jim griffin hired by warners, the ‘feels free’ era inches ever closer
But will the punk and indie bands get their fair share? No Age at SXSW - photo © Nilina Mason Campbell
I’ve often remarked that the best way to get money back into the hands of musicians would be through a “feels free” program. For instance, you purchase an iPod, it comes loaded with 2gbs of MP3 files and you pay an incremental amount more than you would if it were empty. Another way would be through your current Internet Service Provider or ISP. Jim Griffin has been championing this kind of thinking since he founded the email listserv, Pho back in the day. Now Jim, who has long been a critic of the way the music business has handled itself in regard to dealing with music file sharing, has been hired by the Warner Music Group. Portfolio Magazine reports - “WMG has tapped industry veteran Jim Griffin to spearhead a controversial plan to bundle a monthly fee into consumers’ internet-service bills for unlimited access to music.” It goes on - “The plan—the boldest move yet to keep the wounded entertainment industry giants afloat—is simple: Consumers will pay a monthly fee, bundled into an internet-service bill in exchange for unfettered access to a database of all known music.”
Critics of Griffin’s plan are immediately calling any fee added to an ISP bill as a “culture tax,” but really it is a service charge added to a bundle - I already pay Comcast for my Cable TV and Internet service and just recently I paid extra to add a HD package that allows me to watch HD programs on cable. Why wouldn’t I want to pay $5 extra a month for free access to all of WMG’s music files? It would soon become “feels free” to me. However this plays out I believe Jim is the right guy to be pushing this particular rock up the hill and the record labels have nothing to lose. As I wrote here recently the fate of a music company or of one that sells music is often in the hands of people without a music background. Hiring people who understand people’s emotional attachment to music and why people are willing to risk punishment for illegally downloading music files is a step in the right direction.
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March 30th, 2008 at 9:56 am
I think that in order for the “feels free” idea to work you need to have a larger group of content owners on board. I could give a flying “you know what” about the major labels content and even the large independent labels couldnt do it by themselves. Apple needs to push this idea more since they are coming out with their 3G phone this year and seem to have a better grasp on delivering the music to a device than anyone, even though Amazon does a pretty good job, too. Again we are counting pennies for the artists. whoo hoo.
March 30th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Actually Bryan I think the numbers work. In the article Jim mentions that the USA alone could raise about $20 billion if the ISP’s added $5 to users bills. In a country as big as China the user could pay 5 cents and it would still rake in billions. How that money is then split amongst artists and song writers is the big elephant in the room question….
March 30th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Yeah…big elephant, fo sho! Not only do you have artists that stand to make money but the writers will request a portion of the pot as well and WMG aint the only music publisher/major label on the block. There needs to be a collection agency to oversee this opportunity. Another collection agency with a non biased money pot, representing the owners of both the sound recording and the underlying composition while surveying the f out of the “Feels Free” music. I just think that with Jim Griffin working at Warner, its kind of a step in the wrong direction, but correct me if I am wrong, he could just be using WMG as leverage so that he can lobby for a “Collective” that allows for the “Feels Free” model.
March 31st, 2008 at 12:39 am
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April 8th, 2008 at 6:20 am
Got this from Wired.
“Wired.com has learned that industry consultant Jim Griffin, hired by Warner to implement the idea, has already set up an independent company to act as a digital-rights clearinghouse. Griffin’s company would be like an ASCAP for the internet, collecting fees from ISPs and divvying them up among rights holders.”
GREAT IDEA JIM!
May 17th, 2008 at 11:17 am
[...] before that when I was working at Intel, I often discussed the “feels free” model of bundling music into products and devices. Old news packaged as [...]