Salon has a story today featuring the testimony of the 1960's musician, Joseph Byrd, here. Now, I really would like to know when this is gonna get resolved? Is there anyone on the planet that thinks the recording industry is doing anything in anyone's best interest but their own? The fact is, as Byrd points out, that few artists make money from record sales. The recording industry keeps it all for themselves.
I would like to see artists adopt a licensing scheme like that of the Open Source community. Since most artists aren't making much money from music sales anyway, let's get rid of the middlemen and go straight to the people. KaZaa and Gnutella are the new distribution channels and they're free! In the old paradigm, the middleman was necessary, because he controlled the distribution channels. It costs a lot of money to distribute records, 8-tracks, cassettes or CD's. It doesn't cost anything to distribute MP3's through P2P networks.
The record company as a distribution vehicle is becoming an obsolete concept. The record companies are trying to hold on to that cash cow for obvious reasons, but the fact is, it's time for them to evolve. That said, loss of CD distribution shouldn't mean the end of the recording industry. Records still need to be made, producers still need to produce. Plus, there are many other services to ride on top of music distribution. But the fact is, distribution technologies have already moved on and the consumers are going to move on with or without the recording industry.
As long as the recording industry continues to alienate everyone as they are doing now, I think people will become more and more motivated to try and cut the recording industry out. After all, the recording industry neither creates the music, nor consumes the music. Yet, they are trying to control to whole enchilada.
5:41:03 PM 
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