More on Doug Morris
Dec. 19th, 2007 11:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsLike a lot of people, I've ragged on CEO Doug Morris at Universal Music Group for his disastrous interview with Wired Magazine in which he angrily whined about how the industry had changed so much that he didn't know what to do. The most common observation has been that he was a once-brilliant music industry insider blindsided by a new distribution channel, namely the Internet, requiring a completely different pricing mechanism and business model.
What's most telling to me in the interview, now that it's fully on-line, is this quote right here:
The other thing is that Morris is blind to the new reality of technology. Not the Internet specifically, but technology in general. It has put the production of music into the hands of millions of people who once couldn't afford it. The idea that "it's hard to get something that somebody wanted to buy" is simply wrong; Morris's anger stems from being in a world where he's lost control of the channel where we were all required to wait until he found something that most people wanted to buy. Now, peer-to-peer allows small bands to develop loyal followings without waiting for the Morrises of the world to greenlight them. For Morris, this is a tragedy, but the for rest of us, it's a miracle: we can find music we like without having to kowtow to the RIAA.
It's a bit of a shame; Morris actually seems like he was once a decent fellow, and I'd be more sympathetic if he hadn't stepped on his own dick, over and over, for an entire decade, destroyed his own business with his incompetence, created enormous ill-will among consumers, and inspired draconian legislation that continues to create needless suffering and hardship and stifles creative expression.
What's most telling to me in the interview, now that it's fully on-line, is this quote right here:
This business had been the same for 25 years. The hardest thing was to get something that somebody wanted to buy -- to make a product that anybody liked.This quote tells me two things about Morris. The first is that he's upset because from when he entered the industry in the early 1960s through to the mid 1990's, a period of thirty years through which he matured as a musician and as an industry executive, the pricing and distribution model changed not at all. Morris inherited that model. Someone else had done all the heavy lifting of creating it out of whatever had come before (sheet music, public performance, and so on), and when faced with the responsibility of having to do something new, Morris was simultaneously unwilling to stand up to that responsibility, and unwilling to stand down from his command chair. He should have had the courage to tell the UMG board, "I can't do it. Find someone who can." (See Morris's comment about having to operate on one's own dog, and the interviewer's snarky retort.)
The other thing is that Morris is blind to the new reality of technology. Not the Internet specifically, but technology in general. It has put the production of music into the hands of millions of people who once couldn't afford it. The idea that "it's hard to get something that somebody wanted to buy" is simply wrong; Morris's anger stems from being in a world where he's lost control of the channel where we were all required to wait until he found something that most people wanted to buy. Now, peer-to-peer allows small bands to develop loyal followings without waiting for the Morrises of the world to greenlight them. For Morris, this is a tragedy, but the for rest of us, it's a miracle: we can find music we like without having to kowtow to the RIAA.
It's a bit of a shame; Morris actually seems like he was once a decent fellow, and I'd be more sympathetic if he hadn't stepped on his own dick, over and over, for an entire decade, destroyed his own business with his incompetence, created enormous ill-will among consumers, and inspired draconian legislation that continues to create needless suffering and hardship and stifles creative expression.
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no subject
Date: 2007-12-19 11:55 pm (UTC)But I'd hate to see the detailed, big brother, tracking needed to pay even the infinitesimal, such as me, the money our songs have earned. Maybe, for the US environment, some sort of medical insurance scheme would be an answer, but then it would be worth writing bad songs.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 04:37 pm (UTC)Here's the thing: as long as they have the money, they have the right to invest it and earn interest off of it. And you can't get that money from them until you join the RIAA, which owns SoundExchange.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-20 10:01 pm (UTC)I am pretty sure that none of my music has been recorded. The meagre royalty payments for the songbooks go to the RNIB.
But I've just been looking at the SoundExchange website, and it looks as though you are mistaken about having to join the RIAA
I know there's been a lot of comment on the latest round of talks to set the statutory rates for internet broadcasting, but it doesn't look to be all that different from the collection agencies for such people as songwriters.
The devil is in the detail of their admin fees. They say the the rights holders don't pay a membership fee, but there's no info apparent on this fee structure.