What digital music needs is a completely new revenue model that preserves free distribution of music files. Music servers that charge pay-per-listen or flat access fees aren't going to cut it, the lion's share of the income will still go to the music distributor and not the artist. Like search engines, the barrier to entry in will be quite high and the field will be dominated by a few mega-distributors like the record conglomerates.
Why not just cut out the record companies all together? Artists can distribute their music free of charge on the internet, and make money from their fan base in other ways. Concert tickets, merchandise, and endorsements are huge income streams that are tied to the size of one's fan base. Distributing music for free can only increase one's exposure. I have a feeling that, given the pithy royalties artists see from record sales, artists would make much more money overall from this model.
Actually I see legislation as the complete opposite of mathematics. It's more like a student trying to bullshit his way into partial credit on an exam by purposefully being vague so he doesn't expose his ignorance. Revising a bill so enough people will vote for it requires watering down specifics with vague and general language as each faction compromises with the others. This fact is demonstrated by the amount of legal squabbling that occurs in courts, since its often left to the judiciary to decide exactly how to interpret the wording of a law. It's also why two different judges can interpret the same law in very different ways: legal language is purposefully ambiguous.
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What digital music needs is a completely new revenue model that preserves free distribution of music files. Music servers that charge pay-per-listen or flat access fees aren't going to cut it, the lion's share of the income will still go to the music distributor and not the artist. Like search engines, the barrier to entry in will be quite high and the field will be dominated by a few mega-distributors like the record conglomerates.
Why not just cut out the record companies all together? Artists can distribute their music free of charge on the internet, and make money from their fan base in other ways. Concert tickets, merchandise, and endorsements are huge income streams that are tied to the size of one's fan base. Distributing music for free can only increase one's exposure. I have a feeling that, given the pithy royalties artists see from record sales, artists would make much more money overall from this model.
Actually I see legislation as the complete opposite of mathematics. It's more like a student trying to bullshit his way into partial credit on an exam by purposefully being vague so he doesn't expose his ignorance. Revising a bill so enough people will vote for it requires watering down specifics with vague and general language as each faction compromises with the others. This fact is demonstrated by the amount of legal squabbling that occurs in courts, since its often left to the judiciary to decide exactly how to interpret the wording of a law. It's also why two different judges can interpret the same law in very different ways: legal language is purposefully ambiguous.