Greetings. I'm sure an introduction of myself is due, considering that this is my first post here on my new blog. However, I'm going to skip that formality and save it for another time because I'm in the mood to rant.
I've been reading lately about a legal case between the RIAA and a lady named Jammie Thomas. The RIAA claims that Jammie Thomas used Kazaa to illegally download music off the internet. Normally I don't pay a lot of attention to these kind of things, but a popular story I read on Digg last night caught my eye. Apparently, a Sony-BMG anti-piracy lawyer by the name of Jennifer Pariser believes that ripping just one song to your hard drive from a CD that you purchased legally for backup purposes is illegal. The same article also states that "Pariser noted that music labels make no money on touring, radio, or merchandise, which leaves the company particularly exposed to the negative effects of file-sharing."
Herein lies the problem, and my issue with this whole stance. The fact that record labels make no money on touring, radio, or merch has absolutely nothing to do with file sharing. I'm sorry Columbia Records, Sony BMG, Interscope, and all of the other major labels, all you're there for is to distribute the music and promote your artists, and that's not up for debate here. The issue is that you're supposedly losing money because a girl downloaded a few songs off of the internet. Yet you miraculously still have enough money to take people to court. Except, that's costing you money too.
My two cents: Record companies are no longer necessary. In the digital age, artists don't necessarily need to get signed to a national label to get their music heard across the world. It's my belief that it's a pretty well known fact that most artists don't make any more money from record sales than the record companies make on tours and merchandise. The music fans who want to download their favorite songs or artists shouldn't have to be subjected to lawsuits because record labels are all still using an obsolete business model.
Metallica experienced a severe fan backlash when they sued Napster for the same thing that the record labels are suing individual people for. The problem with that? Metallica didn't need a major label to get noticed - their "No Life 'Til Leather" demo made it from California to New York from people making copies and sharing them with their friends. I'd also be remiss if I didn't point out that the majority of artists who have spoken out against file sharing are artists that have been on top of their respective genres and sell enough records to make money off of it.
So as a counter-point to the RIAA, I'd like to state that file sharing is a good thing, and record labels are unnecessary. A friend once told me that there's nothing that anybody else can do for your band that you can't do for yourself. Smaller bands are learning that, and although they're not making the same money that the top selling bands are, they're still becoming more and more well known through self-promotion. Indeed, children, the day the music dies, it will not be file sharing left standing as the destroyer, but the RIAA and it's affiliated record labels.
And for the record, my name is ThinkSoJoE, and I'm in a band called thinksobrain. Hey look, I can promote a band too!
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