The RIAA: Record Company Savior or Jackbooted Thugs?

OR THOSE OF YOU who wonder why brand new CD's cost sooo much, this column addresses a couple of the reasons why: Illegal downloading over the Web and the incredible stupidity of the music industry. If ever there were a chance for all sides in this music maze to come out winners, now is it. Unfortunately, it ain't gonna happen!!! Let me explain...

As long as I can remember, the music industry has always screamed that they were losing huge sums of money because of things like "home taping" and now free downloading of music from the Internet. On the surface, it appears to have some merit. Somebody burns a copy of the new Jane's Addiction disc for two of their friends and, since they haven't trotted down to Tower Records to plop down $18.99 for their own copy, the industry has "lost" $37.98 in revenues. Two hundred people go onto a filesharing website and download songs from an upcoming release by the White Stripes and don't go out to buy the CD when it is released, costing the labels $3798.00 in monies in the industry's view. These are the kind of figures the industry's lobbying arm, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), hurls at Congress in order to get bills passed to "protect" them from this loss.

However, this kind of addition is a lot like the police making a drug bust, when they trumpet on the front page the next day that they confiscated Mary Jane with a "street value" of XXXX dollars. Sure, if you sold the reefer in tablespoons at five dollars a pop, you bet you took a bazillion dollars of stuff off the street. But not every single copy of a CD is sold at the full list price: In fact, most retailers drop the price of new discs so they can get people in the store and maybe sell them something else. If the actual sales figures are accurately recorded, the "billions" the record industry is purportedly losing is a smaller, though still significant, figure.

I'm not saying that downloading music is not a contributing factor to the thirty percent decline in sales over the last three years. There are so many contributing factors, that to list and discuss them here would probably result in my divorce and appearance in court on child neglect charges. But the industry is shooting itself in the foot right now, and the RIAA is not only holding the gun, it is repeatedly pulling the trigger.

How is it doing this? Let's look at a couple of things. Its recent lawsuit flurry, not against the filesharing companies but individuals who have downloaded material, is flawed. First person who gets nailed? A twelve-year-old girl downloading Mariah Carey tracks! Yeah, they really got an Al Capone there! Uh, Earth to RIAA: Mariah hasn't been selling squat lately, anyway! This little gal will probably be a Mariah fan later on and when she does have an income will probably spend it on "Mariah Carey: Remixes Part 12" that the industry will no doubt release (Remember, the credo of the music industry is: sell the same thing over and over, just change the packaging) long after Ms. Carey becomes a Jeopardy question. Oh, and didn't record label schmos, after her movie and CD for "GLITTER" flopped, pay her MILLIONS just to get her off their bus? And then another company gave her MORE MILLIONS to sign up with them and release another disc that wasn't exactly a hit, either? Yet somehow a twelve-year-old is killing the industry? They're spending the GNP of France to chase down the small fries, but give the Mariahs of the world enough scratch so they can feed their dogs caviar? The mind boggles at this kind of asinine reasoning.

Or how about the RIAA lobbying Congress to pass legislation that would make recordings made by say, the Rolling Stones not only the property of the record company, but that the work involved in producing those recordings (writing, rehearsing, recording, mixing, etc.) would be considered "casual labor"!!! You know, like somebody mowing your grass or hauling off that old refrigerator or babysitting your kids so you and the wife can go see "A Mighty Wind" and have the show canceled so the theater could fill up a room with "Freddy vs. Jason" viewers! (oops... sorry about that personal rant, I guess I should get over that...) If the industry spent half their time and resources on fixing the problem instead of crying "Wolf" over and over, everybody could make themselves sick splitting up the pie...

The problem as I see it is to get music into as many hands as possible at a reasonable cost to everyone, from the CD manufacturing plants to the bass player in the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Or maybe the guitar player, since they are one of those legions of new groups that don't have a bass player. (Again with the no-bass-player schtick ? Talk about your one-track-minds, I guess I got one...) How to get this done? First, take ALL, and I do mean ALL, of the songs that a label has in its possession and make them available inside a service that costs fifty cents per song. Now you have a product that everyone can use: not just the 18-34 demographic on which you spent $8 million on market research, but Billy Joe Bob in Alabama and Tiffany the stripper in NYC. Personally, I would sign up for a service today that would allow me to go in and get the three albums by 70's Texas hard-rockers Nitzinger, or that second album of Yes-clones Flash into my home now!!! The companies sit on this stuff and only pick what they "think" will sell. Why not give the human race a chance to decide what they want? Sure, the artists I mentioned are not going to sell millions of copies, but selling 300 is better that ZERO! Ok, now you've done what I've suggested. But all these artists are now crying for their money because they think they're entitled to it. YES THEY ARE! So set up an account and if Nitzinger sells enough to help pay the light bill, crack open your corporate wallet with a crow bar and give them a taste!

Since I started writing this column it has come to my attention that even the Republicans are taking valuable time out from renaming French fries to try to pass stuff to stop the RIAA junta. The Republicans, for crying out loud!!! If that doesn't tell you that this fish stinks, nothing will.

So how can I, one lonely music consumer, make a difference, you say? Well, here are a couple of suggestions:

1. Do not sign up for any of these pay-to-download services until they allow you access to EVERYTHING that they have, no matter how obscure or uncommercial. If nobody is buying into yet another dropperful of music from the ocean that the company possesses, they will be forced to give in. Imagine how painful it will be, Giant Record Company, making money not only off those who want to download Mariah's dreck but someone who wants that third Blue Cheer album. (It's called New and Improved if anybody cares: got a couple of cool tunes on it, but overall a C minus...)

2. Be a smart CD shopper. One example is a store that rhymes with Nest Eye (can't really advertise for someone this early in my embryonic writing career). It usually has the hot new titles at $9.99 the day they are released. Sure, you gotta get up before 3PM and trudge on down to that horrible segment of our current American life, the MALL to get the goods, but you are making your voice heard loud and clear with your money. And MONEY is what these folks understand. Another place to look for bargains is at your local used CD shops, particularly in a town where they get CDs for free from the record companies to review. These hipper-than-thou folk are very impoverished (the music game may look glamorous, but I personally know many musicians who get up the next day from playing a packed-to-the-rafters gig and go to work cleaning houses) and sell their discs so they can pay the rent. I once got the Led Zeppelin Complete Studio box set for $60.00 (now selling for $129.00) because said free music person dumped it at his local. This type of purchase will fuel a deserving small CD store as opposed to a past-their-prime chain store, which crawls along offering nothing more that the fact that it is open 365 days a year. Thank God for that! I always need to run down on Thanksgiving Day morning to pick up the latest from Dave "what-is-a-melody-and-why-can't-I-write-one" Matthews so my guests won't complain if I play three hours of Humble Pie live bootlegs while I'm burning the turkey...

Well, that's about all the rant I have right now on this subject. My next column will be all about music and not all the sidebars that distract from just throwing on "Born Under A Bad Sign" by Albert King and CRANKING IT! I been down since I began to crawl...

G2 the G

<Previous installment - Next installment>