RIAA pwn3d

[Uisce Beatha]

http://www.audioholics.co...head-so-did-the-boot-work

Good article.  Love this bit:

The sheer volume of tepid, uninspired music that the industry pumps out has already devalued music based on simple economics: supply and demand. The supply of music is staggering; we are inundated with it. Now with the Internet, this mass produced dreck costs almost nothing to distribute. No wonder people are downloading it for free. Price goes down with oversupply, simple Economics.

[Walfredo]

My friend actually left his copy of Radiohead's new cd at my house and I haven't given it back.  I think he choose to pay $10 for it.

Surprising that the US on average paid almost twice as much at $8 for it.  I still think it was a cool idea but I'm not surprised at all the cheap skates out there.


WTF most bands are lucky to see 15% of what their albums make.    

[Uisce Beatha]

I think the only sticking point keeping this experiment from being hailed as a complete success is the "well, you wouldn't be in this position without us" argument.  Currently it has merit.  I do think it's true only because of the monopoly the RIAA/labels have on the relationship with radio stations.  Other than college/indy channels with limited saturation of course.  So it'll take a bit of time but I expect artists will be able to chip away at that and remove the only point the middle men have.

Artists should band together and create a cooperative which could wield real bargaining power vis-a-vis radio.  Of course, it will take the involvement of top acts to make it effective.  I think something like that is where we're headed though.  Given storage is cheap and writable media is common place there's absolutely no need for middle men in this industry assuming radio can be conquered.

[gleek]

Artists should band together and create a cooperative which could wield real bargaining power vis-a-vis radio.

There's already BMI, which collects licensing fees from radio stations on behalf of copyright holders of the songs that are broadcast on radio. The performers that aren't protected by BMI are those that don't know how to write their own music. Until they can get to the point of copyrighting a performance/rendition of a song regardless of who wrote the original music and lyrics, maybe these artists should learn how to do their own compositions.

[hobbit]

I love it.  Trent Reznor and one of his buddies recently did a similar thing - download the 'cd' for free at 192Kbps, or pay $5 for 320Kbps or FLAC lossless.  I downloaded it for free and didn't like it, but if I had liked it I would have gone back and paid $5 for better quality.

[Blader]

I sniff a business opportunity.........