Things seen and heard at Midem 2015 (part 2): US copyright, Vivendi, IAO...

By Emmanuel Legrand

In part 2 of our Midem coverage, we looked at what's happening at Vivendi, checked the pulse of the indie community, heard Harvey Goldsmith dismantle the live music industry, saw Europeans bemused by the mess in the US copyright system, and much more. 

The US copyright system is "a mess"... 

The Midem panel on the US copyright system had all the ingredients of a good discussion, and it did not disappoint, not least because of the caliber of the speakers: Jacqueline Charlesworth, General Counsel & Associate Register of Copyrights, US Copyright Office, Elizabeth Matthews, CEO of ASCAP, Cary Sherman, Chairman & CEO of record labels trade body the RIAA, Daryl Friedman, Chief Advocacy & Industry Relations Officer of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, which organises the Grammy, Ralph Peer, Chair & CEO of peermusic, and Mike Herring, CFO of internet radio service Pandora.

But the discussion quickly turned into what was wrong with the US system, from the antiquated consent decree system, to the lack of performance rights for sound recordings on terrestrial radio, the Copyright Office's need of modernisation and the rate fixing system, among other things. "We have a system that is dysfunctional, has been for decades and we should be fixing it ourselves," summed up Sherman.

Friedman stepped in by stating that the ball was also in the hands of the US Congress, but there, also, things are not as smooth as they seemed: "Congress love us and hate us. Congress wants to solve this problem. But they hate us because we do it in a dysfunctional and segmented way. We deal with Congress as a series of one-offs. We all have a different agenda. We can't get there if we don't get our house in order."

After that preamble, it was fascinating for the US visitors in Cannes to hear the comments from the follow up panel in which non-Americans were sharing their views on the US system. "It's a mess...," said Jean-Noel Tronc, CEO of France's SACEM, who added that Europe creates more value for copyright than the US.

"In Europe, we have situation where regulation is better, more balanced between interests of rights owners and the interests of users, whereas it is the opposite in the US. [In the US], State involvement is higher in copyright than in Europe and for many of us, especially in France, this is a paradox."

These comments were echoed by Robert Ashcroft, the CEO the UK's PRS for Music. "The US is obviously the largest music market in the world and is important to all of us in Europe and especially to UK songwriters," he said. "We look with alarm at the turmoil and what looks to be a manifest lack of level playing field. It is very very difficult to achieve equilibrium in a market with so many tectonic plaques."

Ashcroft fears that the "turmoil" in the US could spread to other parts of the world It has a negative effect on the future of copyright in rest of the world. "We are surprised to see to see such a strong exporter of cultural goods earn so little at home and so much from our countries. We are not expecting to change our laws to copy you."

How nicely were these things said! "It was an eye opener," said one of the American executives present in Cannes. 

Vivendi is getting ready for growth  

Arnaud de Puyfontaine has been at the helm of Universal Music Group's parent company Vivendi for now over a year, and his performance at Midem left a few people in the room wondering if he was the real deal. His keynote Q&A was filled with corporate newspeak ("we believe that we are geater than the sum of our parts"; "first is first and second is nowhere"), and was poor on specifics about the group's strategy.

He did say, however, in a typical French understatement, "We have some money and we are expected to make a few moves to grow again." Indeed, there's a war chest of several billion euros following a series of asset disposals that brought in €36bn. In the past year, the company has been completely re-focused and is now "a pure player in media and content," with UMG and Canal+ Group, with revenues of €11bn, and 50,00 employees.

De Puyfontaine -- who speaks in a staccato manner as if he was paid by the number of words per minute, or is it a tactic to get people lost in the flow? -- said that Vivendi was more interested in organic growth than acquisitions, but was looking for new investments (he confirmed that Vivendi was closing the deal to buy French video platform Daily Motion, with the ambition to trun it into a world leading service).

Asked if did not regret saying he would sell Universal "over my dead body" he said he could "reiterate this statement," describing UMG as an "amazing company" which was No1 worldwide, with "a fantastic team with Lucian Grainge in Santa Monica." This could be read as an endorsement of Grainge but the industry in France -- including Universal employees -- is expecting much more involvement from main shareholder Vincent Bolloré in the music business alongside his son Yannick who looks after advertising group Havas (yes, another typical case of parental cronyism, showing that it is not exclusive to the Murdochs). The question -- a senior Universal executive told me -- was not if there were going to be changes but when, although it seems that Grainge's position is secure at the moment.

