Coming
in October
From AK Press
Today's
Stories
September
19, 2003
Ilan Pappe
The
Hole in the Road Map
Bill Glahn
RIAA is Full of Bunk, So is the New York Times
Dave Lindorff
General Hysteria: the Clark Bandwagon
Robert Fisk
New Guard is Saddam's Old
Jeff Halper
Preparing
for a Struggle Against Israeli Apartheid
Brian J. Foley
Power to the Purse
Clare
Brandabur
Hitchens
Smears Edward Said
Website of the Day
Live from Palestine
September
18, 2003
Mona Baker
and Lawrence Davidson
In
Defense of the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions
Wayne
Madsen
Wesley
Clark for President? Another Neo-Con Con Job
Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Wesley Clark and Waco
Muqtedar Khan
The Pakistan Squeeze
Dominique
de Villepin
The
Reconstruction of Iraq: This Approach is Leading Nowhere
Angus Wright
Brazilian Land Reform Offers Hope
Elaine
Cassel
Payback is Hell
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Leavitt
for EPA Head? He's Much Worse Than You Thought
Website
of the Day
ALA Responds to Ashcroft's Smear
Recent
Stories
September 17, 2003
Timothy J. Freeman
The
Terrible Truth About Iraq
St. Clair / Cockburn
A
Vain, Pompous Brown-noser:
Meet the Real Wesley Clark
Terry Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Moore on Gen. Wesley Clark
Mitchel Cohen
Don't Be Fooled Again: Gen. Wesley Clark, War Criminal
Norman Madarasz
Targeting Arafat
Richard Forno
High Tech Heroin
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Website of the Day
The Ultimate Palestine Resource Site!
September 16, 2003
Rosemary and Walt Brasch
An
Ill Wind: Hurricane Isabel and the Lack of Homeland Security
Robert Fisk
Powell
in Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
Imperial Sociopaths
M. Shahid Alam
The Dialectics
of Terror
Ron Jacobs
Exile at Gunpoint
Christopher Brauchli
Bush's War on Wages
Al Krebs
Stop Calling Them "Farm Subsidies"; It's Corporate
Welfare
Patrick Cockburn
The
Iraq Wreck
Website of the Day
From Occupied Palestine
September 15, 2003
Stan Goff
It Was
the Oil; It Is Like Vietnam
Robert Fisk
A Hail of Bullets, a Trail of Dead
Writers Bloc
We
Are Winning: a Report from Cancun
James T. Phillips
Does George Bush Cry?
Elaine Cassel
The Troublesome Bill of Rights
Cynthia McKinney
A Message to the People of New York City
Matthew Behrens
Sunday Morning Coming Down: Reflections on Johnny Cash
Uri Avnery
Assassinating
Arafat
Hammond Guthrie
Celling Out the Alarm
Website of the Day
Arnold and the Egg
September 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 12, 2003
Writers Block
Todos
Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun
Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers
Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11
Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico
Linda S. Heard
British
Entrance Exams
John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity
Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001
Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President
Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11
Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11
Stew Albert
What Goes Around
Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
Hot Stories
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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September
20, 2003
RIAA WATCH
Deaf,
Dumb, Blind and One Foot in the Grave: The Real Story Behind
RIAA Propaganda
By BILL GLAHN
A musician friend of mine who releases his albums
on his own label recently asked me, "What about the little
record company, like mine? If people can get all my songs for
free, then who will buy the CD?"
My heart just about sank when I heard
this question coming from him. I didn't expect it to come from
someone who is a religious reader of this column, a personal
friend, and frequent correspondent. But I wasn't surprised, considering
how much the major media has regurgitated the RIAA line that
P2P file-sharing is killing the music industry. If you believe
the often quoted line that sales are down 31% in the last three
years, a period in which Internet down-loading of songs has become
a world-wide phenomenon, it's easy to make the assumption that
P2P is the cause. And that the tough road which artists who are
promoting and selling their own wares engage in will become even
tougher. But is that a legitimate assumption? Or is that as big
a leap as saying birds can't fly because pigs have a monopoly
on air space? Here's a few observations from an unbiased observer.
The Single factor: A number of years
back the major labels stated that singles weren't profitable
and made an (un)conscious decision to kill the format. They claimed
that singles lost money and were only used as a promotional tool
for albums. The truth of the matter was that singles weren't
as profitable, so why settle for 3 or 4 bucks when you could
 squeeze
the public out of 17 or 18 for an album. After all, in CD format,
the manufacturing costs of both were about the same. Tom Petty
took his label at its word and said if singles were a promotional
tool that lost money, then he would put his next one up on his
web site for free. With no manufacturing costs, his label wouldn't
"lose" money if he promoted his album that way. This
was several years before P2P technology. The label demanded an
immediate retraction of the MP3 from his site and their true
goals were exposed. Any customer that wanted the one song would
just have to pay $17 for it whether they liked the rest of the
album or not.
The Dumb factor: So what do the majors
market in an era of few singles? Acts specializing in singles.
Boy bands. Pop tunes. The most frequently named artist in the
RIAA subpoenas by far was Avril Lavigne. The second was Michael
Jackson. Let me clue the record industry in on something here.
