I'll wait for the headline...

RIAA sues artists for leaving!

I think Madonna just moved up to the top off RIAA's $h!t list. I wonder how long before the lawsuits start. LOL

The best part of this was no explanation of what Live Nation is and how they differ from a "Record Label". Thanks for the lack of information.

why is this posted on betanews?

Slow news day I guess. Maybe the old windbag will finally fade away now. Let's hope.

Payola?

Bummer...

The headline made me think we had finally heard the last from her.

In the end its business as usual and live nation are going to want to collect on their large investment. The music goes on just the same

I love the fact that they can cut the record industry out of the business of selling music all together.

Artist selling directly is a great idea. I am glad she decided to make this deal, she is still one of the biggest names in recording, I wish U2 would do the same.

Digital delivery is all there will be in the near future.

Did the RIAA say that these artists will be homeless soon???? But really if you guy's were not downloading her music ALL day she would have got more like 600M maybe even 1B..
I'm going to just send her a check to help Madonna pay her bills!!

Grats Madonna. Welcome to the revolution!!! Long live radioheads, DEATH TO RIAA.

The way things are going the RIAA will soon only be able to "represent" dead artists since they wouldn't be able to leave the labels and after 50-70 years copyright expires.

Can't wait to see what Madge comes up with when she's sixty. Maybe she'll be attacking some other religion by that stage. (or wearing a burkah)

Warner still has her back catalog though so expect a third GH soon enough after she records her last album for them. They'll still be able to make money off her old music. Each time a new record comes out or a new tour starts thats when the other albums start selling again. If madonna was to also buy back her catalog then i can see Warner being screwed, right how it looks like Phase 1 to me.

The RIAA is as outdated as the telegraph.

New times demand new methods and the dissapearance of old fashioned commercial systems in which the music middleman and not the musician him/herself was the main winner.

I wonder how the RIAA is going to blame this one on pirating :)

I think things are moving away from the record industry faster then most imagined because of the actions of the RIAA in the last few years. Wonder how they feel about that.

I can't help but wonder if in the future children will be talking about next 10 years or so as the time when large monopolies crumbled. RIAA and the record industries, MPAA and the movie industries even Microsoft.
A guy can dream :)

I just hope when all the smoke clears and everything is said and done that we have better music to listen to. If I have to listen to Led Zeppelin Stairway to Heaven one more time on the radio I'm going to scream drive to the radio station and bite the station managers leg :)

The artists are cutting out the middleman. Finally.

Why is this on BetaNews?

Because the RIAA is one of the most discussed criminal rackets here...

my mistake..:)

I guess I should be over at www.boycott-riaa.com/news for my tech news..:)

Well, music distribution is technology.

I know in one respect this seems like celebrity news, but the move has some very serious implications in one of the most lucrative sectors of the information technology industry: recorded music. If this is indeed the beginning of a s*** in the balance of power, then the intellectual property portfolios of the various rights holders and manufacturers who determine the way you store your data could be directly and severely affected. In that case, Madonna may have just done as much to impact the future of data storage as, say, Toshiba switching to Blu-ray or Seagate moving to all-hybrid.

-SF3

does that mean that banana distribution will be covered next?

As soon as we start distributing banana's digitally, sure.

'Til then, why don't you hold your breath.

Mmmkay?

"...Toshiba switching to Blu-ray..."

Why would Toshiba switch to Blu-Ray? It's more likely that everyone else would realize that Blu-Ray is a POS and switch to HD-DVD. Then Sony can go down in flames like it deserves to.

Oh, and the PS3 is a POS also. And Sony wants to put rootkits on every computer in the world. And they're the anti-Christ.

/flame_bait

It was only a matter of time. I think we'll soon see the end of CDs being sold altogether. Why bother with the hassle of it all?

Sell the songs for $1 each and let the users download and make their own CDs. Everyone with a computer these days has a burner and I think most listen to their music on an MP3 player anyway.

Why do we want to keep wasting time and money on creating all of these CDs that no one is going to buy? Or they'll buy and then stow in a closet because they've ripped the music to MP3?

Of course those of us who want to purchase a new recording of the "Vespers of 1610" by Claudio Monteverdi, Mozart's "Magic Flute" or Stravinsky's "Rite Of Spring" are left completely out in the cold.

You should realize that there is an entire section of the world's population for whom the internet/digital music age has no relevance due to the fact that their choice in musical entertainment has been all but completely abandoned by the "business" of selling to college kidz with short-term attention spans geared towards a library of five-minute pop tunes.