When yours truly asked De Puyfontaine how was his relationship with Bolloré, he gave a typical diplomatic answer: "There is no [strategic] difference between Bolloré and the Vivendi team." Which means that Bolloré calls the shots like never has a Vivendi shareholder done in the past.

Harvey Goldsmith takes no prisnoners

Harvey Goldsmith is known for not mincing his words and his keynote at Midem was vintage Harvey. The concert promoter who worked with anyone from John Mayall's Bluesbrakers to Pavarotti, and co-organised Live Aid and Live 8 was in splendid form as he lined up all the things that were not going well in the live music biz.

Agents? Greedy. Festivals? Having a hard time except boutique festivals because of the lack of headliners. Headliners? Missing in action, with the exceptions of Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith, or Beyoncé. Rock acts? They are dying. Labels? They still don't get live music. Ticketing? Sucks! VIP tickets? Regular fans cannot afford them. Secondary ticketing? Racket used to overprice music to the fans. Productions costs? They're rising and sometimes for no reason! (does Michael Bublé really need a super light show?) Comedians? They are the one now filling concert halls and arenas. Extra shows required by agents? Rarely justified, even for McCartney. Live Nation? Maybe theirs -- with management, ticketing, venues and promotion --  is the right model "but we cannot have just one monolith in this business."

It was good fun watching him and it is difficult to argue that he is spot on on quite a few counts, not least on the fact that the music industry cannot seem to be capable to find a place like the UN to solve its internal problems (and in the end, "the only people making money, as always, are the lawyers"). 

The indie spirit lives on 

Midem is by and large a business platform for indie publishers and labels. The true spirit of independence was evident during the keynote talk of three of the leading figures from the indie mouvement: Daniel Miller from Mute, Martin Goldschmidt from Cooking Vinyl and Kenny Gates from PIAS. Miller explained that he experienced life on both sides of the equation before and after he sold to EMI (and then re-gained his independence). "The first years they left us alone," he said. "It was not that bad. I could do pretty much I wanted and had the budgets to do it. Then the relationship changed."

Interestingly, the main problem Miller encountered at EMI was its international release process, by which not all artists get global attention. "I work records from a global perspective. In the end I did not want to sign artists because I knew I would not be able to develop them the way I wanted. I always had very strong independent partners around the world. Being an indie gives me more flexibility in how we work with artists. And the indepedent sector globally has developed into a well run machine to break artists worldwide."

Goldschmidt was on a roll regarding digital opportunities for indies and quite positive overall (see part 1). And Gates sees indies as being responsible. “It’s about the passion and the responsibility. We have to keep the promises we make, try to create careers and the right revenues, and make a living out of it for the artist and for us.”

Elsewhere, Because Music founder Emmanuel de Buretel also heralded the indie spirit by celebrating the value of strength in numbers, through a tool like licensing agency Merlin, which harnesses rights from thousands of indie labels in order to negotiate with online platforms. "Companies like Google don't care about the content, or they are starting to care because content will be more and more important and more and more valuable," he explained. "Big companies use lobbying power to change the law and to be free to do what they want. But we got organised and we can fight back. We lost a lot of ground. The next ten years will be about fight for the lost ground and getting value for what we create." 

Featured artists get organised and make their voices heard 

The International Artist Organisation (IAO), a coalition of performing artists' bodies from around Europe, disclosed at Midem that they have invited the three major companies to work on a code of practice following the disclosure of the contract between Spotify and Sony Music.

Speaking in Cannes, IAO chair and CEO of the Featured Artist Coalition in the UK Paul Pacifico said that the issue of breakage -- ie. the unallocated income from advances or royalty payments - raised a lot of questions. "We invited Universal as market leader to work on a code of practice," he said. "We are waiting for their response and we hope to work with them soon." The invitation will also be extended to Warner and Sony.

This initiative, according to Pacifico, shows that the IAO "is not just a nice talking shop to talk about how to make the world better, but an organisation actively engaged in campaigns to make a difference for all the performers." The IAO wants to get its voice heard in the current European debate on copyright and overall, wants to foster a better music eco-system. "Our intention is not to destroy the industry and create some sort of rebellion but to improve the industry," said Pacifico.

