Our Tone-Deaf Music Industry
Here's an update on the music industry's ongoing war with reality. Seems the big labels just cannot let go of the idea of charging people $2 a song or $18 for an album. Forget the whole Crazy Eddie volume-volume-volume thing, the labels have their price point and are sticking to it.
Particularly amusing is the notion that DVD-Audio and SACD discs, which are not exactly flying off store shelves despite being a nice advance from plain CDs, should spin off separate and additional mechanical royalty streams to labels. Yeah, price them even higher, that'll make 'em move.
Meanwhile, Microsoft pushes ahead with a digital rights management scheme that'll let you rent content for your portable devices. We'll see about that one, but Disney is on it like Minnie on Mickey.
Keep it up guys and sooner or later everyone is gonna realize it is cheaper and probably easier to just make their own damn music.