
The Music Industry Is Dead
but look look, we've got all these free mp3s!
5 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Jul 2008
Realize that Pandora plays *way too much* non-RIAA music due to the superior recommendations mechanism - this is music that was produced independently, and although the soundexchange mechanism screws the indies very neatly, letting the independents suffocate in this "brave new world" where music has no intrinsic value whatsoever is a better solution overall.
Why would the RIAA want to support the independent market?
What would the point be?
I believe that they will change their tune a bit once the vast majority of the independent music market has withered away, along with however many more misdirected "Web 2.0" music-based startups, but not that much.
The long-term solution for the RIAA will be to fire all A/Rs, eliminate all artists from their rosters and shut down any studios/production facilities that they maintain and move into a pure royalty-collection and music licensing, and to sell the music to whoever can afford to pay for it, regardless of what that means to the bands or the fans.
Personally, I'm not looking forward to seeing sides 3,4, 5 and 6 of every hit album from the last few decades come out digitally as they scrape their catalog, but that's probably the best we can hope for. Certainly we are well beyond the point that being successful on an indie label is any guarantee of becoming rich as a majpr label signee. The smartest move that the RIAA can make moving forward is to avoid wasting money on developing new artists, and if those who would, i.e., the indie labels, are dying on the vine, all the better.