally purchased music. It took me over 1 month to digitize all of them which I did at th launch of iTunes….and lke others years before I got an iPod. But it’s all mine…and I still have the CDs…but now instead of filling a bookshelf…they fill a hard drive and the physical CDs are in boxes in my basement.
Also…until iTunes arrived…I had stopped buying music…I never used any sharing sites…I had simply lost interest. Buying crap filled CDs for one song that I liked just didn’t make sense any more. So my music addication faded.
However, when iTunes launched and I was able to find and buy only the songs I wanted…I started to get hooked again. For the last two years I have averaged buying 2 songs at day. Or a total of 700 plus songs…I’ve spent probably over $1000 if you combine TV shows and movies.
So $13,000 worth of CDS and $1000 worth of iTunes…well I don’t quite make your $20K – $30K mark…but I’m close.
This is all about MS trying to cut Apple’s profits. Unable to come up with a decent idea themselves they are atttempting to use their monopoly profits to undermine Apple’s success.
Nonetheless as another poster says, what happens when Sony and all the others come knocking on the door? Then there are the indie lables all wanting their cut.
It’s the sort of sleazy trick I would expect MS to pull. These guys really have no shame. And they wonder why people regard them as s..t.
I can’t believe there isn’t a phone number or email address to this Ahole Morris
“These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it,”
Computers could also be classed as “repositories” so does he want a cut of every Mac or PC sold aswell??
I fail to see the logic in his point of view.
No contact links on Universal site or (parent company) Vivendi site. Figures!
Boycott their products, all of them, if possible, this includes the other divisions
like Vivendi Games.
Vivendi knows al ot about crooks after all. Their ex-CEO Jean-Marie Messier is in jail in France for stock fraud.
Can’t believe i used to work for one of their divisions (since spun off and sold).
With this kind of attidtude, I am wondering why no one is calling for a boycott of UMG? Hit them where it hurts and don’t buy ANY of their products.
I’m not sure it qualifies as socialism, however much it would suit MDN’s right-wing bias and the leanings of Rabid Dog.
This is simple legalised theft delivered though a commercial front. It has more in common with the behavior of the Cosa Nostra than it does with socialism, conservatism or any other political philosophy and anyone who thinks the Mafia were in league with left-wing politics obviously has no understanding of history (go look up the histories of P2 or Gladio if you want proof).
To be honest, Apple should just decide that it has tried hard enough to be nice to the music industry and it should now just get on an assimilate the industry in incremental stages: the two easiest players in the market to acquire and derive benefit from are Warner Music Group (controlled by the phenomenally greedy Edgar Bronfman, but owned by VC and private-equity groups if memory serves) and EMI Group plc given that Sony-BMG is a joint venture and Vivendi-Universal is far too cumbersome and unfocussed.
The cost of assimilation would be around $4.0 billion for Warner Music and around the same for EMI. Choose whether to dispose of the bits that don’t serve any strategic purpose – like EMI’s recording studio empire – and then remove redundant overlap (like accounting and distribution) and you’re left with a viable cash generating business, simmer gently for three years and then spin-off 30%-40% as a separately quoted business.
The advantage of doing this is that Apple can effectively shape the future of the music industry and – most probably – disrupt the quasi-criminal cartel of the record industry. Furthermore, new artists who come into the “industry” (although it’s hard to understand where that word can be applied) can make a choice as to whether to sign for a label run by people who have no understanding of the digital age or sign for a label owned and controlled by people who created the digital age.
Apple has the money and the market cap to make these things happen.
same problem w/ my screen.
Double digit maegabytes? well sure I might have double digit megabytes on the hard drive. But I must say, if I did have that much, a good portion of that is music I wouldn’t have paid for. Ever. A fact, and maybe I’ve been living under a rock, but before digital music, I had bought no more than 1 CD over a ten year period. It appears that I have spent at least $800- on music over the past 3 years between iTunes, Amazon, and other sources. So is the movie industry better off now that I have some tunes they have not a cut of, or before MP3s when I spent 20X less on music than I do now?
I agree that the Zune Tax (like the iPod Tax that was once levied by Canadians) is a very very stupid idea.
On a side note: “It’s time for Apple to start eliminating the middlemen.”
Um…. what does that even mean, MDN? Most artists don’t own the rights to their music, so you can’t be implying that Apple make direct deals with the artists. It’s not possible in most cases.
So, what are you implying?
When AAPL finally get things sorted out with Apple Corps, (aren’t we waiting for the appeal?). Just you see, AAPL will start signing bands, that will start such a huge trend away from the big labels.
My iPod holds more than 700 CDs I already bought… and the music industry wonders why it’s failing….
Don’t worry, the big record companies will soon be irrelevant. But great music will be as relevant as ever.
I, for one, am tired of their packaged crap, pushed will millions while producers of great music are waiting tables trying to pay the rent.
The likes of Maurice Star (NKOTB, etc.) are over. They need the monopolistic vertical and it is eroding. Thank God.
Down with readio, too.
Readio?
Radio.
how are they going to “equally share” the money with the artists? does that mean everyone gets an equal share? or every group gets an equal share? or is it based on their sales? how far back in history do they go to count sales?i think the movie “it’s a mad mad mad mad world” dealt with this issue of equal sharing. maybe better than umg perhaps.
I know Doug from working at UM. Nice guy,but, not a smart comment.
Anyone got the UMG’s email address?
I have over 15,000 songs. A large portion is stuff I have transfered off of LPs. I amassed a huge LP collection while in college in the 90s. It was cheaper to go to Rasputins and get 30 LPs at $1 apiece rather than 2 CDs.
It’s taken about 4 years to put most of them into a digital format. I think I have like 1000 something LPs, plus all my CDs.
So, UMG, are these legal? Hmm? I mean, I got these for practically free. You guys didn’t make any money off the LP when I bought it.
