A Big Fat Thanks to Record Execs – Rolling Stone Magazine

In the latest issue of Rolling Stone, the editors did something a bit – unexpected.  Issuing a sarcastic letter essentially calling out the music industry, the RIAA and the thousands of lawsuit storming across the country, it’s one of the most concise statements on the subject i’ve ever seen – from possibly the most influential music publication on the market.  That took some balls Rolling Stone – and thank goodness someone with some actual pull finally said something.  Is this biting the hand that feeds?  Probably.  Will it hurt their advertising revenue?  Certainly not (where else will labels advertise?  the…*snort* internet?)  Was it needed?  Absolutely.

Look – no one denies that intellectual property has value.  Whether or not you consider it “stealing” or just “sharing” or even “sampling” is beside the point.  What IS the point, however, is the Music Industry’s utter failing to embrace TWTA (the way things are).  File sharing will NEVER go away, and it’s been proven that every attempt to squash it just scatters it into a million harder to control pieces.  This is the hydra and no matter how many heads you cut off, ten more grow back in it’s place.   So hey, music industry, STOP CUTTING OFF THE HEADS.  Of course, that means accepting that the days of draining every last cent from every last property is over (which the execs will never do until the day they die – cause shoot, if the industry dies, at least they keep their fat pension).

It boils down to this – the Music Industy (and now the movie industry) can bury heads in the sand and claim moral outrage – or they can find a way to make money off of a culture that is sharing, swapping, and purchasing (albeit selectively) more than ever.  Because every single pirate out there is a free advertiser and distributor.  Digital mediums cost zero to reproduce (think about that – selling a product that costs literally nothing to make more of, deliver, or store).  More bands than ever are making music for the sheer love of it (and just more bands than ever EXIST) – more kids teens and adults are discovering their new favorite band (or twelve) every day than the past 3 decades combined – and yet if we cannot move past the criminality of it all and stop using hot button words like “thief” or “pirate” (like the kid held up a record shop, shot the band in the face, and robbed the personal safe of the record exec in the process —- he clicked a button on a faceless website and listened to a song) and start to discuss the real ways (and they are out there) to utilize the most powerful tool in the entire world – the internet and it’s users – then, with %100 certainty, the music industry as we know it will crumble – while the rest of us get to fiddle as it burns.  And some kid in his basement will figure it out and be the next billionaire.

just sayin.