Music Industry

I haven't posted in a while, but I felt motivated by recent news.

The music industry makes me laugh. They are the biggest bunch of fools. With this new digital age, and something called the Internet, they are still stuck in an age that has past. The age of the CD. Sure people are still buying them, but recent reports are saying CD sales are declining sharply. Why you may ask?

Digital Music Distribution services. iTune, Amazon, Rhapsody, etc...

These new medians have made it much easier and more convenient to acquire music. Most of the big names still haven't caught up. Sure they license the music out and make money from online sales, but they are still spending a huge amount on hard media. It's turning into a frivolous venture. The companies have to find a bigger and better way to distribute their music because CDs just aren't cutting it anymore.

Sony's idea of moving forward is novel... but still dumb. They are giving you the ability to buy DRM free music on the net. Catch is you need to go to the store and buy a card(which is the same price as a CD) and the scratch it off. This may work for some people. But for all those who download their music off of iTunes, why bother? It makes no sense to me, especially in this day and age.

Speaking of DRM.... it's a joke. They are so afraid of losing their music that they protect it. How well has this worked? People can still download their music for free from P2P(Peer to Peer) networks. DRM hasn't seemed to stem this. According to BigChampagne about 1.1 BILLION songs are downloaded from file sharing networks. If DRM is stopping anything then you could have fooled me. I know it stops me from using iTunes, or any other music distribution service for that matter, because the songs are copy protected and only work in certain places. I don't have a mainstream MP3 player(Toshiba Gigabeat) so some songs don't work on it. I can't even use iTunes because most of the music from there won't work in anything but an iPod, and I really don't like iPods.

Stop fearing people and move forward in the world. The movie industry doesn't seem to have problems, why does the music industry have to put up a HUGE stink. In fact, in college more people downloaded illegal movies than they did music.

That's what this whole thing comes down to in the end: fear. The music industry fears change, like the majority of companies and people out there. For years they have known the threat of the Internet was out there and choose to ignore it. Now that it is slapping them in the face they are struggling to play catch up. They are thinking of ways to make up for the rapidly dropping CD sales with other services and medians to sell and license music.

One idea, get this, was to put MORE onto the CDs. How would that sell more if people aren't buying them in the first place. The general population has shown they don't want physical media anymore, they want to buy from the comfort of home. And if the 1.1 billion downloads is any indication, they also want DRM free music.

You had a strangle hold on the distribution channels for so long you let it get to your heads. Now you have competition on an evolving distribution channel. What are you going to do? The age of the CD is dying and so far you are still trying to play catch up. Stop fearing the Internet and use it as your advantage. I saw some ideas you all had and most of them dealt with something other than the Internet.

Get with the program. The Internet is the new distribution median. Learn to leverage it and you can once again take control of the market.