If UMG get $1 for every Zune sold, by this time next year they should have enough to buy…
….1 Zune !
Guess it’s time that all iPod users not buy any more Universal Music Group’s music cuts for awhile – and for that matter lets all email back all of thise so called stolen musdic cuts that us iPod owners paid for!
Maczealot (above) really has this slimy practice pegged. As to whether this is socialism or fascism, that’s a silly debate–both types of collectivism are two sides of the same coin. I wish boycotts actually worked, because I’m sorely tempted to boycott Vivendi.
BTW, this will probably cause the anti-DRM zealots to avoid the Zune; most of those folks are really anti-music corporations, in an anti-DRM disguise. And, frankly, I’m beginning to sympathize. But not to the point of participating in theft, yet…
I admit I have got some songs via limewire, but 98% of my music on iTunes were originally ripped from my own CDs. 1% of songs from iTS.
iTunes first and then the iPod reinvigorated music for me. I certainly wouldn’t have bought about 100 CD in the last 5 years if it hadn’t been for iTunes and iPods.
So sure I have stolen a few songs (basically cos it would have cost an arm and a leg to get those titles), but I have also paid for a lot of titles that I wouldn’t have done if it hadn’t been for iTunes.
My take on this is that you win some and lose some. The record companies won big when CDs came out, lost out when recordable CDs and ripping became available and stand to gain new business by embracing digital music distribution.
Apple have demonstrated that people will buy legally. But this is still in its fledgling stage. I rarely buy iTS songs because I want a higher bit rate and want whole albums. But sooner or later that will be less of an issue because I want to get only songs I like or get explore new bands without having to get a whole album.
“Socialism has failed before, it will fail with the Zune.”
This isn’t socialism, its just stupid greed on the part of Universal.
how many video recorder companies paid TV companies a fee. Did Sony pay record companies a royalty for the Walkman – I think not.
So if Apple doesn’t comply, what will UMG do, pull out of the iTunes Store? Like that makes a lot of sense? No. Apple knows the music labels need them more than they need the music labels. Maybe Apple should start asking UMG for $1 for every iPod sold!
iPod users call Universal Music Group a bunch of greedy, stupid fucks.
I actually buy far more music now than I did before iTunes came about. Most of it I don’t buy thru iTunes, I buy the actual CD’s, but the slickness of iTunes as a venue for browsing new music and other media has really grabbed my attention. It’s not just iTunes, it’s the entire spectrum of digital media now that makes it so addicting, fun, and easy. The music I have bought from iTunes, I just click — there it is, bought. No real thought. Shameful to say in that sense I am an impulse buyer. Same goes for software. It’s so easy to buy it online now, quickly. Before ubiquitous digital media downloads, you had to drive to the store, pick it out, carry it around, etc… lots of time to think about it and then put it back on the shelf without buying.
The music studios should be kissing Steve Jobs’ feet to keep him as a partner. If they don’t, he will soon have the power to completely put them out of business, and I, for one, after watching their behavior, hope he does just that.
This is ridiculous. Waaaay back when the Sony Walkman came out–and even before that, when my folks got our first tape player–people (including me, a broke middle school student) were taping each others’ record collections and even taping songs off the radio (now THAT was an exercise in patience and a quick finger on the record button!).
In other words, this problem has persisted for a very long time, and will persist forever. It’s just the nature of music/media and the way consumers work.
The deal for us, as we grow older and hopefully wealthier, is to purchase what we listen to so that we support the artists making the music we love… On the other hand, I have absolutely no desire to pay off the slimes who run the large record labels. If Apple or anyone else could figure out a way to cut these folks out of the loop, I would jump at the chance to follow that path.
What’s really ironic here is that music sales have consistently gone up since the introduction of the iPod. I listen to far more music now than I ever did before I bought my first iPod. 20+ years of CDs and lots of music I’ve purchased in the last couple of years, and I can listen to any of it on a whim at any time. Record labels should be thanking their lucky stars for the MP3 player!
Personally, I would rather be a thief than a moron anyday!!!
I have an iPod.
I buy albums on CD, I then rip those CD’s into my itunes library at an above download quality rate and put the CD’s away, rarely to be directly listened to again.
I buy occasional single songs from iTunes. In the case of new songs it’s stuff I want to try before committing to an album – if I do then buy the CD I’m buying the song twice. In the case of older stuff it’s the classic song by an artist whom I don’t need an entire album by since I only want that song.
How exactly am I a thief?
“”These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it,” UMG chairman/CEO Doug Morris says. “So it’s time to get paid for it.””
So if you buy a player that pays a royalty to these record co’s then does that mean you can then go online and take any of their music for no addional cost then?
I mean, if what he is saying is true, thats what it sounds like.
Scumbag!
Boycott that shit major label!
In related news:
“Microsoft today was overwhelmed with the world-wide success of its Zune program as it has signed up 500 record company deals around the world. A spokesman said the company was excited about the large number of songs for sale on its store, but was unsure what it would do now it was now losing $250 net per Zune on each sale due to the $1 commitment to each record company. Steve Ballmer was throwing too many chairs to comment.”
Perhaps iPod users should start boycotting the artists and let the artists put the heat on UMG.
http://new.umusic.com/artists.aspx
There ya go. A list of all their artists including…
Ashlee Simpson
Audioslave
Beck
Black Eyed Peas
Blink 182
Eminem
Gwen Stefani
Nine Inch Nails
Snow Patrol
Sting
Toby Keith (probably should boycott him anyway)
U2
Thanks for the editorial assist, MDN. Much appreciated
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
3rd Generation iPod (20 GB):
1% music from iTunes Store
99% ripped from own CDs
= 100% legal
GWM – I’d be close to that
I have 200+ albums (real vinyl) which I paid about $14 EACH
And I have something like 1500 CD’s
I’ve bought these over the last 30 years
Hmm.. I wonder if it’s feasible to sue for libel as a class action?
