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Time to Face the Music
Mortimer.CA writes "The Toronto Star has an article up about the ailing recording industry with some possible scenarios for solving the problem(s). Choice quotation: 'We must ask ourselves what Elvis would do to stop the theft of music via the Internet, now so widespread and so brazen that it makes the Baghdad looters look like trick-or-treaters.'"
No, let's also pause to enjoy any torment that befalls Clear Channel, the greedy narrowminded suits who own and have culturally cleansed nearly all of the U.S. radio market. Break a leg, fellas -- break it in multiple places, you Nazis!
It's a great time to love indy, outsider, ethnic and lo-fi music -- these fields have never been more teeming nor the work more passionate and lovely. And here, of course, when you look beneath the excuses of file trading, can be found the explanation for the collapse of the top-heavy giants. Fragmentation of taste. The rise of alternatives. Before Napster taught the suits to say "mp3," they were already going around in the early 90s bemoaning their long-term prospects in light of the disintegration of consensus music.
Let these dinosaurs sink up to their necks in the tarpits. As they descend, their last angry gurgles will be no more memorable than the formula records they're so shocked that fewer and fewer people want to buy.
Give me a service which has nearly all the songs p2p networks has (ie the big 4 labels and all the smaller ones) for betwen £5 and £10 per month for nonDRM's downloads (ie in mp3 or ogg format) either in unlimited ammount of downloads or limited - 50 songs per month??? and i will pay now
Luckily, in a civilized world, the seller has a right to refuse your offer. Offering nonDRM songs has proven unpracitcal given the rapant piracy that alsready exists. Such a demand is unrealistic, and stealing the music if you can't strike a bargain is immoral and illegal.
Vote for Pedro
The problem is that there simply aren't enough musicians in Canada who are capable of going head to head with the products of a very similar culture, 10x the size, next door.
Or maybe the problem is the crap that Canada chooses to export. Avril Lavigne? Nickelback? Sum41? You want to compete with Hendrix and The Doors and you've got is Rush? I don't think it's a size issue. It's an issue of talent and taste.