GregKerr.Net

[Scott Radke]

The music industry establishment has a long tradition of attempting to squelch new technology. “Home Taping Is Killing Music” was the slogan of a British campaign aimed at recordable cassette tapes in the ‘80s. Funny, it seems that music is still here.

A similar uproar came about with the advent of CD burners; the industry was thoroughly convinced that once CD burners were in every home that no one would buy CD’s anymore. Perhaps they should have taken into consideration that they were trying to charge $18-20 for a product that cost them less than $2 to manufacture. And, funny thing, music is still here.

Of course, given this track record, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) assault on the digital download formats comes as no surprise. What is particularly confusing to me is that the RIAA purports to be protecting the rights of the artists, but their actions seem to show otherwise. The site www.boycott-riaa.com presents some of these interesting tidbits on their facts page:

Every Music CDR since the AHRA was enacted has a hidden tax built into the price! (2% of the manufacturers sales) This is supposedly to pay the artists for home recording. Who Collects the Tax? The RIAA under the auspices of the AARC. Who shares office space with the RIAA and has many of the RIAA employees working for it. I haven't been able to find one artist that was paid a cent of the money. 4% is set aside for non-featured artists, of the remainder 40% for the featured artist and 60% for the labels. To date I have not found one artist who has received one cent of this money. (Source: RIAA website)

The artists received not one cent of the money from the MP3.Com settlements of approx $158 Million to the labels. Who did??? The label themselves.

SoundExchange" the new digital rights collective for collecting royalties from internet play is a division of the RIAA. They did not distribute royalties in July 2001 as they were supposed to do, but instead decided to wait until next year.

Perhaps ironically, many musicians have decided that the Internet is clearly more helpful to them than the RIAA is. Not just the little guys, either; both Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead released their latest albums on-line without the benefit of a record label. Nine Inch Nails put theirs up for free, and Radiohead allowed fans to pay whatever they thought was fair for the album.

With Apple's recent announcement that iTunes has surpassed Wal-Mart to become the largest music retailer in the United States, it is clear that the RIAA is not going to be able to halt the progress of music technology. And what do you know, the music is still here...

[krisnyquist]

This post caught my eye right away. You do a great job of presenting examples in the past, like the tape recorders in the 80's. That was a little before my time, its funny to think of all the big labels freaking out over that. Especially considering the quality of that vs what we have these days. Its also good that you point out that a CD costs about 2 dollars to manufacture but the major labels charge 18-20 bucks for em. Your supporting facts from www.boycott-riaa.com are also very interesting, however not suprising. Major labels have always stood for nothing more then their own profit. They will always be willing to rape musicians and steal what is rightfully theirs. I hope more bands fallow suit with NIN and Radiohead's internet releases. Music belongs to the people, not some rich old bastards in suits.

The music is still here, and it always well be.