You'll Watch Eurovision And You'll Like It
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry—the other hemisphere's answer to the RIAA—has launched around 2,000 new lawsuits against European file-sharers. Among their rationales for the new blitz: "Digital music sales soared in 2005, but not enough to make up for a continuing decline in physical formats like CDs, sending total sales down 3 percent." That's not bad compared to last year's 7.2% decline in the US, but Europe's just learning the ropes of this fan-suing jazz.
Jesse Walker originally took on the anti-filesharing hysteria in 2000.
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Along those lines, check this shit out.
“The record labels agreed to Apple’s one-price-fits-all model three years ago. However, when Apple’s license expires, the labels are expected to push for higher prices, especially for new releases.”
Hey, just when something starts to catch on…raise the prices and drive people back to illegal downloading. Now that’s a good business model! I’ll tell you right now, personally, if I had to pay $1.69 for a single song, there wouldn’t even be any debate in my mind. Not. Gonna. Happen.
“An emboldened Bronfman even suggested that Apple should give the labels a cut of iPod sales.”
That’s rich. How about a cut of all the CD player sales, too? Fuckin crooks. Gotta make that yacht payment, I know…
Any chance they might try producing material worth the money?
If I could pay $1 for a song, and actually port it to my MP3 players, I’d be happy. But it only works on my iPod.
I could buy the CD and rip it to my computer, and then burn it for my car’s old fashioned unit, but now the RIAA claims this is illegal.
I can’t imagine why I’d be tempted to download illegally.
Can’t we all just be thankful that the music industry lets us listen to music at all. Without them there would be no music. I mean come on, who would even make music if it wasn’t for the music industry and a high profit margin? If we keep trying to depress the price of music, musicians will just stop producing music and move on to some other form of more profitable art.
I for one will be happy to pay whatever the Big 4 demand for the privelage of being able to listen to music, even it if they get to dictate how and when and where and how often I get to listen to it.
I can see wanting to minimize your losses to file sharing, but Europe? Come on, guys, how many fans do you have left? I suggest you take what you got from The Final Countdown and move on.