Big Fork
Like a snake eating its tail, the Mega Music Industry has launched its four-pronged strategy to destroy itself:

  • destroy the goodwill of music fans by entrapping the children, the poor and the technically illiterate then suing them;
  • continue to release music that no one would be caught dead sharing;
  • turn their back on profitable, legal sales by backing out of deals with legal music sales entities, like Apple’s iTunes music store;
  • finally, gut fair-use by pursuing those true thieves–their own customers–who burn mix CDs or rip their own music for their iPods.

In the circle of life the big labels are headed back to dust.

Destroy the goodwill of music fans
The music industry has always been populated with greedy bastards. It’s a fairly common story to hear of the band signing a deal with a big record label and then being forced into using that label’s own producers, studios, and marketers, only to have their earnings from music sales eaten up by exorbitant charges: charges that were paid right back to the label itself.

Now, in the name of the artists, the RIAA, with evidence gained from its hacker team, is suing individuals under the weakest rationales. The RIAA is now celebrating its first win in the courts. This is clearly going to bring tons of goodwill to the industry and its artists. Brilliant.

Release Unsharable Music
Given that the radio industry has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the music industry, the labels can continue to release trash music with an extremely short half-life and be assured that it will get tons of airplay. This isn’t music people want to buy. It’s like a pop version of Muzak. This music will embarrass any potential file sharer. If you become the butt of jokes because you’re sharing the latest Britney Spears album, you’ll be a lot less likely to share music. Again, brilliant.

Turn its back on iTunes
While the music labels whined about Napster and pursued pathetic attempts to market digital music via repressive DRM and subscriptions, Steve Jobs and Apple single-handedly saved the retail music industry by opening the iTunes Store and giving the public a reasonable way to purchase music online. For that, many labels in the music industry are now crying foul and threatening not to renew their deals with Apple or going month-to-month on their deals.

I think they’re right. They own the music. And if they don’t want to sell any, they should back out of those deals. This will be a very effective prong of their strategy.

Start suing their own customers
In the most depraved prong of their strategy, the labels now appear poised to begin criminalizing the fair use of music. Always bitter that the software industry had a better model for selling their product than they did (licensing per device), the music industry is now hinting that they will begin pursuing their own customers for ripping music onto an iPod or burning it on a CD. By doing this, the industry reduce even further the value of its music to its customers. This is likely the final nail in the coffin for Big Music.

With this four-pronged strategy, I believe Big Music has sealed their fate.

I’m not a serial music sharer, just a long-time customer of Big Music. I purchased and own thousands of CDs. I feel like I did my part to support good music being released by the big labels. At this point, though, I will never purchase another track from the big labels. I’ll buy from Radiohead. I’ll buy from independent artists on iTunes. And I’ll continue to buy from Beatport. Those folks get it. The “Industry” doesn’t.

[photo by Erica Marshall]