Techdirt this morning has a note up that suggests the record labels are going great guns trying to block the file sharing business model.
Ya know, gang, I’m getting really ticked about this. As I’ve indicated before I have a rather large music collection… On the order of 20,000 LP’s, over 100,000 singles… and a fair amount of CD’s to go with it. The upshot is I have an MP3 collection that requires a server of it’s own, along with a 7 CD tower… all of them loaded with MP3’s as well.
But I’ve not bought much recently. I may have purchased 25 or 30 disks in the last year. The reason for the sudden slowdown in buying of music has nothing to do with my ability to download gigabytes of music off the ‘net, legally or otherwise… it has nothing to do with the technology I employ. It has nothing to do with a business model at all.
Let’s take a short trip back in time, to the middle 70’s through the 90’s and to today. Remember when the RIAA loudest scream was that Magnetic tape recorders in the home were going to be the death of the music business?
Funny thing; That Chicken Little act didn’t win them any converts, and about everyone had at least one cassette recorder in the house. (Personally, I have a few of them, and a good reel-to-reel unit, as well, even today) But, lo, and behold, despite the simplicity of making a recoding of whatever music source you wanted by simply loading a tape and punching a few buttons, the Music industry didn’t die.
But now suddenly, the technology changes, and we’re supposed to have pity on their calls of the sky falling. again? Sorry, I don’t buy it. The number of people making supposedly illegal copies of recordings hasn’t gone up at all. Everybody already HAD that ability… we’ve had it since the 50’s and 60’s.
The problem… what’s killing the profits of the music business these days, is what’s being turned out these days. The product they’re turning out makes sewage look desirable. Nobody wants it.
Until they address THAT issue, the music industry will never recover it’s old glories. And they’re certainly not making any friends with the ‘blame the consumer’ nonsense.
Tags: BitsBlog
