In reply to The New York Times Forum, 09.18.2003

to the young woman who was quoted as having said something like, "it's not as if I'm selling the songs..."

you're not buying them, either!

and on the other hand, i can not believe how the Luddites at the RIAA can face the public with a straight face and announce, in effect, that they're going to sue the buyers of automobiles in order to finance the retirement funds of buggy-whip manufacturers!

they are clinging to an old business model and trying, through legal and legislative routes, to maintain it in the face of new technology which they should be embracing, not fighting.

several years ago, i figured that a single song was worth about one dollar to the listener, to have and to burn to their personal cd to put in their portable or car player or whatever they wanted to do.

thanks, Apple, for coming to the same conclusion. i'm sorry i didn't patent or copyright the concept back then..... :(

but the RIAA is sounding just like the movie industry, when it tried to fight the early use of home VCRs. wake up and smell the latte', guys! if you were to embrace the new technology, you'd make lots more money than you ever will by suing teenagers for a few thousand times their yearly allowance.

they're making a point, all right, but not the one they think they're making. morons on display.

sell the songs on the internet. a dollar a cut.

then i won't have to pay $13 for a CD to get the three or four songs i really wanted, and there will be direct, free-market feedback to the singers, writers and other performers that we, the buying public, are not willing to subsidize the lousy songs when we only want to buy the good ones.

the result will be a weeding out of lousy performers and performances, and an overall improvement in quality.

so, in other words, RIAA is suing teenagers in order to keep the quality of the music they sell LOW.

THAT's something for RIAA to be proud of, i'm sure.

but i wouldn't be.

+af

Cupertino, CA

Universal to Cut Prices of Its CD's, By AMY HARMON, New York Times, 09.04.2003

This following comment in the article,

"But some analysts said the price cut signaled a long-awaited recognition that the music industry needed to adjust its business model to fit a world where music can be sold or copied song by song. That might mean the industry needs to sell more music for less to make the same amount of money."

brought me a new idea: what the music industry is missing is that the songs themselves need to be priced to market. A popular good new song might be sold for $1.50 to $2.00 for a few weeks or a month, but when it slips down the charts, its "market value," hence selling price, should be racheted down, too. Mediocre songs by mediocre writers and singers might go for 25 cents, while popular classics might average around a dollar a cut.

Of course, and this is only my personal opinion, companies selling rap music with lyrics could offer to pay me to buy their "goods"... Nah, no they couldn't.... not for any price they'd be willing to pay me....

Dear RIAA: You are such a bunch of morons.

• Why the heck do you think Napster and all of the other file-sharing companies came into being!?
• Why do you think so many people hooked up and subscribed to them?
• Why do you think they were so popular?
• Why can't you understand that you're fighting a losing battle?
• Why can't you see how you've failed, and your lawsuits are proof?

"I guess people didn't take it seriously, but we really are very serious about this," said Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America. "We want the message to get across to parents that what their kids are doing is illegal. We are going to file lawsuits.""

Let me break it to you gently:

You've been running a monopoly, charging unrealistically high prices for unrealistically low quality material.

I stopped buying CDs years ago when the prices went above $10 a disk.

I saw no sense in buying five or ten mediocre songs in order to get the one or two or three which I really wanted to be able to listen to whenever I wanted to.

Being able to stuff a disk with mediocre material and charge for ten or fifteen songs, when there were really only one or two good songs on the disk was also a disservice and an insult to the artists and performers: a subsidy of their poor work by their good work. Their good songs never got to stand on their own. Their bad songs never got to have the light of day shone on them so that they could wither on the vine and provide feedback to the authors and performers that some of their material was truly awful.

So, with Napster and its ilk, people could buy, sell and trade the songs they really liked.

Rather than take advantage of this particularly capitalistic "market-clearing pricing" and "market information feedback" tool, you did everything in your power to shut it down.

Now, you're throwing your lawyers at women and children, in order to intimidate them into submission to your subsidized failed plan.

Sure, your lawyers may win, but guess what? You're the losers. Monopolists always make less money than if they compete in a free market.

They also demonstrate to the world, through their actions, how weak, frightened, and spineless they are, at heart.

Meow!