Pacifico added that IAO supported IFPI's position on safe habours or WIN's declaration on transparency. "This sets benchmarks for accountability and transparency. We as an industry have plenty of internal issues but there are plenty of external issues that we can work together on." 

Obviously, the message was heard. The IAO gathering at Midem was attended by a number of high level executives such as IFPI CEO Frances Moore, RIAA chairman/CEO Cary Sherman, and Impala Executive chair Helen Smith. 

Neighbouring rights are a big business 

At the initiative of French neighbouring rights society Adami, I presented at Midem the findings of a report on the global market for neighbouring rights. Co-penned with former SoundExchange CEO John Simson, the study shows that the global market is North of 2 billion euros (music and audiovisual repertoires combined). Europe accounts for close to 50% of the collections and the second largest region is North America, thanks to the on going growth of SoundExchange in the US. The top 10 markets account for 82% of total collections, with the top three being the US, the UK and France. South America shows promises, and SE Asia and Africa are almost virgin territories. The report is available in French on Adami's web site. An English version will be ready soon. 

The future of neighbouring rights and publishing

I moderated two panels on the 'Music business stage', one on neighbouring rights and the other on the new generation of music publishers. The first one -- featuring PPL CEO Peter Leathem, Adami CEO Bruno Boutleux and the Featured Artist Coalition chief executive Paul Pacifico -- fully confirmed the importance of neighbouring rights as a significant source of revenues for both performers and record labels in the digital age, and the enormous potential of growth in many parts of the world where these rights are still in their infancy. But also the need for the whole network of neighbouring rights collecting organisations to step up their game and modernise their systems and the way they operate. 

The other panel was a good occasion to hear from the new generation of music publishers: Benjamin Bailer, President, Globe Art Group (Germany/US/UK); Edwin Cox, Managing & Creative Director, West One Music Group (UK); Jessica Ibgui, A&R/Creative Manager, Buddemusic (France) and Tommi Tuomainen, CEO, Elements Music (Finland). They did show that there was still room in the music business for young talented and passionate executives, who understand both the value of a song and the ways to add value to songs.

Will India soon have a new PRO? 

Ran in Cannes into a music publisher based in India who was very happy the share the info that, in India, a competing authors' society to the existing IPRS was currently been set up with the aim to start operating next year with, most likely, the repertoire from all the major publishers. Authors such as Javed Akhtar and international publishing houses have been complaining for years about the inefficiencies of IPRS and by its governance and lack of transparency. That's what I like about Midem. In five minutes, you get updates from all around the world...

And to finish, here's a selection of quotes from Midem:

UK recording artist Sandi Shaw is egotistic:
"The music industry has an ego-system and we need an eco-system." 

Mute founder Daniel Miller has limited patience for bad managers:

"I work with a lot of managers and a lot are not very good -- they are just mouthpiece for the artist. The worst managers are the ones who try to divide and rule and they are generally insecure. The best ones are the collaboratives ones." 

Concert promoter Harvey Goldsmith is not keen of free:

"We don't work for free, record companies don't work for free, employees at Deezer do not work for free. So we need to get them [streaming platforms] to pay."

Sony Music Entertainment CEO Doug Morris does not like to be yelled at:

"The thing about running a company is to treat people with respect. Make people working for you feel great, make them know you appreciate what they do. People are your most important asset. That's the culture I believe in. I hate screamers, I hate people who abuse other people, and at the companies I'm in charge of, that's not tolerated."  

Doug Morris on his biggest contribution to the music industry:

“Taking on the internet service providers. We turned videos, which cost tens of millions of dollars in expenditure to promote the artist, into a tremendous profit centre which is increasing every day. You can’t be afraid of things, you have to go and face them. It was a wonderful victory for the industry.” 

Martin Goldschmidt, founder of Cooking Vinyl, knows a few things about artists' psychology:

"We try to underpromise and overdeliver. It is all about managing expectations, and try to do better. We don't have a long contract with Billie Bragg. it is a two year contract. And we've been together for 20 years. He sees us as working for him." 

PIAS co-founder Kenny Gates has clear views on what makes majors different than indies:

"At indies, we work for artists, at majors, artists work for them." 