Oh, well. If someone could make up a list of Universal Music acts that I can refer to before I buy a CD or a song on the iTMS, it would be much appreciated. I’d rather not give my money to a company whose CEO has slandered me.
-jcr
If you feel offended, tell universal that you are:
communications@umusic.com
At least that’s what I did. I told them that I didn’t steal my CDs, it was cold hard cash, the only thing they love…
What prevents Zune users from pirating music and will Zune users embrace this restriction?
>Their ex-CEO Jean-Marie Messier is in jail in France for stock fraud.
No he is not. Unfortunately.
The way I see it, this is just a reason for people to steal more music. With this tax you’ve already paid for the music, so go ahead and download it as the record companies have already been paid. If they try and force you to pay for the music again, well thats just double-dipping. But we already know the labels are greedy.
Universal is just a shadow of their once former greatness. Under management of the French the company stinks as bad as their B.O.
My email to Univeersal:
“As an iPod owner, and according to Doug Morris, therefor a thief, I plan to boycott Universal/Vivendi products and artists for the foreseeable future. I can live without you. Can you live without me?”
Microsoft’s management is not too bright if they would bow down to the record labels and agree to this absurdity. Microsoft should have signed up everyone else with more favorable terms for distributing their music. What gets me is that Microsoft has even said that this device is supposed to be more than a music player, so why are they agreeing to pay these idiots? So, when they start selling movies and games, are they going to just give away all their profit to pay each person who sells content through their marketplace? Microsoft is truly idiotic for setting this precedence. All that’s going to happen now is in order for Microsoft to make any money, they’re going to have to raise the price to cover all this profit sharing.
If I were a MSFT stockholder, I’d sell it in a heartbeat. This is the kind of stupidity that incompetent management shows right before the company starts heading out of business.
Oh, and I have 90 GB of legal music on my home server (and still have a closet full of CDs to rip) and paid a pretty penny for all of it. I refuse to pay those extortionists twice for anything. I don’t do stolen music. No wonder people lose interest in music – these companies are transparently greedy and treat their customers like criminals. I do wish that these middlemen will become obsolete.
Yeah. about the same count here, Toolazy. A couple of hundred fewer CDs for me, however. My wife makes up for that with an additional two thousand CDs of her own, though.
We’re part the small handful that did spend that much over a lifetime. Regardless, that’s why I’m aware of the circumstance, as you no doubt are too. It becomes pretty clear, as well, that nobody really much discusses their total cash outlay anymore. Not like they used to, at least. It’s way too rude of a topic to casually embark on in today’s society. And that’s perhaps the one part of the whole circumstance that’s most telling, imho.
The pot calling the kettle black?
It is the labels that steal from the artists. iTunes at least allows for a proper accounting to ensure the artists get correctly compensated.
Copy of email sent to UMG:
Subject: You calling me a criminal?
So Doug Morris,
CEO & Chairman of UMG, I take considerable offense at the suggestion that I and all iPod owners are thieves and our iPods are filled with ‘stolen’ music.
Does my iTunes collection and iPod contain downloaded music which I haven’t paid for? Yes, of course it does. All those tracks which have been deleted by the labels and can’t legally be purchased anyway. All those house and trance tracks which were never released as singles, only on vinyl. And the odd favourite track here and there which I owned on a CD but was stolen. I download those and make no apologies for it. But that makes up less than 5% of my entire music collect. And that doesn’t mean that I’m not still looking to replace these unpaid downloaded tracks with purchased versions in either physical form or as digital downloads. Sometimes this means forking out $45 AUD for a multi-disc set just for one track – imagine that, spending $45 for a song I love – and if I’m lucky, there might be other tracks on the set I also like and grow to love. Does that sound like a criminal mind to you?
But the bulk of my music collection in iTunes and on my iPod has been ripped from my extensive CD collection, and a few iTunes and other legal downloads but no doubt you consider ripping ‘theft’ too. No doubt you want me to buy my music, twice and thrice to satisfy your perverted lust for money. You and your ilk should be careful who you go about calling a thief – to me it’s the ones with obscene incomes and mountains of wealth who are the real thieves: Pot, kettle, black. What a hide!
So Doug Morris, CEO & Chairman of UMG you can stick your arrogance up your arse. And just to spite you, I might avoid purchases from your company altogether.
I don’t take kindly to being called a criminal.
Stuart Duel
Music Lover – Capitalism hater
I only buy used CDs never new that way record companies get nada from me.
“These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it,” UMG chairman/CEO Doug Morris says. “So it’s time to get paid for it.”
Dear Mr. Morris:
Read your statement above please… I am absolutely appalled at your juvenile-like statement, and I am quite offended that you think all iPod owners are thieves. You need a little reality check from me, the buying consumer.
Recently, I purchased two iPod nanos (red) for myself and my wife – our first iPods. We own over 600+ audio CDs that we paid for with our own hard-earned cash. I purchase CDs from all over the world, mostly on Amazon, due to my extensive musical tastes. I am in the process of digitizing all of our audio CDs so I don’t have to touch them ever again – they will be boxed up to protect them and put in my closet.
For your information, we don’t steal music and we do not order music online at the Apple iTunes store either. Your statement is very offensive and it is a blanket statement that is undeserving in my opinion. Personally, I do not like all the “bubble gum” crap music that you music labels release these days, and because of this, I am quite selective in what I purchase on audio CD. Quite possibly that is the reason for declining music sales, because most of the music released today is complete garbage.
As of this moment, my wife and I are boycotting the Universal Music Group along with any related businesses. We will not purchase any of your products ever again, because we both live by principles in life. Since I absolutely detest being accused of something I have never done, you have lost both of us as customers for accusing us of being common criminals. I am an honest man and have always been that way – you offend me greatly.
