Boycott RIAA
The RIAA is really ticking me off with their “sue everyone, sue customers” campaign. I think the news that they sued a 12-year old girl for downloading music was the last straw for me. Everything from the price fixing, blaming finances on downloaders, lobbying for copyright law changes, underpaying artists, invading privacy, and bringing down file sharing networks has led to my final decision: I’m never buying another CD released by a member of RIAA again. Thanks to RIAA Radar, it’s easy to identify RIAA-safe music. Between the independent artists at Amazon, mp3.com, and the whole library at CDBaby.com, I should have no problem getting my electronic music fix.
I really like this artist Antinomie from France. Why do Europeans do techno so well? It makes so much more sense to support artists directly.
The infoporn section of Wired 11.10 shows statistics that CD prices have climbed 16 percent since 1997, after being adjusted for inflation. Listeners are paying more and purchasing less — sales sank 7 percent. Maybe if they made CDs cheaper, and they had a good online model for downloads, they could make some money.
I like this article from USAToday about the music industry not knowing how to handle file sharing. The history of disruptive technology is interesting. Electricity and the kerosene business, cars and buggies, movies and VCRs. Somehow, the industry involved has always adapted to make money a new way.
September 11th, 2003 at 11:28 pm
Had an interesting conversation with a 50+ year old coworker today. He’s got a 16 year old son who thinks nothing of downloading songs from the Internet. In fact, he doesn’t understand why it shouldn’t be free. He’s grown up with the Internet which has always been free … why stop now?
The Music Industry is in serious trouble. The USA Today article you pointed to said that it took Hollywood 50 years to recover from the creation of the TV. It appears, from the idiotic and bullying way the RIAA is handling the birth of pure digital music, that it will take them 50 years as well.
Of course, I don’t think they can survive that long.