SXSW '08

"There are no record deals. The record industry has become non-existant." Change brings... well, change. "The next level will be free music financed by ad revenues." The quotes are from a record company rep I am going to keep anonymous. But it drives home a problem with content delivery that has existed for many years now. The RIAA initially recoiled in fear at the advent of MP3 and other digital content and took a very passive course of action hoping to wait and see if somebody else could come up with a solution they could jump on the band-wagon of. It has been said that 1 out of 10 people pay for the music they listen to. I don't know if that statistic is true or not but it sounds like that can't favor artists.

Digital Rights Management is a huge failure. Digital media is not as tangible; like a hard copy of a CD that you can put on your shelf and use whenever you want. It is frustrating "purchasing" music online and not being able to keep it. Personally, I purchased a bunch of albums using Napster a ways back. A few operating system crashes and forced upgrades later and I didn't "own" my songs any more. I still have the songs on a backup but Windows Media Player won't let me play them. I can say with certainty- that model doesn't work for me.

On the flip side... once upon a time there was not record industry and there were still professionals musicians. The difference was they did not have the Internet to promote their careers. With the current cost of concert tickets somebody is making money somehow.

Back to the issue at hand... new delivery systems for music media. As an outsider, the RIAA looks like a bunch of shoe-makers trying to build Sky-Net. The good news is they are successfully retarding the arrival of the Singularity. Live shows, video games, and the film industry are solid vehicles for artists to continue getting paid. Alternate delivery models of music are popping up all over the Internet. I would love to hear other peoples ideas that would benefit music listeners and artists.