If you weren't one of the 50 gazillion people that bought the
Thriller album in the almost two decades since its release, you
ain't gonna buy it in 2003 just to get "Billie Jean."
Consider that Madonna, Pink, and Lil' Romeo made the list. Now
consider that Jimi Hendrix and John Coltrane didn't.
The Deaf factor: Aw hell. This one doesn't
need explaining.
The Blind factor: Downloads were in full
swing in 2001 when industry wide sales of singles in the United
States totaled a little over 2 million units. The pitiful showing
was due to one thing and one thing only. The major labels weren't
releasing any singles. But the industry just wouldn't budge when
it came to entering the download market. A few more singles were
released last year and sales doubled to over 5 million. Still
no movement on the majors part other than a few over-priced and
poorly configured download sites which were label affiliated
and exclusive. Enter iTunes this year. In 3 months iTunes has
sold over 10 million downloads at a dollar a pop. The thing to
consider here is that iTunes is currently only available to MAC
users, an infinitesimally small portion of the home computer
market. AND iTunes isn't part of the world wide net. Their sales
are limited to customers in the U.S. I think what is illustrated
is that greed will blind you from reality. Toni Basil, Kajagoogoo,
and Hooked On Classics all made money for the industry. They
didn't do it by selling albums. People aren't going to pay album
prices for one-hit wonders or career popsters.
The "lie-through-your-teeth"
factor: The RIAA says sales are down 31% as if the 5 major labels
were the only record labels in existence. No doubt that sales
are down significantly for them. They released 25% fewer new
releases during the slump. Take into account that the economy
has been in the toilet for much of that time and average incomes
continue to slide and the other 6% doesn't seem to be out of
line for an industry that sells exclusively non-essentials. Which
brings us to...
The youth factor: The first jobs to go
in a sliding economy are the ones held by teens and young adults,
the primary focus audience for the majors. The Bureau of Labor
Statistics reports that "in July 2003, the labor force participation
rate for young men (16-24 years of age), which has declined steadily
since 1995, was at its lowest July point on record, 70.0 percent.
The July 2003 participation rate for young women was 64.5 percent,
the lowest it has been since 1975." So why is it that the
majors, always looking at things in terms of "markets",
continue to ignore the multitude of older artists with followings
ranging in age from 30-90 (save a stable of proven million sellers
with major label careers dating back to the Jurassic age)? For
one thing older artists have been around the block and don't
look at label contracts the same way a starry-eyed youth might.
Either assume that those artists are too smart to be coaxed into
slavery contracts or refer back to the dumb factor.
The Indie factor: About a dozen independent
music stores were questioned while preparing this article. They
were about evenly split on whether or not their businesses had
increased or decreased over the last 3 years. But none stated
anywhere close to a 31% hit. ALL stated that they had an increase
in sales of independent releases during that period. Most stated
that major label releases were moving in the direction of the
Wooly Mammoth. The most successful operations stated community
involvement, a move toward local talent and independent releases,
and (get this) an increased focus on import singles not available
in the U.S. as reasons for increased sales. In the most extreme
example, Doyle Davis, co-owner of Grimey's Pre-Loved Music in
Nashville, states a whopping 250% increase in sales over the
last year. A lot of the store's success is attributed to co-owner
Mike Grimes' strong ties to the local music scene (he played
in the Bis-Quits and Bare Jr and owns Nashville's Slow Bar) and
Davis' extensive knowledge of music (he worked for the Great
Escape, the leading used CD/comics store in town for 15 years).
Plus a healthy stock of indie rock, classic funk (Davis' fave)
and reggae (think Lee Scratch Perry) along with local artists.
With major label execs making tens of millions of dollars a year
to steer their corporations into the dumpster, I wonder what
a pair like Davis and Grimes would be worth to deliver just one
year like that.
The price factor: You can buy a DVD of
an old movie at Walmart for $6.88. A re-issued catalog CD costs
twice that. If it has been re-mixed and re-mastered and some
fluff thrown into the packaging it can cost three times as much.
Tough choice when the consumer is contemplating where to spend
their entertainment dollar? Think not.
All of this brings us back to my good
friend's concerns. He was on a major label at one time. He never
made a dime off the deal. If he makes a dime on his own, he's
10 cents ahead. He makes great records. He'll never sell 500,000
copies of one though. There is a multitude of reasons for that
and none of them have to do with P2P downloads. As Janis Ian
has pointed out, there's plenty of free water available but bottled
water is still a huge industry.
That 12-year-old girl in New York that
the RIAA sued last week lived in low-income public housing. How
many 18-dollar CDs does the RIAA think she's going to buy? Lost
income? I don't think so. Lost opportunity? You bet.
(Rev. Keith A. Gordon contributed to
this article.)
Bill Glahn
writes the RIAA Watch column for CounterPunch. His Husgow Record
Guide appears at www.mondogordo.com
Feature articles appear in BigO
magazine.
Alt.Culture.Guide--The Journal of (Un)Popular
Culture (Rev. Keith A. Gordon with Bill Glahn, Anthem Pop/Kult
Publishing) may be
purchased online from Sound Products.
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
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