I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m really getting tired of hearing how I (or "we" as consumers), are destroying the music industry. No, the way I see it, The Recording Industry Association of America, better known as the RIAA, which is the (well paid) lobbying group that represents the major record labels, is doing a fine job single handedly.

Especially in the past couple of years, the RIAA has been both way out of line and totally out of control. They use the guise of "protecting the artists’ intellectual property." However, the RIAA doesn’t represent the artists, they represent the major record labels! They are looking to gain 100% control over every aspect of the music, starting with the artist and ending at the consumer.

Instead of working with, and following the future of where the music industry has headed, they’re fighting against it tooth and nail. They rabidly attacked and shut down Napster, then Audio Galaxy, with others to follow, instead of trying to find a workable solution. They claimed that these sites where people could download music, were what is killing retail sales, and it amounts to consumer thievery. Where were they when the people that started these services tried working out deals for royalties and licenses years ago, when the idea first arose? They were completely ignored and given the brush off by the industry, so given there was no "model" for this type of endeavor, the people that started them, built their sites flying by the seat of their pants, with nothing to go on. Yes, the concept caught on like fire, but contrary to all the RIAA’s manipulated data "proving" it’s having a major negative impact on the music industry, realistically, it’s hurt nothing. People were not spending 12 hours a day downloading tons of music to avoid buying it. The vast majority of people used it to find music no longer available, or an even simpler concept- now they finally had a way to sample music they may have heard about, but had nowhere to hear it. The truth is, for the average artist, this caused an increase in their sales, both at the recorded level and concert level. This has indeed been a proven fact, unlike the RIAA’s dubious "focus group" findings. Now, along with going after the sites that provide downloadable music, they are seriously considering spending millions of dollars more going after individual users. Gee, for an industry that says it’s in such financial dire straits...Even more dangerous, right now they have pushed through a piece of legislation sitting in Congress, making it legal for copyright holders to "spoof" (which is uploading fake files), to parties they feel are involved in file swapping. While supposedly aimed at larger services like Morpheus and Grokster, there’s nothing stopping them from going after individuals- or launching viruses, and is a total contradiction of anti-hacking laws now in place.

Another brainstorm was "encryption." It works for DVDs at this point. The only problem is, DVD players were made specifically to play DVDs that were already encrypted from that start. They tried this with music CDs in Europe, and there was one little problem. The CDs wouldn’t play in all players, especially older players that weren’t specially made to handle encryption, and eventually consumers there had it outlawed. They are still trying to push this one on us, with a compromise of a warning label making the consumer aware, and if the CD doesn’t play in their player, they can return it for an exchange. How many times is the consumer going to put up with going back and forth to keep exchanging CDs until they find one that plays right? This has some label executives rightly apprehensive, so the RIAA has come up with another plan- to have the manufacturers of the hardware (ie: CD-RWs), incorporate anti-copying technology into the equipment. Quite a double edged sword, since many of the corporations that own record labels, such as Sony, also manufacture the very equipment used to copy and burn CDs. And then, there’s still the matter that our rights, under law, to make copies for personal use are being denied.

Bootlegging is wreaking havoc on the industry from downloaded music? Does the music industry think it’s special, and this hasn’t been going on long before Napster? Bootlegging of everything known to mankind has been going on for decades. Heck, look at Prohibition! The pirating that’s going on- the kind that does hurt the industry, where thousands and thousands of copies are being made- is still being done as it’s always been done...from the "inside," where someone with access within the label gets a copy of the master tape and sells it to professional bootleggers. The kind of equipment the average consumer has can’t withstand copying thousands of discs at a time. Let’s get real here.

The drop in retail music sales? The first one, I touched on before. When vinyl was fazed out, CDs were proclaimed as indestructible and made to last forever. When players and the CDs came down to reasonable prices a little more than a decade ago, people went out and replaced their beloved scratchy vinyl with copies on CD. It inflated sales, and that trend has now run it’s course, and the system of checks and balances has kicked in, merely returning sales to a normal level.

Next, look back on the last decade of music. It was nothing more than a string of one or two year trends, artists that although sold millions, had a hit or two, were one or two album wonders, and then were gone. Where is the new Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, George Jones? The new Dylan or Springsteen? How about Elvis, the Beatles, Stones or U2? BB King or Buddy Guy? Who came out of the 90's that is still going strong, that will have been able to achieve selling 60, 80, 100 or more million albums over their careers, will continue to sell steadily, and draw crowds decades from now?

