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The Near Future Of The Music Industry Is A Big Honking Mess
from the not-much-of-an-understatement dept
A nice summary of just a few of the various proposals concerning what the music industry should do that were discussed at a conference last week at Harvard. The summary was basically that the music industry wasn't going to be able to really stop the sharing of music - and they probably don't want to. However, no one is really sure what a good business model would be - since every one suggested raises other problems (some of which are worse than the current situation). However, at the end, the writer basically says, maybe we don't need to figure out a single-swoop solution, and just muddle through while the market figures this out. Of course, that's what plenty of folks have been saying for years. The only thing that's really annoying about that plan is that we have to keep watching the existing recording industry strangle itself while destroying everything in its path.
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that simple
Although the "details" of it are entirely unpredictable and convoluted, the most basic reality is just that simple. Things are going to change, and it's going to happen in unexpected ways. And of course it will be messy and confusing as stuff changes. Everything always is. The entire tech industry has been going through it as long as it has existed. The only way to find out what's going to work is to try everything, and learn from the failures as well as the successes. What hasn't happened, however, but obviously should have, is that the music industry leaders in the old system haven't been the ones spearheading all the change.
There's a number of reasons being bounced around as to why that's the case. Maybe they really didn't see it coming, maybe they're afraid to change because they've spent so much time refinining the old system into something that screws over the artists and consumers, yet still sells records. Maybe it's not about money, and it's about control. I don't know.
But everything that's happening now in both legal and technological battles over file sharing is just meant to slow it all down while the big companies play catch up. I don't think anyone except the most purposefully blind executives can actually think that lawsuits or DRM will stop filesharing. It's all just an attempt to stall things until the big companies can get back in the game. How well it will work remains to be seen. Because there are so many techie people pissed off at these tactics, this race of protection vs. cracking and tracking vs. anonymitiy continues to be interesting. I think so at least. And I don't even listen to music all that much.
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an good idea
Magnatune based on Creative Commons
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