“So it’s time to get paid for it.” Paid for what may I ask? We already pay you indirectly when purchasing one of your products. Isn’t that kind of like double dipping? You already rip off your own artists by being the expensive middlemen that add such a ridiculous surcharge to the price of audio CDs. Why do you need more money? Is it for you to double dip from the company’s funds, so you can take a prostitute out for dinner, etc.? We can also make blanket statements about CEOs that we have never met.
To sum up… You are an asshole and your board of directors should fire your sorry ass.
Yours sincerely,
James *****
My first though was that this clown is one of those fools that thinks only downloaded music goes on iPods (these are similar to the fools that believe music with DRM = piracy and trying to starve artists). Then I realized that the music industry wants it to become accepted that ripping CDs is stealing. Their wet dream tactic, DRM on CDs, has been nothing short of a disaster. They realize that downloads with DRM are still too small a fraction of total music sales, so they want to send the message that ripping CDs is stealing. I believe, as the current laws are written, it may or may not be fair use. Their goal, of course, is to make you buy a copy for every device. They had such a windfall with the advent of CDs, as people bought their catalogs again, that they want to recreate that scenario. If they cannot do that, they want part of the hardware action.
I’m all for artists getting paid, but I am also for the reasonable fair uses the consumers have had over the years be retained in this format (digital files on some form of memory).
“All other considerations aside, which of us personally knows more than a handful of people who have actually spent twenty or thirty thousand dollars on their record collections? That said, which of us does indeed personally know a substantial number of people with double digit gigabytes of music on their hard drives?
Just saying. I think we ought to at least be honest when we discuss this issue.”
12,500 tracks on my iPod. 95% of it from CDs that I bought. Some from iTS. Some from CDs friends burned for me. I haven’t purchased my own copy of many of those burned CDs, but I have purchased other CDs from each of the represented artists and in many cases paid for tix to their shows. Of the 10 people I know with 100+ GB of music, I would say they are in approximately the same 95% paid for range.
BTW, my 1000+ casette tapes that have been in storage for 10 years – paid for a much lower percentage of those. The labels more than made back their money on that when I bought the CDs of the albums to which I actually listened. Does anyone know if the labels got $ from the sale of blank tapes or casette recorders?
Of course, we all know that there are folks that were in HS or college around the advent of the Napster 1.0 era that have endless gigs of music they didn’t pay for. Many people were in intentional denial during that period and some probably haven’t recovered. However, condemning iPod owners for being thieves is not really a way to solve that problem. In fact, from comments I have read above, it merely pisses off people that have been attempting to be righteous about their music acquisition habits.
I am all for educating people that pirating music is bad for artists, but when you trying to equate ripping CDs with piracy and thievery, you lose credibility with the audience and hinder the cause. I also do not feel like compensating the label for damages that I have not caused.
Way to go Stuart.
My email was shorter, but just as pointed.
Everyone else join in now.
If Universal (and all the other music labels) want a “music royalty fee” attached to every device (mp3 players, computers, harddrives, etc., etc.) capable of storing and/or playing music, then I have a (half serious) proposal.
Let’s enact legislation to do that, and to top it off, let’s beat MS at their own game, by paying an additional fee (variable…say up to $5 per each label) on every device. Fees would be collected and splt equally between all the major labels and their artists.
What’s in this for music consumers? Well, the trade-off/concession is this… all the labels music becomes freely downloadable. From wherever.
We, the music consumers, don’t pay for music again. (Except at concerts, or it comes on a non-DRM’d CD/media, or is purchased directly from an indie label/band.) Otherwise, we’re paying for music at least twice, and those that don’t listen to music are also paying for it.
And another thing… there’s already an government agency that can handle this.
The IRS.
They can track/collect “royalty fees” from manufacturers, and assess/collect the appropriate taxes before dispersing the remainder directly to the appropriate parties.
Yes, this is very simplistic, but (as I said) I’m only half serious and I’m only trying to get across the essential points.
As they say, the devil is in the details.
I hope he likes my e-mail above, because I Cc’ed it to Steve Jobs as well. I want Apple to know how I feel about music companies accusing me of stealing music, when I have not ever done such a thing.
If there is one thing I cannot stand in this world, it is to be accused of something I have never done. Grrr…
The only times I’ve downloaded tracks through Aquisition or Limewire is either
A: I have the CD in a cupboard but I suddenly thought of a track I wanted to hear without hunting down my CD or
B: I hear a song I like from an artist I’ve never bought before, I download a couple of tracks, listen to them and either delete them if I don’t like them or go out and buy their CD if I do. From there onwards, they are a chosen artist for me and I’ll actively look for their new CD when it comes out.
Music label execs are just middleman leeches who profit off of the real talent and work of others. It’s time they shut the fuck up.
1058 music tracks. 565 tracks bought from iTunes. The rest were free tracks offered by the artists’ labels or the (self-produced) artists. (I’ve never bought a CD in my life.)
My email I just sent:
Re this quote by your CEO, Doug Morris:
“These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it,” UMG chairman/CEO Doug Morris says. “So it’s time to get paid for it.”
Here are the FACTS, Doug:
I’ve got 9,213 songs on my iPod. I have PAID for EVERY song!
MANY of those songs are from Universal’s catalog. Hmmm, maybe I’ll just stop buying your music from now on since you think that calling your customer thieves is OK.
Mr. Morris owes me and millions of his customer an apology. Oh, and while he’s at it, since he obviously doesn’t have a clue what goes in the real world, he should resign!
I’ll await that personal apology from Mr. Morris!
They want $$ per MP3 player sale and they want everyone to pay a monthly subscription for their music as well. They keep pushing back copyright times to collect money on tunes forever.
They think switching to digital recordings was a big mistake.
Don’t get them started on the internal combustion engine or heavier than air flying machines.
“””These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it,” UMG chairman/CEO Doug Morris says. “So it’s time to get paid for it.””
