There was an interesting piece today at jefitoblog about gizmodo declaring March "boycott the RIAA month". The only real protest against the recording industry and their recent strongarm tactics against mixtapers and mp3 bloggers and online radio is to stop buying major label music. And stop stealing major label music. And stop blogging about major label music. Basically pretending that the big I can't remember the last time I purchasing a new CD on a major label, so I'm completely down with not buying any this month, but even more than not-supporting major labels, it should be a month for supporting non-major labels. Buy CDs directly from artists, or from smaller labels, or from cdbaby. Or if you must buy major label music, buy it used from a local independent record store. In other words, kill the music business by supporting music makers.
One of jefito's commenters said that the three major labels (Sony/BMG, Universal, and EMI/Virgin) are responsible for "70% of all music manufactured and sold", which sounds like 100% b.s. Major labels are responsible for such a small portion of the music made in 2007, and an even smaller portion of that 5% of top quality music that people like us buy. Those three companies probably own a large portion of the music copyrights, but that's not the same as 70% of the music.
I have a much more optimistic view on the future of "music blogging" than Mr. Jefito does. I've posted a few tracks here, and don't know if I qualify as a "music blogger" yet, but I try to post things that are either on independent labels or way out of print. Instead of actual Bee Gees' songs, I'd be more likely to post covers of their songs by artists a little lower on the music food chain. I also don't post the "newest and hippest" artist and tracks, mostly because my taste in music is old and unhip and keeps growing older and unhipper each year. I think the RIAA won't stop all music blogging just like they won't stop all song sharing -- they're just after the highest profile ones.
Some people have complained to about esnips, the site I choose to host my tunes, but they have 5GB of storage for free, and they're hosted outside the USA, so they aren't as vulnerable to the arm of the RIAA. And you don't need an account to listen and download. Plus they let you play the songs before you download them, and one listen is enough for most of the songs I post.
1 comment:
As much as I'd like to just stop buying RIAA product, there's still plenty of good music on major labels. Since I'm also old and unhip, a lot of it is by older artists: looking over recent purchases of new CDs, I see John Cale (British EMI), Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane (EMI), Bob Dylan (Sony/BMG), Beck (Universal), and Sparklehorse (EMI). On the other hand, during that same period, I acquired another 26 CDs, of which 15 were used (via Lala.com), 8 were burned via eMusic downloads, 2 were burned from quasi-licit downloads (both out of print CDs), and 3 of which were newly purchased but from non-RIAA, indie labels. And that doesn't count stuff that's in my iTunes playlist but not burned to CD (probably another two-three CDs' worth). Except for the Cale (and that's a 2-disc-with-DVD import - so RIA*A*(merica) has nothing to do with it), I could probably pretty easily have acquired the other major-label items used, or even downloaded them. I'd miss the artwork (Sparklehorse) and the useful liner notes (Monk/Coltrane) if I'd downloaded them, granted...but that's why used CDs exist. So maybe boycotting the purchase of new CDs from RIAA labels is more do-able than I thought, in terms of damage to my ability to hear good music.
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