Vivendi CEO Arnaud de Puyfontaine knows at least three Universal Music artists:

"We want to find the Stromaes of tomorrow, the new Sam Smiths, the new Aloe Blaccs. We have team to find them promote them. This is our raison d'etre." 

De Puyfontaine understands what makes artists tick:

"At UMG and at Vivendi we want talent to come to us and stay with us because it is the best place to grow, be successful and make money." 

De Puyfontaine is not afraid to offend primates:

"If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys, so we need to be able to fund content in the new economic environment."

De Puyfontaine does not give a monkey's about answering journalists' questions:

"What are we going to do with out our cash? I am not going to answer your question." 

Laurent Petitgirard, chairman of the board of French rights society SACEM, is full of love for the European Commission:

"When the president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, in his inaugural speech, talks about silos of authors' right as one of the main problems of Europe, we are more than surprised. This is plain amazing: Copyright is not a problem but the solution."

 SACEM CEO Jean-Noel Tronc is looking for friends in the US:

"The US market is one of the worst in the world in terms of creation of value for copyright." 

Robert Ashcroft, CEO of PRS for Music, tries to be positive

"The US is just eons behind [Europe] in looking at its fundamental copyright system and I would not want to be influenced by that." 

Attorney Dina LaPolt has issues with the way her country treats artists:

"[The USA] represent 33% of the world's [music] market and we are treating our creators the worst."  

LaPolt on Darwinian laws applied to songwriters:

"The most vulnerable group [in the music eco-system] is the songwriters and they are on the verge of extinction." 

ASCAP chairman/president and songwriter Paul Williams begs to differ:

"Songwriters are not an endangered species. But we need protection and we need respected for what we give."

Check part 1 of the Midem report.

Things seen and heard at Midem 2015 (part 1): Streaming, streaming, streaming...

by Emmanuel Legrand

Some 18 months after it last happened, Midem was back in Cannes (June 5-8), leaving winter for early summer. So it was not surprising that most of the side conversations during the trade show/conference were not about the eco-ystem and it's future, but rather about Midem's future in June and in Cannes. There were rumours about Midem moving to Cannes, about the event staying in Cannes but moving a couple of months back in April. Eventually, Midem organisers confirmed that the next event would take place at the end of June in 2016 in Cannes.

Personally, I have always enjoyed Midem in January. For those coming from a colder climate, it was usually a blessing to be by the seaside in a warmer pasture (except when it rained, of course) so I was never convinced by the move to summer, in a town already filled with tourist. So for me, Midem by the beach in June was not the best experience. And I even like less the idea that next year's Midem will end on the day the millions of people will take the road to their holidays, plus it is the weekend of the 4th of July, which or those who live in the US is one of the busiest in the year.

That said, it was a good Midem when it comes to the discussions that took place at the Palais des Festivals. The 'Main Room' sessions were packed with interesting speakers from all sides of the industry. The tech sessions were very instructive, and the 'Music business stage' where a lot of the panels took place was a bit of a noisy spot as it was set right in between the aisles and the stands where people were talking shop, but the discussions were usually quite inspiring.

Here's a round-up of things seen and heard at Midem, focusing mostly on streaming.

Streaming, streaming, streaming... 

If there was any doubt that streaming was the immediate future of the music industry, Midem provide many talking points about the importance streaming in today's business and also many questions about the viability of this new model of music consumption. Most keynote speakers mentioned streaming either to explain their models (Deezer, Tidal, SoundCloud) or to comment on it (Sony Music's Doug Morris, Vivendi's Arnaud de Pyufontaine, European Commission's VP Andrus Ansip).

Considering that it was taking place the weekend before the Apple Music announcement, it was amusing to see that a sentence said in passing by Doug Morris on Sunday got picked up all around the world. "It's happening tomorrow," he said. In Apple's world of rarefied information, this became major news and the whole world went crazy about something that wasn't really news.

Aside from this amusing distraction, the key issue for many remained the capacity for the music industry to be financed by streaming as it overtakes downloads. Deezer CEO Hans-Holder Albrecht might may have claimed that streaming “is the model for the future,” Mute founder Daniel Miller probably summed up the overall feeling from the record labels and publishers' side when he said (in a different session) that it "hasn’t got the reach it needs to sustain an industry.”