So if you buy a player that pays a royalty to these record co’s then does that mean you can then go online and take any of their music for no addional cost then?
I mean, if what he is saying is true, thats what it sounds like.”
I like this idea, I say we give all the record companies 1 dollar for every ipod and also ran, then we can all go to limewire and get what we want for free, because we have already paid “a liscensing fee”
I say, Go Morris Go!
MDN word Theory
as in this is a good one
I’d like to share the email I just sent to UMG (feel free to copy what you;d like)
My iPod is filled with THOUSANDS of songs, many not born from any of the majors, but now controlled by them (U!)…
All purchased legally from iTunes, or in CD/vinyl format.
I just wanted to let you know that within the next 48 hours all of my music that Universal now controls -since we all know you haven’t really developed that much on your own, have you, you’ve just bought it After The Fact;),will be deleted from my iTunes directory, my iPod, and will be physically removed from my visible music collection
(which is well over 10000 records and 2000 CDs in total).
AND I WILL NEVER BUY MUSIC FROM “U” AGAIN !!
Unless.
your CEO [who should really be vetted before being allowed to speak, very poor public image for a true industry nobody that got luckier than he should have]publicly apologizes to HIS MARKET (in a press release) for being so callous and disenfranchising–TO THE VERY PEOPLE THAT PAY HIS RIDICULOUS SALARY
-or-
you fire his crass and undisciplined ass for threatening your future with verbiage [this btw would make me smile pretty big]
-just to clarify-
I don’t steal music, I never have. But the fact that your business is run by peeps with such little regard for their customers… kind of explains why it happened on Napster et al.. in the first place, don’t you think? If you have no respect for your market, why should they respect you?
1/2
2/2
here it is in bullets, in case you still don’t understand your customer that is writing this
1. You start buying out all the small players, in many cases swooping in for the kill when really all of these labels needed was a little investment.
2. You start jacking up prices on physical product, changing formats to force re-purchasing along the way (kind of what Microsoft is attempt with their iPod ripoff).
3. You start killing true a&r, and artist development, and then wonder aloud why your financial recoup isn’t at expectations (maybe you should try developing artists for a REAL amount of time, past their first hump). Instead you pretend to let the labels you bought out develop for you, only to shutter their doors once they’ve developed their existing roster as far FINANCIALLY as you think they can.
4. While you weren’t looking, simple hotline file trading and ftp sharing catapults into the monster that becomes p2p. You should have seen this coming, especially considering how much $$$ you waste on inefficient promotion techniques and PR shite. Instead, the U was too busy “acquiring” content to realize the world had developed a new way to distribute it.
5. Because you didn’t react fast enough, you lost LOTS of money (so did the other big guns. get over it)
6. Because you still didn’t react, a newly re-appointed Steve Jobs beat you to the punch, figuring out what hundreds of other content and device companies couldn’t.
7. After you realize that “this Apple stuff might actually work”, you use various offensive means to kill off the BIG thieves in the p2p arena, and try to scare the crap out of the public. You try multiple bad ideas for going on your own, mainly because they lacked the simple and effective design of iPod/iTunes.
8. You start whining that “we should have flexible pricing”, “we should control the pricing models”, “we can’t manage the system, because we not smart enough to, but it should still belong to us”. What don’t you understand about simple and effective? You guys/girls are worse than OPEC. Would you like to dictate how much milk and eggs should cost too?
9. Microsoft realizes they are never going to gain real traction in the market with PlaysForSure (like anyone didn’t see that coming). They decide to once again copy Apple play-for-play and announce the Zune (or is that iTurd?).
10. You see an opportunity to spoil the success, excuse me, THE ONLY TRULY SUCCESSFUL ONLINE CONTENT DELIVERY MODEL, ahem, by poisoning m$’s iPodalike with a petty overhead fee. Why should Microsoft care? They won’t sell a fraction of what Apple does. Or did last year. Or the year before. What kind of payments do you hope to see? $1000? $5000? $100 000 [that’s stretching it I think]. Your just trying to create what the dirt in your world calls “leverage” against Apple next year when negotiations begin again. How much will that mean next Xmas? A HELL of a lot more. If you truly believe the model isn’t Artist-Intended, DEVELOP A BETTER ONE! Oh wait, you’ve tried to (albeit late), OVER AND OVER AGAIN. And the public has flatly rejected every attempt you make to hi-jack their wallets.
11. Your CEO justifies all this with 1 sentence that completely and transparently puts on display the spite, irreverence, and disrespect your entire organization displays to it’s customers. And you wonder why they’ve stolen so much from you. Maybe you should have kept your CD prices in check at Retail! If I make a product for $5, and expect to see $5 profit on it’s sale, why would I let retail channels make more than I do? The consumer fallout you’ve suffered is NO ONE’S FAULT BUT YOUR OWN.
11 moments in time. 1 stupid sentence. First rule of business “listen to your customers”.
Now we know for sure how you feel about your customers. Unbelievable.
There ya go. A list of all their artists including…
Ashlee Simpson
Toby Keith
I thought UMG produced music….
Stuart Duel
Music Lover – Capitalism hater
Great letter, but you lost me on the capitalism part.
So what’s your solution? That the government should seize all music and make it available for free?
Never forget that capitalism is a good thing. But sometimes those practicing it get cocky and greedy, and need to be reminded how much they’re at the mercy of their consumer’s favor.
I think all you people bragging that you’ve paid for every single LP, CD, whatever of your music collection are nuts. What are you justifying? That you were completely suckered into paying extortionistic prices on something the artist gets only a fraction of? Please, stop being hipocrits and fence sitters and be proud.
Say it!
I’m a pirate, and I’m bloody proud of it.
And I’ll stop when I know that the money I spend on a CD is going to the artist, that software and music are priced comparably to their quality, not by their monopolistic death grips the corporations have on everyone. Don’t legitimise their existence and teach them some humility!
