[advocacy] Approaching artists to support Ogg Vorbis

[Daniel James]

> > 4. telling your CD buyers that you are on their side and don't
> > want them criminalised by the recording industry just for
> > downloading free music.
>
> 4. I don't know if you really want to mention that point out loud.

I think its a them or us situation - you either want to limit digital
music, or you want to use it to its full potential. I don't believe
that artist interests are always aligned with those of their record
companies, and artists know that better than anyone.

> Recording artists essentially make their living off CD sales (as I
> understand it, most concerts, except for the most popular
> performers, are not terribly lucrative), so it seems like a
> difficult sell to ask them to endorse free trading of music.

Not especially, I don't think. Artists are also music listeners, and
they know they are more likely to buy a CD that they've already heard
tracks from than one they haven't. Bear in mind traditional methods
of getting heard, TV and radio, are relatively expensive - and it's
the artist who pays for them out of their royalties. How much does a
promo video cost to shoot? The video probably doesn't generate income
by itself, it's just a means to an end.

Giving away free content is probably as old as recording itself. It's
just that it was targetted at radio DJ's in the past, who are the the
bottleneck in the distribution system. Most promo CD's go straight in
the bin - and who pays for those? The bulk of the remainder get
traded in at the local secondhand store when the DJ has run out of
beer money, never to be heard by the intended audience.

> might be better to suggest that they offer oggs in addition to, or
> instead of, mp3/wma for their free giveaway tracks (those that have
> any).

Sure - although an exclusive .ogg file would encourage people to go
and get the plugin.

Daniel

--- >8 ----
List archives:  http://www.xiph.org/archives/
To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'advocacy-request at xiph.org'
containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body.  No subject is needed.
Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.