If the consumers decide they're fed up with buying cds with one good song with a load of crap
If that's what the consumers decide, perhaps... but just the opposite is happening.
Case in point, bubblegum princess Brittany Spears has released two albums, each with a total of one catchy song. (By "catchy", I mean that the producers slaved over a rhythm track that was good enough, and simple enough, to get stuck in the heads of 12-year-old girls across America).
Result of this one-marketable-song-and-35-minutes-of-filler formula? Back-to-back #1 albums.
And if you old-school listener's think that your generation was any smarter, I have three words for you: The Bee Gees.
The record companies will continue to shovel out white-washed, watered-down funk-pop for as long as they can find dumb kids to spend their lunch money on it... which will probably be forever.
"Nearly two-thirds of the 1,135 college students surveyed say they download music as a way to sample music before buying it"
And we all know that no college kid would EVER bullshit about something like that right? Right?
Everybody I know who uses Napster uses it for one reason and one reason only: Free music. It is choose-you-own-programming-radio, plain and simple.
I stop short of hyperbolic terms like "stealing", but Mr. Katz's argument ("Hey, we are just marketing your product to ourselves! By listening to your songs without paying for them, we will make you huge piles of money! In fact, you should probably be paying us!") is at least as silly and extreme as what the record executives are saying.
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If that's what the consumers decide, perhaps... but just the opposite is happening.
Case in point, bubblegum princess Brittany Spears has released two albums, each with a total of one catchy song. (By "catchy", I mean that the producers slaved over a rhythm track that was good enough, and simple enough, to get stuck in the heads of 12-year-old girls across America).
Result of this one-marketable-song-and-35-minutes-of-filler formula? Back-to-back #1 albums.
And if you old-school listener's think that your generation was any smarter, I have three words for you: The Bee Gees.
The record companies will continue to shovel out white-washed, watered-down funk-pop for as long as they can find dumb kids to spend their lunch money on it... which will probably be forever.
And we all know that no college kid would EVER bullshit about something like that right? Right?
Everybody I know who uses Napster uses it for one reason and one reason only: Free music. It is choose-you-own-programming-radio, plain and simple.
I stop short of hyperbolic terms like "stealing", but Mr. Katz's argument ("Hey, we are just marketing your product to ourselves! By listening to your songs without paying for them, we will make you huge piles of money! In fact, you should probably be paying us!") is at least as silly and extreme as what the record executives are saying.
If I had 5 to give, I would spend them all modding that AC up.