Time for music groups to elimnate the greedy middle men. Record your album and go straight to iTunes. No record label. This guy is calling his customers thieves. What a dope.
GE= Greed Enterprises
The company is laying off about 700 people from it’s NBC/Universal sub even though it is highly profitable. Kinda like hearing this from your boss:
You did a great job this year, profits are up substantially. You did a magnificent job. It’s too bad we are going to have to let you go.
Really Nice People
This give me no choice ; from no on ALL music from UMG on my iPods will be downloaded via any torrents. If the cocksocker call me a thief, I better live up to it !
rabid dog : you really don´t have a clue abous socialism do you ? (great “anal”yzis by the way )
= )
My e-mail…
I’m writing to you to complain about the remarks attributed to your Chairman & CEO, Doug Morris, with regards to the “theft” of music.
My iTunes library consists of over 9000 tracks and over 800 singles or albums. I’ve paid for every single one of those tracks, some of them several times over as I’ve purchased compilations, special editions and boxed sets. Much of my early music purchasing was mainly focussed on your own licensed repertoire as I was a devotee of the products of EG Records when they were licensed by Polydor in the UK, although they have long since been replaced by CD copies issued by Virgin, Caroline and others.
I have spent thousands of pounds on my music collection and have never purchased a second-hand record because (as a frustrated musician myself) I was morally concerned about the fact that the artist didn’t receive any benefit from this secondary transaction.
As you can imagine, I find Doug’s alleged remarks insensitive at best and crassly offensive at worst: I have supported your industry in a completely above-board manner for nearly thirty years and – in return – I have been branded a thief simply because I like to have my music collection digitised and available both on my Mac and on an iPod to suit my varying moods and tastes rather than regularly struggle to take 50 discs that might suit my needs as I wander around my local supermarket.
It would strike me that insulting the owners of over 70 million iPods by tarring them all with the same brush is monumentally stupid from a PR perspective.
In reality, the iPod and iTunes has actually re-awakened my enthusiasm for music by allowing me to explore more of my library than I ever listened to when it just sat on my shelves, however that enthusiasm has been tempered by some of the vapid rubbish that your company and others pump out. And now, you add a real insult to the metaphorical injury that you do to my appreciation of music on a daily basis.
Furthermore, I would argue that – for an industry that indulges in creative accounting to deprive artists of their deserved share of their labours whilst simultaneously indulging in questionable practices (I’ve never been prosecuted by the authorities in New York, which is more than your industry can claim) – Mr. Morris’ attempt to take the moral “high ground” reeks of hypocrisy and cant.
As I see no reason to reward those who hold my custom in such contempt, UMG can wave goodbye to any of my custom over the Christmas period which means I’ll be buying discs from your competitors as gifts for friends and family. And because I like to be consistent, your colleagues in Cinema and TV won’t be getting any DVD purchases either. Bear in mind that – until this latest outburst – I was not buying CDs from Warner Music Group (following similar comments from Edgar Bronfman Jr.) or Sony-BMG (never buy anything from anyone who thinks it morally appropriate to install “software” on your PC without your permission), but I guess Doug’s comments get these two of the hook otherwise my only major would be EMI.
This “sentence” will be reviewed should your CEO choose to issue an unreserved and unequivocal apology.
“and have never purchased a second-hand record because (as a frustrated musician myself) I was morally concerned about the fact that the artist didn’t receive any benefit from this secondary transaction.”
Nor should they. Music artists aren’t getting a one-time only fee for one piece of music. Any one particular piece of music is sold many, many, many times when it’s released.
Does GM deserve something from the sale of a used GM car, or the original owner of a house when the second owner sells it, or…well, I’m sure you get my drift.
They may want it (and I’m sure most do), but you have to think: where do we draw the line and with “what”? How many subsequent transactions do we allow someone to collect a part of?
Do we restrict it to just “artists” endeavors? Or should everyone receive benefit from secondary transactions?
I’m sorry, but neither “artists” (regardless of the artistic endeavor) nor anyone (or anything) deserves any benefit from secondary transactions. And I say this as an artist (non-music).
If you want to make more money (God knows I want to), make more more “art.”
And get better contracts. Educate the up-and-coming about the pitfalls of dealing with the labels.
Sorry about running on about this. FWIW, I think your email, was the best of emailed replys posted here. Succinct, angry but intelligently composed, and from an “insider” with a viewpoint.
I sent this to UMG
Sirs:
Your CEO, Doug Morris, has been quoted in Billboard Magazine refers to iPods and other MP3 players as “just repositories for stolen music”
I take great exception to such a prejudicial statement about listeners and music fans who own various devices to store and play music.
I have over 3000 songs on my iPod and EVERY SINGLE piece os music on my iPod has been acquired through legitimate purchases either from a bricks and mortar store or legally made purchase on the iTunes store.
The most recent addition (from Universal Music Group) to my library was The Who’s “Endless Wire” through the iTunes Store.
It quite frankly pisses me off that you would accuse me of stealing music.
I won’t boycott music from artists that you “represent” but I can tell you that I am revolted by the idea that you should be able to coerce even one penny from manufacturers of the iPod, Zune or other MP3 players for the devices themselves. I also use my iPod for data storage other than music.
Frankly, I despise the big labels such as yours who obviously do not have the interest of the artists at heart at all.
To me, Microsoft is just as repugnant for having capitulated to your demand for a “royalty” on devices such as Zune. It is wrong on every level.
What’s next? Will you demand a payment for every hard drive sold in the world because it might be used to store music.
I truly accept the concept of intellectual property rights. I have developed and sold software for many years. I respect IP rights but UMG obviously is trying to take the concept far beyond the domain of reasonableness.
What you are trying to do would be equivalent to demanding a royalty be paid for the manufacture of paper to authors and playwrights. It is unreasonable.
