Brick-And-Mortar!

In the seemingly incomprehensible jargon of eCommerce, there's a term called Brick-And-Mortar. The term is used to describe a traditional business that choses to construct a physical storefront in order to sell their merchandise or services.

Most businesses still chose to believe that these Brick-And-Mortar establishments are the best ways to distribute music, movies, music videos, and video games. Several companies have taken the initiative already and launched products set on proving this ideal false.






Exhibit A


As of January 2007, Apple's iTunes Store has sold more than 2 billion songs, accounting for more than 80% of worldwide online digital music sales. To date, it has also sold more than 2 million movies, making it the world's most popular online movie store.


Exhibit B


In order to curtail future distribution abuses from companies like Vivendi (formerly Vivendi Universal) Valve creates their own distributing software, which they call Steam, in order to sell their games directly to consumers.


While Valve's example is not as prominent, or successful, as Apple's, they both go a long way to show the direction digital mediums will be taking in the future. The internet is profitable. The internet will always be profitable. Traditional mindsets need to be abandoned when thinking about commerce in the twenty-first century. Downloading music, games, movies, or anything else that can be converted into a digital format will always be cheaper for the producer and the consumer.

So while 'brick-and-mortar' installations will always need to be around for certain types of products, internet sites and programs like iTunes are paving the way for faster and cheaper commerce in the future.

The RIAA Hates You

"The love of money is the root of all evil." Timothy 6:10


So why does the RIAA feel like they need so much of it? In a quote taken directly from the RIAA's 'about' page, they define themselves as the following:


The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry. Its mission is to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members' creative and financial vitality. Its members are the record companies that comprise the most vibrant national music industry in the world. RIAA members create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 90% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States.

In support of this mission, the RIAA works to protect intellectual property rights worldwide and the First Amendment rights of artists; conduct consumer industry and technical research; and monitor and review - - state and federal laws, regulations and policies.



Sounds pretty noble. Basically they are trying to say that they are watching out for American record companies, who are watching out for their bands. But in reality, this is far from true.

Most bands never make money off the sale of their CD's. When bands sign to labels, they sign a contract that can barely be defined as English which gives the band a few things. They get an advance (basically a loan, because they DO have to pay it back), time in the studio, and promotion by the record company. Most bands don't understand that they have to pay this money back by way of royalties.

Dictionary.com defines Royalties as follows: an agreed portion of the income from a work paid to its author, composer, etc., usually a percentage of the retail price of each copy sold.


So this all doesn't sound to unreasonable so far, does it? The record companies give their artists a loan, produce their albums, and promote their music. Then once all these costs are recouped through royalties, the artists start to see a percentage of the profits from their CD's.

But when artists average a total of $1.00, after all the fees are deducted, from the sale of one CD or tape, most will never pay off the exorbitant costs they have already incurred from signing their initial contract.

In summation, if you want to support local artists or artists that have not yet been signed to a record company, purchase their albums. But if you want to support artists that are popular and signed to the record labels that the RIAA protects, go see their live shows and buy their merchandise.


For a more extensive read on this topic, head over to Music Law as it is the primary source on the internet for such information.


And remember...

Tegan And Sara : The Con

My friends are always making fun of the music I like to listen to. I have a rather eclectic mix of music that I enjoy and an even more eclectic group of friends. Some of my friends prefer to only listen to hip-hop, some listen to hardcore music, while others are in what they like to call "experimental rock". So depending on which group of friends I'm with, I can bet that someone is going to take a jab at one of the newest albums out that they don't particularly like.



If there's one band that I get teased about the most, it's Tegan And Sara. Tegan And Sara are a female duo who are releasing a new CD on July 24th. Because I believe in the freedom of the internet and the impossible task of preventing file-sharing of any type, I downloaded their new CD before it released. Now, before I elaborate on how amazing their new album is, let me explain why I think file sharing is a good thing which actually stimulates the economy.

I was the first person I knew with a computer. A few years later, I become the only person I knew that had the internet at their house. From an early age, I have always been interested in music. I learned how to play the guitar when I was ten years old and am proud to say I have just purchased my first drum set at twenty-two years of age. With this type of background, it was no surprise when I started using IRC to download music and videos before P2P networks were being widely used anywhere.

If it wasn't for P2P networks and websites such as last.fm, I wouldn't be listening to half of the music that's on my computer. It's a bit risky going to BestBuy and spending $20 on a CD when you have no idea who the band is. I would venture a guess that only about 20% of the music on my computer is downloaded. I love Tegan And Sara. But I can't purchase their new CD yet. So instead, I download it. Then when it does become available, I'll go to the store and buy it. Not because I care what the RIAA thinks or says is legal or illegal. But because I don't want a great band to have fall apart. Musicians are people too. They need an income just like everyone else.

So because of this small portion of music that I have downloaded I've learned about a myriad of bands and different types of music that I never knew existed. In a sense, because I downloaded a few cd's, I ended up purchasing five times that amount at the store. Thus supporting the store, the record company, and the band.

Tegan And Sara have their own blog which they post pretty much bi-weekly. You can find it by going to their website and click on the Journal link in the middle of the page.

Napster Versus Metallica

Napster: Launched in 1999, was started by Shawn Fanning as a way to help people find and download music for free in the popular MP3 format.

But was it really all that simple? No, unfortunately it wasn't. The fatal flaw with Napster was it's design. Instead of having a backbone like BitTorrent, Napster had central servers so that when you submitted a request for a song, it would contact the Napster servers, which would then search other people's computers on the Napster network for the song, thus facilitating that song's transfer.

This was fatal for Napster because in early 2000, Metallica filled a lawsuit against Napster for allowing users to distribute their music online without paying royalties.

It's hard to copyright intellectual property which is what Marc over at P2P-Weblog was discussing in his most recent blog. It's relatively easy to copyright something tangible because you can hold it, examine it, take it apart. But who's to say that a song, which expresses certain emotions, feelings, and words, can be copyrighted? How does the creator know that the combination of chords he is using to create a chorus has never been used before?

Napster today is a mere shadow of what it used to be. Today it offers a service just like Apple's iTunes Music Store. You have to pay for every song you want to download. This,unfortunately, was the only legal way for Napster as a company to survive.

Personally, I don't think P2P Networks have anything to worry about. Whenever a corporation or group of lobbyists find some way to shut down a P2P network, like Napster, another one usually pops up to fill the void.

Media & The Internet

The birth of the internet is traditionally traced back to January 1st, 1983 when the National Science Foundation linked several different science department computers together over large distances. This network was called NSFNet which is an ancestor of the internet.

In the beginning, the internet was created by ARPA, later renamed DARPA, which stands for the Advanced Research Projects Agency. It was, and still is, a department within the United States Department of Defense that is aimed at developing new technologies that will benefit the United States Military and Government. But ARPA soon gave control of the internet away to the NSF when the NSF pledged to only use it for scientific purposes.

It's been over twenty years since the internet was created and only a small majority of the work being done on the internet is for scientific purposes. Bittorrent, for example, is estimated at using an incredible one-third of internet traffic today. That means one-third of all traffic on the internet is not people clicking around, reading the news, reading e-books, writing e-mail, or doing research. Instead, most of the traffic is going to people that are downloading movies, games, music, and more. Some of these downloads are legal, but almost all of them are "illegal".

Most bloggers agree that the Net should remain neutral. The folks over at PodTech agree that it should remain neutral and even did several interviews with new companies to try and see how companies like Apple will use new and innovative approaches to distribute media to us in the new 'internet-age'.

Whether media on the internet is restricted or left wide open for Bittorrent users to download and distribute, the legislation currently being debated will change the internet and the world forever.