Albrecht pleaded the industry to wait for scale to kick in, noting that the world's smartphone population has reached one billion users worldwide, with another billion to be added in the next three to four years. The discussion also focused on the ongoing debate on freemium vs. premium. "If you talk about freemium, let’s talk about all the free music, and how can we reduce the free offering to customers in order to accelerate subscription," he said.

Meanwhile, Tidal chief investment officer, Vania Schlogel was trying to brush away some of the negative comments that followed the launch of the service by its new owner, rapper Jay-Z. Interviewed by a very sympathetic and kind Ralph Simon, she claimed that there was “a lot of misinformation out there" and that many comments "hurt" especially that Tidal did not acre about indie artists. It was a nice PR attempt to re-address the tidal waves (sorry!) of negative vibes, but it will probably take more than that to convince the industry that Tidal has a viable model. 

Rdio CEO Anthony Bay believes that the big elephant in the streaming room is YouTube, which he considered more as a competitor than Apple or Spotify, since it provides all the music for free. "The biggest challenge for the industry is that YouTube is too good and it is hard to get people to pay, especially if it is already on YouTube for free. Safe harbour is not intended for this."

More streaming 

Meanwhile, several record company executives did also share their views on streaming. Arnaud de Puyfontaine, CEO of Universal Music Group parent Vivendi, said he believed "in the future of streaming" as a condition "to recreate good mechanical growth in the industry." He added, "We want to help and stimulate and be part of the future of the streaming business. We are very happy to see Apple coming. It will be an accelerator of this growth and will add momentum that will be good for the industry."

Sony Music Entertainment CEO Doug Morris was quite outspoken on streaming during his keynote interview. Most of his conversation focused on past anecdotes, and as pleasant as they were, they did not reveal much about the seasoned executive's visions about the challenges of today's world. But he got going about streaming, which he described as "a tipping point in the music industry" which has the potential "to bring [the industry] back to where it was before." He took solace in the fact that Sweden's music business revenues was back to where it was ten years ago thanks to streaming.

Apple arrival in this business will build momentum because "Apple will advertise, they'll make a big splash. I think the result of this will have a halo effect on the streaming business. I think it's been the beginning of an amazing moment for our industry. And after what we've been through for the past 10 years, we all deserve some happiness."

"You can't have a streaming service without music, so we are really in a great position," he said. As noticed with the leaked Spotify/Sony contract, this means lots of nice perks (worth noting that he was not asked any questions regarding this issue). He also praised Spotify founder Daniel Ek for doing "an incredible job with Spotify because pushing that boulder up the hill."

And he certainly made known his preference between free and premium... "“Paid? Good. Ad-supported? Unless there’s a conversion factor into a paid service, not so good," he said, adding that 100 streams on Spotify equal a dollar while it would take 900 streams on the biggest on-demand ad-supported platforms to get to a dollar. "So you can tell which one we like,” he concluded.

And even more streaming

Cooking Vinyl founder Martin Goldschmidt is an optimistic. He sees a lot of positive points in the current landscape. Take YouTube. Goldschmidt views the free, ad-supported video platform as something “fantastic and a nightmare” with its capacity to provide all the music for free to a wide audience, but with very little in return for rights holders. He thinks YouTube has been "the most effective thing against piracy that’s happened” but it is also "a massive source of free consumption of music." He added, "If the money can come up, it’s a fantastic opportunity. Let’s just keep our fingers crossed, let’s be optimistic.”

For him, the freemium/premium debate is a rich country's issue, while in places like Africa or Asia, "freemium is going to be where the big money is.” He also described the transformation of VKontakte -- the most popular streaming service in Russia -- from being an unlicensed music service to a fully licensed platform as "fantastic," as they will start paying rights holders and convert millions of users into legitimate consumers of music.

Goldschmidt had less enthusiasm for a platform like SoundCloud that pays rights holders “next to nothing”. Well, that is about to change, according to SoundCloud co-founder Alexander Ljung, who described the platform as reaching 135 million unique monthly listeners who have access to 100 million tracks, a volume growing by the rate of 12 hours of audio content uploaded every minute.