Thanks for the link to U music. I will not buy any more universal product.
“I think all you people bragging that you’ve paid for every single LP, CD, whatever of your music collection are nuts. What are you justifying? That you were completely suckered into paying extortionistic prices on something the artist gets only a fraction of? Please, stop being hipocrits and fence sitters and be proud.
Say it!
I’m a pirate, and I’m bloody proud of it.
And I’ll stop when I know that the money I spend on a CD is going to the artist, that software and music are priced comparably to their quality, not by their monopolistic death grips the corporations have on everyone. Don’t legitimise their existence and teach them some humility!”
Oh, brother! Yeah, great idea, let’s not screw the artists by REALLY screwing the artists by making sure they receive nothing!
And, oh yeah — INTEGRITY — you should try it some time. Stealing is stealing no matter how you want to rationalize it way.
There are other ways to beat down the big record labels.
Geez,
If universal has already labelled you a thief, then don’t boycott them, download their music and NOT the other labels. Maybe their artists will jump of the stupid ship and onto another smarter one.
I for one will never buy universal again. Limewire is great to check out bands beforehand without having to buy a CD just to find out that its crap.
Oh and Cub Fan, shit up and go whine elsewhere. Crapping on honest people takes a level of stupidity I just cannot fathom.
My email
“I hope you recieve this letter in good health.
The weather here has been fine, could use some rain, though. I have been fairly busy with work lately, thankfully that won’t keep us from traveling for the holidays. The kids send their love, as I do, and hope to see you soon.
Your Son
Txxx”
Sorry, I only had time to cc one to my mother.
Doug Morris, doesn’t know what he is talking about, he complaint about stolen music or piracy, so to excuse his ignorance he blame us, iPod owners, when the true is that Mr.Morris doesn’t care about piracy. Universal and the rest of music labels, still thinking that Limewire or other P2P clients are the main reason why people get music illegally. Big mistake since you don’t need any P2P application installed to get anything you want, and when I say anything I’m talking about Music, Movies, Software, Games, etc.
Mr. Morris want to make quick bucks and take a piece of Apple’s success, he should be thankful to Steve Jobs and Apple that brought back people’s interest to buy music legally again.
How I said yesterday the best solution is to take Universal Catalog out from iTunes store, to see who gonna lose.
Mr. Morris, if some day you care about your artists and decide to do something about piracy, give me a call you gonna be surprise about how much I know about it!
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We’re theives? $20 for a CD with diminishing sound quality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war) and perhaps one decent track I guess is not theft when you can buy a DVD with far more (and better) content…
Perhaps if the music industry offered a better value, then people wouldn’t feel the need to supplement their music catalogs with content of dubious origins. When old catalogs (eg. early Billy Joel or Eagles) are issued at obnoxious prices, then one is not making strong case for charging people a fee for having an MP3 player to store music they bought already.
As for music, I pay for my songs. The only free songs I listen to is my own I have created using GarageBand. And I like my music! Someone here said iTunes should make its own label. See where this is headed? An iTunes label for folks that create their own songs using a Mac. It could be offered at very low cost or free. Problem solved; fame or fortune for all, take your pick!
my email to UMG:
To whom it may concern:
I am personally offended by the comment that recently appeared in Billboard by your chairman, Doug Morris. Here is the link to the article: http://billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003380831. To quote:
“These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it,” UMG chairman/CEO Doug Morris says. “So it’s time to get paid for it.”
Since Mr. Morris just called me a thief, I thought I’d take the opportunity to tell him that’s a load of crap. I have no filesharing applications installed on my computers, I don’t ‘borrow’ friends CDs for ripping and I actively buy songs for $.99 from iTunes. So thank you, Mr. Morris, for painting with such a broad brush. I didn’t think it was possible, but my opinion of music executives just got lower.
While we are on the subject of thievery, I find this arrangement between UMG quite hypocritical. If a poor soul is actually foolish enough to purchase a Microsoft Zune, and then never purchases a song from a UMG artist, for what purpose was UMG paid for exactly? I have trouble believing that such a socialist type compensation agreement is good for business and is ultimately sustainable. I think it’s time to rethink what you are trying to accomplish here.
Finally, I can’t help but wondering if Mr. Morris has ever asked himself, “Who is John Gault?”
Your friendly iPod loving non-music stealer,
please see enclosed email sent to Universal, note the U2 comments at the bottom
H
I object strongly to the comments made by your employee, about music theft and its association with the iPod. As an iPod owner i only have music which i legally purchased on my iPod. As a 44 year old my music buying had declined over the years. Since purchasing an iPod i have begun buying more music, all legally purchased on itunes.
i think it is wrong for your company to demand a percentage of MP3 player sales. You cannot run a car without petrol, but that does not mean that petrol companies should get a percentage of the car sale. Nor do TV companies demand a share of the TV purchase price, Closer to home i dont hear you shouting for a share of the revenues from Hi Fi manufacturers.
These comments smack of unadulterated greed on your part, and i as a consumer will think twice before considering purchasing music from any of your labels or artists.
Furthermore, your comments are in stark contrast to one of your artists U2 who have a branded Ipod. i am forwarding this email to them with the comment that is unlikely i will be purchasing any more of their music as a result of your comments.
H
Is that how it is? OK, I will NEVER buy another CD from Universal Music AGAIN. Welcome to the list.
Music Sh*t List:
1.) Sony-BMG
2.) Universal Music
Your day is coming Record Labels, be prepared to be X-ed out of the equation. You are already the walking dead. Sucking the life out of the musicians, the customers, and now the MP3 makers. Sad.
I currently have over 23,000 legal songs in my iTunes library. I have over 18,000 vinyl records yet to be converted. I haven’t counted, but I would guess I have spent $500 at iTunes Store. Before one iTunes Store purchase I had thousands of songs, all legal. I never did or will do the limewire or napster thing, that is not the example I want to teach my children.
