Slashdot Mirror
Fallout from the Internet Debacle
gatesh8r writes "This article off of Janis Ian's site lashes out at the RIAA for "wanting to control everything that the consumer will purchase" and then proposes some mild and thoughtful solutions to the problem. Nice to see an artist write up something like this." This is her follow-up to her earlier piece.
Like many people on here there was a time I grew used to paying $15 - $20 for a CD only to end up listening to only 2 or 3 good songs on the album. In fact, I had mentally begun to consider a CD a good buy if it had 3 good songs and anything above that an excellent buy. This was helped by treating each CD purchase as the equivalent of buying 3 singles from the same artist.
Then came the advent of large scale P2P software based, copyright infringement while I was in college. I began being able to avoid what I used to consider "bad" CD purchases by only obtaining the one good song without having to deal with the dreck on the rest of the album or paying for it.
Now in many cases I would love to pay for the one or two album tracks or single remixes that I like but the music industry has steadfastly refused to provide me a mechanism to do this. However, there is really nothing technologically preventing record labels from either a.) providing customized CDs for their target audience (in the same vein as the NOW compilation albums) or b.) providing digital music at a fraction of the current price of singles and CDs.
Unfortunately they don't seem remotely interested in satisfying their customers in this demand. Legislating against technology can only last for so long.
I could get the file instantly; it was guaranteed to be CD quality or better; and it was in an open format (mp3, or much better, ogg).
Even if the track were available for free elsewhere, it just wouldn't be worth the hassle of locating it, queueing it, and then hoping that it was the right track at a decent quality.
Maybe we don't need digital protection, we just need a scarcity mechanism. That is why people buy things in the first place...
There is a scarcity mechanism. When media moves to an infinite product (there's more music out there than one could hear in a lifetime) the scarce object becomes the consumer's time. Saving the consumer time by building an efficient and convenient product produces the value.
+&x
We can't kill the music industry. It's big, and the companies involved do too many other things. It's highly unlikely that the big names would ever decide to ditch music and just sell game systems and internet access. Even if they were getting no profits from their music parts, they'd probably use their other resources to try to do something about it, rather than giving up.
Therefore, if we want to stop them, what we need to do is give them a viable business model. We have to actively help them do things we like.
</desmond-tutu>
Is it worth $.25/song to have the music industry's attempt at a business model compatible with consumer rights succeed? Wouldn't you pay $.25/song if the RIAA would chill out? Think of it as buying influence, and you'll realize that you're getting a lot for your quarter that you don't get from the P2P networks.
Just think: they set up this thing. It appears on slashdot, with a favorable article. Everybody goes there and gets a couple of songs. They make more money in a few hours than they can ignore. If people are interested in paying to make Blender open source, won't people be even more interested in paying to make the RIAA reasonable? Oh, and there's also this music thing, but that's not important.