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Independent Companies Gather Up and Stand Against RIAA and „The Four Major"Merlin's first strike |
By Florin Tibu, Editor, Software Reviews
25th of January 2007, 15:07 GMT
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Who the f**k are „the four major" I guess you're asking yourselves; and I am trying to guess the surprise on your face as you learn that your lives are connected each day in a very direct mode with them. Warner, Sony, EMI and Universal, these are the four major. Major records/music companies in the whole wide world, that is; it's their artists who play the music you're listening to on all radio stations. From the hippest hip-hop or hardest hardrock, many of the big names in music have signed with one of these 4 media giants.
It's these giants who have started the long-debated issue on the Digital Rights Management (DRM, shortly) and who cause so much stir in the media around the world when it comes to iPods vs. Zune vs. Zen vs. whatever-you-may-like; it's them who control most of the heavy names or - better said - the span of their music on the face of the Earth. The major four and the RIAA (Recording Industry Association
in America), together on one side, are trying to reduce music piracy to zero by whatever means necessary without thinking of the consequences and about the fact that the measures they're taking are hindering exactly those people whose honesty and good will they claim they defend.
In other words, the march towards zero piracy (an impossible thing, if you'd ask me) does a lot of collateral victims. Part of these victims consists in the immense number of small, "independent" record companies who struggle and their own, also legal, "piece of the cake" is more and more often reduced to nil by the battle of the giants and the rest of the world.
Last weekend, in Cannes-France, at the MIDEM music conference, a new "giant" was announced: its name is Merlin and it represents the joined forces of a very large number of indie labels and record companies, all of them sick of being treated like dirt by the four. Already having initiated serious discussions about their artist selling music via MySpace, members of Merlin are a force to be considered in very serious terms.
IMPALA, an European gathering of independent labels has declared that about 29% of the total amount of sold music and almost 80% of the new releases are running through indie companies; and if we think what would almost every independent records company in the world rally up...things are all of a sudden looking gloomy for the major four. No more supremacy for them, not even by far any actual serious control of the music market for them to exercise.
Merlin is said to have only negotiating purposes as the main goal is to obtain real equal treatment as far as revenues are concerned. According to Arstechnica, the head of the World Independent Network, Alison Wenham, has stated: "independents will now achieve parity with each other and with the majors in getting a fair share of the revenues now being generated by new business models. Without Merlin, the sector ran a huge risk of being cut out of the revenue chain. No more."
It is now clearer than ever before that a newly-emerged very strong gathering of forces are standing up against both RIAA and the "four major" and the balance is about to change its tilt in the near future. I for one, can't but salute the birth of Merlin, as behind it are the truly creative and forward-oriented labels from which so many very-very good acts have reached us. Being so huge and so money-oriented eventually kills that spark which allows the recognition of really good music; the saddest part is that once this spark is dead, it's replaced with the narrow-sighted mind for shallow starlet-crap and fake glamour...
At the end of these words... I join those who welcome Merlin and wish it strength in defending what the indie labels have always stood up and fought for.
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