To call someone a thief, just because they own a .mp3 player is stupid.
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That is like calling all politicians crooked. Well…
I will definetly not let them become record execs.
Hmmmm,
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I say that we should sue the CEO and Universal music for libial and slander. We get a class action suit for say 1 billion dollars for calling us thieves and ruining our careers.
I am sure there are some lawyers out there that will take this on Pro Bono.
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N.
I read where UMG called iPod users “theives”. Seems you want it both ways, it’s gonna end now. The fact that you promote and foster such filth as any one of the thugs you call poets is the REAL crime you fools. For 10 years now I have sat by and simply chose to not tune in the garbage you pass off as music.
Now that a couple of scalp hunters like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have rallied against Mr. Don Imus, to the point his millions of listeners/fans are now deprived of the invaluable platform for poltical discourse his show provided as no other, I am demanding that you immediately cease the manufacture of CDs/videos which call black people “niggers”… “hos”… “bitches”… and any other sweet terms of endearment.
Hello…. anyone home? The hypocrisy that allowed the swift execution of Imus, is a double edged blade you see. The criminal culture this hip-hop has spawned is all to be layed at your door, and now it’s come home knocking. The millions of listeners that tuned in each weekday to ‘Imus in the Morning’ now have 3 hours to spend coming at all record companies which promote this swill, Imus fans are a group which will not rest until we see justice on Don Imus’ behalf.
You can’t have it both ways UMG, you have made your billions and now you should have to spend it defending your actions of the destruction your so called “ARTISTS” have brought upon America’s youth and culture.
Who would’ve thought that the issue of racism would’ve culminated over a serial do-gooder for childrens charity like Don Imus. No… NOT any of the countless thugs who whore out their own race daily in such musical gems as “Slap My Bitch Up”… hey, who can’t hum along to that old standard huh? And what Don imus said, the heart of this whole issue is the context in which his comment of “nappy headed hos” was uttered. First of all, let’s get off the high horse of which these basketball bores have been placed, take them down off the pedestal and really look at them. How many of them do you suppose HEARD the comment Imus made? The answer: not a single one… if you want to realize how incredibly stupid this all is, not one of these chicks even knew WHO DON IMUS WAS!!!!!
I gotta say that if a comment a shock jock says has become the source of such outrage, I’m gonna call you mo-fo’s on it right here and now. I want every rim-spinning Cadillac jumping gold teeth grill wearing tattooed thug who pimps out their whores in all the videos to be took off the airwaves right now. I’ve tolerated these bastards for 10 years and simply did what everyone else who sees it as the racist filth it is did, turn the damn dial. It’s that easy, but now that a man who has generated $40 million dollars in charity for children and fallen soldiers families has been taken off the TV and radio for a “racist slur”… every other one of the REAL offenders has got to go TOO. I mean right now, not yesterday. I would say that 75 to 80 % of the music I listen to is made by black artists, however it is from the 1940s to the 1970s… Funkadelic y’all. Today’s wannabe hip hop whores who come along and cut out a groove from real music and flap their yaps over it thinking that it is in any way at all VALID, well I got news for y’all, it aint.
Get a life and do something with it other than think that anyone in the world has any control over your own happiness, that comes from wthin you and nothing that any person says should be able to sway you one way or the other, dig? Realize that if you are black, stop pimping out your own race by sticking a bunch of half naked whores grinding their crotches into a camera lens while thugs flash a gold toothed grin shouting that “she ain’t no golddigger, but she ain’t messin’ with no broke nigger”. Have you ever heard a band called ‘Catalyst’… ‘The Politicians”… ‘Eddie Fisher’…. ‘Badfoot Brown’ [who by the way is actually Bill Cosby, betcha didn’t know that]… ever heard of Dorothy Ashby… Cleveland Eaton… Phil Upchurch? Get some soul and re-issue all of the above artists, who by the way, sit in your vaults rotting. And I gotta say that I know some of y’all are hip to what I’m sayin’ here, and to you… righteous. It don’t take Flavor Flav to tell you what time it is does it? If it does, your done anyways.
“The music labels do not deserve a cut of MP3 player revenues any more than television networks deserve a cut of TV sales.”
HEAR, HEAR!
The music labels do not deserve a cut of MP3 player revenues any more than television networks deserve a cut of TV sales. It’s stupid, illogical, and wrong. Microsoft’s real tag line for their Zune debacle should be: “Welcome to socialism.”
Do mp3 files when played on a mp3 player play with paid advertisements to generate revenue off? NO! so how it can it be the same as television networks getting a cut off of tv sales.
the only socialist thing about this is people who steal music create a socialist environment for the artist not the consumer.
What’s stupid and illogical is that you have a job of statue where you can write these ignorant statements without considering what it is your saying – and you get paid for it.
What if I were to create this outstanding technology called cut and paste everything your publicist produces on the site and post it on my own controlling your distribution and generating revenue for myself from your hard work.
I bet your boss would be a little upset if that was socially acceptable, economically acceptable, and more importantly successful.
Companies who produces mp3 players should be forced to give virtually ALL of their profits to artists or labels in one form or another.
People like you who have authority and influence should be severely punished for encouraging the social acceptance of stealing. It is media like you who put so much responsibility on artists to be conscience of the work they create
yet in your own inane hypocrisy are completely irresponsible with the influence you as a journalist has.
Its the music industries fault that people steal in the first place…If they hadnt 1)increased the price of cd’s just as downloading came in 2)Introducing buying music on the internet way to late as high quality mp3 files were already there. Its the music industries fault for demonizing the customers and not introducing some kind of music market on the internet
The TV analogy is interesting. Television viewers in the UK have to pay for a yearly TV License, which funds one broadcaster – the BBC. We have to pay this even if we never watch any BBC channels. It’s just as brain-dead, yet it’s been happening for decades here.
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