A recent editorial from our friends at the RIAA. Basically, the gist here is that their recent actions and aggressive stands against music downloading stems from a genuine concern to maintain jobs and artistic rights, as well as a moral obligation to teach a generation of college students (the primary target of the article) to steal for everything.

First off, where’d the focus on the elderly, the crippled, and the recently deceased go? If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go look up some of the recent news regarding people targeted with legal actions by the RIAA.

A comment to the editorial however, brings up an interesting point. The comment states that it’s not the obligation of the population at large (college students let’s say, for the sake of sticking to the same factors the RIAA is focusing on) to help prop up what’s essentially a failing business model. The major labels represented by the RIAA (who make up a large chunk of the music industry in the US) don’t sell records for a variety of reasons that, to be honest, is entirely their fault. Terrible artists, focuses on immediate returns rather than looking at artists as long-term investments (thus the hit single/one-hit wonder versus good albums), and high prices are not my fault. While the editorial claims that though they only represent a small fraction of the US population, college students make up for it by being the most prone to downloading (made synonymous here with “stealing” an awful lot by the author).

Traditionally, teenagers and young adults have ALWAYS been targeted by the music industry because after World War II, they were the generation who were into those sorts of things. With a disposable income and no immediate worries regarding death by malnutrition or working themselves to shreds in a factory, they were a natural target audience.

Since then we’ve seen a dramatic evolution (some would say corruption) of youth culture as being singled out as the most important economic niche in the US, if not the world. In this case, the editorial argues that college students are a magnified symptom of culture that demands free stuff that demands easy access. Why drive a few blocks to a record store to spend money, it claims, if you can just sit in your dorm room and get it all for free?

My personal beef comes up here. There is almost no blame being pointed at the business model/cultural attachments of youth musical culture (at least in the mainstream). While record industry bigwigs will claim declining record sales (and increases in the sales of artist-related materials that aren’t CD’s like ring tones, keychains, etc), they never stop to think that perhaps a cause of such abandonment of music culture is because quite frankly, music these days sucks. Since the 1980’s at least, the popularity of MTV and the selling power of singles (as opposed to records) has become a priority. The market is overflowing with bad music that’s almost engineered to produce hit singles and top 10 music videos. Tastes change at the drop of a hat, having not only specifically been driven to be like this, but having gone into overdrive.

Most people aren’t like say, obsessive record freaks like you’ll see in punk rock, heavy metal, and jazz. For them, the ownership of a few songs off of a record (even just one) isn’t worth the money to spend on a disc. Having come up and being taught that their generation is meant to take what they want and that music is really a dime a dozen, why should there be any respect for the record industry? The irony here is that it’s more or less a case of major labels having crafted, over the years, a monster that they just can’t control. Their culture-seeking and exploiting landslide, meant to target specific niches, make money, and then move on, has become a rolling avalanche that no one can reap a profit from because it just goes too fast.

Whether or not it’s immoral or not isn’t the point here. That’s a discussion that quite frankly will perhaps never really be resolved because, (and this is the only time I’ll ever give a definite answer on it), it’s too objective. While it’s not really that cool to download whole discographies from a band you claim to be a fan of if you can afford to just get the discs, there really is worse stuff out there. With all the terrible things that the internet gets used for like terrorism or sex crimes, is the downloading of music really that bad?

If the RIAA really wants help with this, the obvious path to follow is to restructure their business models to fully incorporate new technologies and realize that the cat is, metaphorically speaking, out of the bag. Suing the hell out of everyone is not going to get people to stop downloading and buy records.

It just makes you look like a dick.

Don’t blame us (the consumers) for your shortcomings.

Tags: RIAA, downloading, essay, legality //