RIAA Changing It’s Tactics

Read an interesting article today  Here…  About the RIAA rethinking it’s strategy of suing people that illegally share music files.

I think it’s a wise decison.

Suing little kids, single mom’s, grandparents, and dead people has been a PR nightmare for Record Labels and Artists from the beginning.  Even if it is wrong, it doesn’t ever make good business sense to go after your fan base.  And the punishment (Huge Fines) never did seem to fit the crime.

That said, the RIAA freaked me out.  When Napster came out I was all over it, then jumped over to Kazaa when it was shut down.  Who could turn down free music?  And honestly for me and others I assume it was really a giant leap into a brave new digital world.  It was the first time I really every utilized my broadband connection.   Actually is was the only reason I kept it for a while.

When people started getting sued for Hundreds of thousands of dollars though I went legit (for the most part, with the exception of a few lapses every now and then).  It wasn’t worth the chance of getting caught with your hands in the cookie jar.  How do you explain this…  Honey we have to sell our house and cars to pay fines and lawyer fees…  but I do have the enitre Coldplay discography for us to put on our Ipods.

It will be interesting to see how the industry and how we consume music continues to evolve.  It’s been an up and down battle so far, but in the long run I think it will work out to everyones benefit.  Already there has been some great changes and I look forward to more.

Interesting Points of discussion…

Take a look a total # of album sales…  Steady decline since 2004.  I don’t know if it indicates that people are downloading illegal music or if people just aren’t buying albums any longer, but rather popular singles they like.

My wife and kids by singles…  I still like to buy albums of the artist I like.  But I paya lot of attention to the overall quality of an album, if they have only one or two songs that are good,  I don’t buy the album.  To be honest, I typically won’t even buy the single I like if the Album is garbage.  Having the ability to preview an album and select which songs to purchase is awesome.  But my guess is it hurts album sales.  

But that is a good thing I think…  It drives the artist to make better music, better albums, better content.

on a side note….  I love what Coldplay has done with their latest releases, they released the Viva La Vida Album, then after time a Prospekts March release of songs that didn’t make the original CD.  As a fan I love it,  give me everything you got.  That’s a way to be creative and make more money.

Music… the rise of the amatuer the death of the professionals

I’ve been looking at some critics picks of the years best albums this year.  Is it just me or is everyone falling in love with an Indie band?  I listened to NPR’s All Songs Considered today (the podcast), I don’t like most of their top choices.  I also looked at Relevants, Rolling Stone, Last FM’s choices.  And I’m not to excited by too many of them.

Some indie stuff is fun to listen to, but I’ll admit I like quality, full sounding music with good instrumentation and vocals.  I don’t want to hear some lo-fi garbled mess produced in someones garage, with a high pitch whinny scratchy, melodramtic tone, backed up with weird organs, bells, chimes, etc…  And I like accoustic music (ie Jon Foreman’s Limbs and branches) but some of the other stuff Bon Iver for example, not appealing.

Granted…  I listen to the music, the lyrics and I can appreciate what they are doing.  I just don’t find it appealing.

This kind of dovetails with a conversation my friend and I had yesterday.  It seems to me that the last several years we’re seeing this trend of the rising amatuer.  Which is awesome, because people are creating things, making content, videos, music etc…  But I’m wondering if this is the beginning of the end for professionals?

If I can get or create free or substantially reduced music, movies, photo’s, equipment at sub-par quality – will that take away and eventually push out the high quality content, media, art, etc…?  Are we currently undergoing a dumbing down of all things we enjoy?

Another argument, will the increase in creativity for content, media, music, art, etc…spawn a love and appreciation for the good, true and beautiful in their respecitve fields.

I feel like there’s some kind of shifting taking place and I’m wondering where this is going to shake out.

I just hope the kind of music I enjoy continues to flourish or even that I can find new music that I enjoy.  I don’t won’t to be the Old Dad or Grandpa that has his favorite “oldies” station locked in on the radio dial.