Bad Idea Redux: Revisiting The Music Tax

Too Much Free Time

from the not-this-again dept

I was going to ignore this, but people keep submitting it. A student blogger for ZDnet has decided that he’s solved the RIAA’s problems: just tax every internet connection at $1 per month. This is, of course, unworkable and unwise for a variety of reasons. First, the recording industry would laugh (and laugh and laugh) at the idea that $1 from every internet connection would come close to covering what it (falsely) considers to be “losses” from file sharing. Remember, this is the same recording industry that’s continually trying to raise the price per song downloaded to over $1. But, more importantly, there are so many problems with a music tax idea, that it’s taken up multiple posts here.

However, now that the fall semester is starting, we’re curious about the “tens of thousands” of students that supposedly had signed up for Jim Griffin’s Choruss — which is an effort to put just such a plan into practice, though on a smaller scale, just on university campuses — and, as Griffin constantly reminds everyone — with a variety of experimental business models rather than a single one (despite them all seeming to reflect this sort of “let’s create a big pool of money” concept that makes little sense to us). Last we’d heard from Griffin, back in June, he promised to answer all of the questions folks here had asked him about Choruss. I just emailed with him before posting this, and due to some unforeseen — but perfectly understandable — circumstances, he has not yet had a chance to go through the questions, but promises to do so soon. In the meantime, it would be great to hear from any students arriving on campus this fall, and finding out they’re a Choruss campus. To date, I’ve heard from students at two schools, both (happily) telling me their campuses had turned down Choruss, but I haven’t heard from anyone who’s actually seen the program. But, surely, with tens of thousands of students signed up, at least someone here knows one of them. It would be great to find out from their perspective what’s happening.

In the meantime, though, I take solace in the fact that nearly every comment on the ZDnet post points out why the idea is a bad one. This is an improvement. A few years ago when people talked up the idea of a music tax, many people seemed to like it — but these days, it appears that more and more people are recognizing what a bad and unnecessary idea it is.

Filed Under: music tax
Companies: choruss