Die Bitches

According to Mike Collett-White, Eminem's new album could "save" the music industry. This is nothing more than one more in a tired, long string of articles from the media lamenting the decline of the music industry while desperately looking for ways to save it. It has all the cliches, how "piracy" is responsible for the declining music sales

Official figures for the key U.S. market as it approaches mid-year
show how tough conditions are for music companies and acts who blame
illegal file sharing for their woes.

So dvd sales, video game sales, a sour economy and people just not
liking "product" released by the labels of course have NOTHING to do with declining sales. I'm sure people getting pissed off about their friends and relatives sued by the RIAA had nothing to do with that either; it's all the "pirates" fault.

Although relatively small in terms of a label's revenues, digital
streaming, downloading, online subscriptions and advertising are seen
as key to the industry's future.

"The revenue is still small, but at least it's revenue," said one
major label executive. "Don't forget, some 95 percent of the digital
market is illegal. If we can grow that five percent significantly,
we've got a future."

Just HOW do they know 95% of the digital market is illegal? Did they
take a poll? I can see it now: "Sir this is the RIAA, we are
conducting a poll to see how much of peoples digital content is
illegal, so tell us how much music did you steal?" Or, could it be,
just like LOT of music industry numbers, they pulled it out of their
ass. We will never know, because no one in the mainstream media ever
challenges music industry figures.

Amazingly enough, one thing the article didn't do which so many others
have is to call for draconian copyright measures. Thank you for small
favors, it saved me from throwing up.

I'll repeat this as often is necessary, it is a GOOD thing if the music industry dies, it seems like all they ever do is push for legislation to strangle innovation(look up "diamond rio", "vcr is the Boston strangler" etc if you don't believe me) and for more restrictive copyright laws.(Google ACTA, DMCA)

Originally posted on 21 Jun 2010 by Monkey