Sure, you can always get Luciano Pavarotti or Yo Yo Ma's latest album...but that's like only being able to buy the newest release by Micheal Feinstein as a viable example of current pop music.

I find this endless argument about the RIAA and copyright law to be both amusing and annoying because it's based on a very narrow view of the cultural tastes of the population at large.

And yes...I fully realize that if every college kid wanted Yo Yo Ma more than Madonna, then he'd be the one announcing the new $120 mil contract today. But that's not the point...the point is that there are many more people than the narrow slice discussed here, who are affected by this issue.

I don't consider myself a "college kidz" - been a lot of years since that happened - but looking at Amazon's MP3 downloads - all but the "Vespers of 1610" is available in MP3 format. So I don't think we've been abandoned.

But just as we had to move from record to 8-track to cassette to CD, I think the next move is going to be to MP3 (or some form of electronic distributed media - rather than on physical medium). Times change, like it or not this time we're lucky in that we don't have to go out an rebuy our albums again. We can just rip them to MP3. Also - just as when CDs first came out, there weren't a whole lot to choose from. Mostly it was contemporary bands that came out in multiple formats, but within a few years, the labels started releasing their albums on CD as well.

If bands going forward were to not sign with labels but just cut their music straight to MP3 - they could sell them on their own through an intermediary and make more money and get the music out faster.

They'd also not have to fill an album with crud they didn't want to record in the first place, just to get the few songs they did like out.

There's still a much, much larger part of the market that doesn't have a PC with a burner, or an MP3 player, or is even interested in a PC-based version of their music.

Even as someone who DOES listen to a lot of music from PCs or portable players I still prefer CDs so I can get CD-quality recordings. Until online distribution is all FLAC or equivalent, that's not going to change. Then there's the bandwidth problem... an album encoded in FLAC can be expensive to download for some. As an example, your average Aussie broadband pundit is on a measly 256kbps ADSL plan, with 200MB download limit. Downloads beyond this are 15c/MB. First album: $60. Subsequent albums $90.

Ouch.

"Why do we want to keep wasting time and money on creating all of these CDs that no one is going to buy?"

Because the audio quality of MP3/WMA/FLAC etc even in "lossless" bitrate is absolutely dire. Most of the harmonics and stuff you don't consciously hear but which enhance the richness of the sound are stripped out.

And what happened then?
Well, in SUEville they say
that the music industry's big pocket
shrunk three sizes that day.
And then the true meaning of music
came through, since the industry
lost the strength of Madonna,
plus two.

that was enjoyable.

Oh yeah "Das mod" - this was great!

Das Suess?

A boy named Sue....

It's about time something like this happened. Maybe now the racketeering and extortion, and exploitation of the artists can stop.

I think the best thing artists can do now is produce their own albums, and include a CD as part of the ticket price to a concert. Go in the doors, pay your ticket, get handed a stub and a CD, enjoy the live show, and take the CD home with you.

Getting a disc mass produced isn't that big of a deal. The advent of the home PC, a decent investment in the right equipment and software to make a home studio, you've got all you need. With the internet today, all you need is a website, word of mouth and a little exposure on a social networking site like YouTube and the like, and voila, you're bypassing all the "middlemen" that wheedle percentages of work you are doing, and creative products you are producing.

Besides, this overhyped corporate-driven drivel is getting old. Maybe a revolution in sound and style will arise from this, where every album doesn't sound like it was mixed by an engineer, instead is more "personal" and "club/concert" sounding like the old concert CD's from bands that tour Asia and Europe used to sound like. One of my favorite albums was a Whitesnake concert. It had more "life" in it, gave you the feeling that you were there.

Did BetaNews suddenly transform into 'PopNews' while I wasn't looking?

While the RIAA is out extorting money from individuals, all the big stars are leaving the labels.

Karma, baby. Karma.

I Wonder how long it will take before the King of POP will do the same now that the Queen of POP has taken this step!!!!!

Well apparently he's got some exciting news soon.

He probably just saved a bunch of money on his car insurance by switching to Geico.

Nothing, the real Michael Jackson died in 1985.

roflmao

Karma, karma, karma, karmeleon... you come and go.... you come and goooooooo....

Ever notice that- just like Superman & Clark Kent / Batman & Bruce Wayne- no one's ever seen Michael & Janet together?

Try not to leave skid marks please.