Then we have the ever so misleading RIAA certifications: gold, platinum, diamond. Many mistake these distinctions as sales. However, the truth is, they are only units shipped, so therefore, an artist can have a certification of platinum (1 million units), but in reality, may only have sold half that amount, while the other half million are still sitting on the record store shelves. The RIAA also counts multiple CD sets, (such as box sets containing more than one disc) on a per disc basis. If the set includes 4 discs, it’s counted as 4 units, instead of the one unit it should be. One can’t go into a store and just buy, say disc 2, from a set, can they? So therefore we have Soundscan to track actual sales. The problem here is, small independent labels and artists that put out their own music are not counted in Soundscan’s sales. Up until about two years ago, online music sales, from sites like Amazon and CDNow weren’t counted either. That’s a whole lot of music that’s not being accounted for. Given that the major labels are grossly out of touch with what the music consumer wants, many people have turned to the Indie labels and the "do-it-yourself" artists that are putting out the more interesting music that people are looking for. So sales are being spread around among thousands of non mainstream, non reporting artists, as more and more people bypass the banal, boring, trash the major labels are putting out. I know over the past 6 months, I’ve bought 4 major label releases- and probably close to 40 small label/independent ones. So are music sales REALLY down, or is it a matter that a lot of music is simply not being counted, and it only appears music sales in general are down, when in fact it’s only major label sales that are down? Hmmm...

Now, the RIAA is on the attack again, this time to stamp out webstations. They are imposing ridiculous fees on these stations, that conventional radio stations do not have to pay. Their rationale is that webstreams can be digitally copied. Personally, I’m still trying to figure out how to do that, however, I can easily pop a tape into my tape deck and tape a conventional radio broadcast anytime! Not to mention the fact that the latest statistics showed only 30% of PC users had broadband in their homes, which leaves 60% of us still using lowly dial-up, with it’s constant buffering interruptions...However, buffering problems aside, I do listen frequently to webstations, whereas I seldom listen to conventional radio these days, due to it’s mindnumbing repetition and lack of any kind of variety, let alone trying to hear anything that resembles good music. Webstations are where I finally realized music was not really dead after all- there actually were still great artists out there making great music- I just never knew it because there was nowhere to hear them before. When I started listening to country webstations, I soon discovered Terry Allen, Brian Burns, Ed Burleson, Dallas Wayne, Kevin Deal and countless others. This was the music I was craving, and was clueless was even out there. I looked up their websites, I followed links from their sites to other artists’ sites, I listened to more of their music- and went out and bought it. The RIAA claims it is helping and protecting the artists. By driving these stations off the net, how is it helping anyone? It’s hurting the artist, by not giving them exposure that translates into potential sales. It’s hurting the consumer, who wouldn’t have found music and artists they like otherwise. And it’s hurting the entire music industry, because the consumer would be buying...nothing. Fortunately, one independent label has stepped up to the plate and has agreed, at least for the next year, to waive these fees. Hopefully, others will follow behind them, and continue to provide their artists the exposure they need. If the major labels don’t follow suit, it’s no big deal. Anyone can turn on commercial corporate radio, and hear the dreary Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney, or any of the other tediously banal overplayed acts, at least a hundred times a day- so who would really care anyway?

The internet is here to stay, and there’s nothing that’s going to change that. The music industry has a potentially powerful marketing tool before them. The smaller players in the industry already recognize this, and are using it to their great benefit. The RIAA however, wants to gain total control over every aspect, and it ain’t gonna happen. It’s hurting the "non-superstar" average artists that don’t get radio, music television, or any other kind of exposure, which in turn is hurting the industry in general. And it’s doing nothing but further alienating, or in other words- totally pissing off, the consumer. For an industry that’s crying hard times and poverty, pissing off the people that your jobs depend on, isn’t exactly going to woo them back, and make them hand over their hard earned cash. The RIAA had better wake up and face the reality that the way the music industry worked in the past, is not going to work now or in the future- things have indeed changed. They are already light years behind the "real world." If they hope to survive the changes, then they had better spend far less time, energy and money fighting it, and far more to figure out a way to make things work within this new landscape, or they, themselves, are the ones driving the nails into their own coffin- not the consumer. Hard as it may be for this self-absorbed group to accept, that means compromise- not dictatorship.

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