The problem with the music industry.

The problem with the music industry today is that everyone but the artists get paid. They're fighting tooth and nail to keep it this way. You get distribution, production, markup, tax etc etc etc. That $20 you're paying for a disc doesn't go to the artist, maybe $1 of it if they're lucky.

Enter music "pirating". Sure it's pirating. Sure it's duplicating. But we've been doing this ever since our portable devices could record. In fact, most tape decks had two decks, one for recording other people's music. Blanks were plentiful. So why is it that the music industry is suddenly threatened by software?

It's not. It can track who's making the dubs now. It used to be that only the high profile money makers could be tracked. Bootleggers so to speak. So why isn't it stopping now that it can be tracked? It's become as prolific as riding a bicycle. Everyone knows someone who has downloaded music, or has someone that can do it for them. The record industry makes a few token law suits stick, shuts down a service here or there, but in it's place four more pop up. 

For every dollar fined to a "music pirate" there are 50,000 more downloads going on. People stop buying music when they get wind of this "free music service" shamelessly promoted in the news. Only now that they know they can get caught they install peer guardian or get on a DHT tracker. The people want to download. Music is about as important to human welfare as food and water.

So what about paying for music? $1 a track? $10 an album? That's a good deal right? Not when you can get it for free with little to no fear of repercussion. Album artwork? Well... it's not really all that great most of the time, and half the time it can be downloaded with the album. I'd rather spend $240 on an original piece of artwork locally that I can display on my wall instead of sticking it in a CD case. So what about services that let you stream music for a fee? Well lets get into that.

Last.fm will charge you $5 a month for unlimited streaming music. The only problem with this is that you have to be connected to the internet to access the service. You can't save your favorites or modify the music in any way, you have no access to "unreleased tracks" or non-label artists, and if the site goes down you don't have music. Those are the downsides. The upside is that you have access to an incredible music library with a rating system and community aspect, also the artists you listen to get royalties from your plays.

Royalties paid directly to the artist with only one middle man, no distribution fees. Hmm. And they don't just get paid for the first CD that is purchased then sold to a pawn shop then stolen then given to your cousin. They get paid for every play by how popular their song is. Radio stations don't get to decide what the public listens to in this format.

Now bear with me on this one, we pay a license fee to fish, hunt and drive. This is to compensate for the services provided to monitor the usage of these resources. Music isn't a local resource though, it's global. One might even say universal. Why not a "music hunting" license? Say $50/yr lets you download whatever you like. If you're caught downloading without a license you forfeit any works that are not your own and pay a one-time $500 fine. All of this would go into funds that pay the artists directly. 

That's affordable, reasonable and enforceable. And the "record companies" can still make "records". However now music labels will become just that. Music.

Does the RIAA really think they're going to collect 23 million from a person downloading music? That person would have to clear 500,000/year to pay that amount. Silly.