Well, this story on AP has me angry all over again. I guess I’ll go over my rant again. Why is the RIAA so against sharing music on the internet? Is it possibly because they are using an outdated marketing model? Or is it simply because they are a bunch of greedy bastards and want ALL the money?
Let’s examine some facts:
- You can record songs off the radio to a medium of your choice with an inexpensive boom box.
- You can record your purchased CDs, LPs (I know, I date myself here) or cassettes to the medium of your choice.
- You can record songs from X-radio to the medium of your choice.
- You can record the audio from TV to the medium of your choice.
- You can record the audio from digital cable TV to the medium of your choice.
Now, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) comes along and says all of this is illegal along with “ripping” songs from CDs and converting them to MP3 format to play on your computer. (For those of you who don’t know, “ripping” is the process of copying a CD track from the CD to your computer while converting it to a different format that doesn’t take up as much space on your hard drive. A 4 minute song on a CD takes up about 40-50 megs, but as an MP3 takes up 3-4 megs). Furthermore they point to the decline in sales during the last two years as the only justification that this so-called “file-swapping” is killing their business.
Let me make this clear: The RIAA is calling me a theif for converting songs I have on MY purchased CDs into MP3 format to play on MY computer. They say that I am a theif because they aren’t making as much money as they thought they would in the last two years, which by-the-way have been in a declining economy where EVERYTHING is experiencing a decline in sales.
Now I remember a time in the not-so-distant past (early/mid 1990’s) where radio stations in this area of the midwest proudly advertised that they would play an entire CD from the first to the last track without commercial or DJ interruption. These stations normally did this in the wee hours of the morning on the weekend, starting around 2am or so. Now, I’m not completely stupid (although KC might beg to differ here!) but the impression I got is that if you stayed up and got your cassette (or other medium of your choice) ready you could have a CD recorded to tape to play as often as you’d like. These were not the “moldy oldies” but CDs that were released within the previous two or three months.
Tell me true, is this not the same? I get the music I want for the cost of the blank medium. The only difference is the range of the broadcast. The internet broadcast is worldwide; the radio broadcast is fairly local, usually within about 60 miles or so for clear reception.
On another track of thought, I remember when CDs were first available in the mid/late 1980’s. The cost of a CD was the exhorbitantly high at $17-$18. However, a benevolent RIAA told us that when the cost of the medium was reduced, so would the cost of a CD. The reason the cost was $17-$18 was because the technology was new and the medium was fairly expensive. No one was purchasing a 100 pack of blank CDs. Heck, a 10 pack cost just under $80. Now you can buy the medium in bulk for less than 15¢ each. Why aren’t we seeing a reduction in the sale price, with a reduction in the cost of production? One word: Greed. The artists are not seeing the fruits of the high price of CDs, so where does the money go?
