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. . . radio stations are going under and the music industry isn't selling music much today. And their excuses are hysterical. They blame file trading, MP3s, internet/XM/Sirius radio, video games, swine flu...you name it. No mention of their own bad business plan and all of the boring artists that they promote. The real whining and crying that I hear is from the lawyers and executives in the RIAA.

Dan



I've been saying for years that the publishing industry--which includes print and film--is dead; it just doesn't know it yet. Those who figure out that it's about moving bits, not moving molecules, MAY survive. But they (mostly Western companies) just keep shooting themselves in the foot in marvelously creative ways.

It's all about distribution. Ever wonder why the price of product went up every time the medium changed--from LP to cassette to CD--while the costs of manufacturing and distribution went down? I'm all for capitalism, but simple greed is getting in their way. (Frank Zappa would have put out a lot more music if he hadn't spent so much time in court proving how record companies were screwing their artists, and eventually themselves. He had a large hand in the creation of the indies.) Now it costs as much to download a CD's worth of material as it would to own the disk, when there is NO inherent cost beyond paying the producer, the ISP, and the artist, and you get NO physical product. Madness.

One of the big three record companies saw sales and revenue (two different things, indirectly related) go UP significantly when they cut CD prices by a third. Amazon Kindle and iPods are where it's going. Blockbuster is closing 900 stores and moving to an Internet model. When the publishing industry as a whole enlightens itself as to the wisdom of delivering more and/or charging less, they'll have a chance.

But I'm sure it's much more fun complaining and punishing the consumers who are actually paying the freight.

/RANT

R.

"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."