Arriving in Cannes a few days after the announcement of a deal with indie labels' agency Merlin, Ljung could boast that he was "super excited" about this deal that gives him license to use music from 20,000 indie labels. In parallel, the service launched its On Soundcloud partnership progarmme, giving rights holders the possibility to monetise content. "Artist control has from day one been at the core of what Soundcloud is. That is no different when it comes to monetisation. I want artists to be in control when their music is monetised and how it is monetised."

His interest is to provide access to music with the free service but the platform will also expand with a paid-for service. "Today we are an ad-supported platform but we will be launching a subscription service later," he said. "We are interested in having 3 billion people on Soundcloud. Some will be through subs, some through freemium.

And Apple? "They are very large, have a lot of cash and are very good at marketing and they have very good hardware," said Ljung. "They are going to put a lot of marketing  into [their streaming service]. The future is ahead of us with streaming. Apple will rapidly increase the market overall. They will make the streaming market much larger. With our scale we are in a different position. But if Apple increases awareness for music streaming, I am all for it."

Check part 2 of the Midem report.

Rdio prepares to launch its €3.99 Select service in Europe

by Emmanuel Legrand

Rdio is preparing to launch in Europe its Rdio Select service, a low-cost subscription streaming programme already available in the US and in other parts of the world, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa.

The €3.99 plan will be available across Europe in the next couple of months, according to the company's CEO Anthony Bay, once negotiations with rights holders will be concluded. 

Speaking in Cannes during Midem a couple of days before the launch of Apple's streaming service, Bay added that he would have liked to launch earlier but talks with labels, publishers and rights societies have delayed the process. "We have not yet launched in Europe, as we are negotiating licenses, but we hope to get that soon, probably within next month, but we are not there yet," said Bay.

"The industry has developed its structure around 9.99 and everything new requires more discussions," said Bay. "The market is complex in Europe. It takes longer which I think is unfortunate for European consumers, because we have a service already available in many places but not in Europe."

For Bay, fluidity in the European market could be achieved if the European Commission decided "what is the appropriate fair split between the stakeholders. If it could solve that problem, it would be wonderful." 

Bay -- who joined the service in December 2013 and who worked previously at Amazon, where he was responsible for Amazon Prime -- said that Rdio's strategy is to attract various types of consumers by offering different pricing points. Bay declined to disclose the number of subscribers the new tier has attracted. As a privately-owned company, Rdio does not disclose financial figures nor its number of subscribers.

In the US, the basic offer is Rdio, a free ad-supported streaming service, then for $3.99, consumers can pick Rdio Select, which allos access on mobiles to ad-free streaming radio plusn25 daily downloads. The two upper tiers are Rdio Unlimited, at $9.99 with unlimited ad-free streaming radio and Rdio Unlimited Family, a package priced $14.99 for two accounts to $29.99 for five accounts.

"If you look at the TV business you have a free to air TV everywhere in the world and pay TV," said Bay. "The majority of the audience is on free TV and when you chose pay TV, there's different tier pricing. Any subscribers' business needs tiers."

He added, "In the music business, you've had a version of this system with free for about 100 years. Around the world everyone listens to free radio, which has existed alongside paid music for a long time. From our perspective, we need something that is free and something at $10 with an all-you-can-eat model."

In passing, Bay drops that the free, on-demand tier that Spotify offers "is bad for the industry: If you give someone something too good for free, they have no reason to pay."

Rdio Select, he added, offers for $3.99 (or less than $1 in India) a significant uptake from the free tier, with access to an unlimited catalogue, higher quality files, and 25 downloads at a time. "This offer is not aimed at people who collect music but rather at people who hear a song and want that song over and over or just a list of hits. So this is made for a pretty broad audience."

More than Apple or Spotify, Bay sees YouTube as the biggest competitor as it provides all the music for free. "The biggest challenge for the industry is that YouTube is too good and it is hard to get people to pay, especially if it is already on YouTube for free. Safe harbour is not intended for this."

Bay is optimistic that eventually the streaming audio market will pick up and the entrance of new players such as Apple or Google can only boost the market. "We believe that there is a lot of potential, with more people with mobile phones," he said. "The potential audience for legal music is very high. It could be some of the best times in the history of music. In the long term I am very optimistic. I do not think that Apple and Google will not leave room for others. There will be room for independents like us. I believe that as competition will grow, services will differentiate from each other. You have to take the long view in a business like that and I believe that it will be a very big business with millions of people subscribing."