When Hitler was in the midst of gaining world domination, he underestimated an enemy. Germany's rousing defeat at the hands of Russia during the winter of 1942-43 was the beginning of the end of the Nazi regime.
The RIAA, a fitting comparison to the fuehrer, has made major assaults on its home territory by suing everyone from prepubescent children to grandmothers who don't know how to power on computers. However, the corporate entity's future fate is sealed by going after the same enemy that whupped the Germans: Russia.
They pressured the Russian government via bribes or whatever to shut down allofmp3.com. No problem, now there are a handful of Russian sites offering the same deal, music for about a dime a song. And in case the RIAA should manage to buy enough Stoli to get them shut down, there are plenty more where they came from.
The end result is slow death for an entity that exists solely to make money off of the talent of others by charging exorbitant middleman fees. I don't know about you, but I'm certainly not shedding any tears.
What did these clueless morons do to get in this mess, anyhow?
Simple. They ignored technology, and the benefits thereof. They also ignored what their customers wanted. It doesn't matter how big you are, or how many politicians you have in your pocket, thumbing your nose at paying customers will put you out of business.
The RIAA has stubbornly stuck by their CD package for nearly 25 years. And while the price of media and digital recording technology has fallen to the point that it's practically free, record companies still try to sell CD's at the same price that they cost when introduced.
I have a sub-$100 car stereo that plays mp3's from CD's, USB drives, or camera flash drives. I can put over 30 hours of music on one drive if I wish. Standard CD's give you a bit over an hour of music, then have to be changed for more. Do you think I want to mess with the only musical format that I can buy in a store?
Another problem: consumers don't want to pay a dollar for a song.
I used to get TWO songs on a vinyl 45 for that price.
Ten cents a song is an acceptable price, and double that wouldn't chase me away. There should be plenty of room for everyone to make a nice profit with a twenty-cent song. Even middlemen.
Thirdly, DRM is universally despised by all but its corporate proponents. Windows Vista has enough built in to choke a fast dual-core processor. It's there for the benefit of the RIAA and their nearly-as-clueless cohorts, the MPAA. It benefits Joe Consumer not a whit. And it keeps fast hardware from translating into a fast operating system.
Imagine if the RIAA were to extend an olive branch to Russian music businesses. They already have the infrastructure for fast, efficient distribution of files. They also have a good reputation among consumers. While they gouge fat corporate middlemen, they take good care of folks who put $20.00 at a time on their credit cards and have no issues whatsoever with security, dishonesty, or other shenanigans. The Russians couldn't care less about US copyright law, but they know that if a customer gets ripped off making a credit card purchase, it's curtains for them. After all, their competition isn't Napster, iTunes, or Yahoo. It's free file sharing.
But say the RIAA was to approach them with hat in hand, and cut a deal where they sell songs for, say, twenty cents in exchange for no more hassles. The RIAA gets ten cents a song to do with as they wish out of the deal.
Here's where it gets better: they put the word out to all of the "legal" music sites that the price of RIAA and record company fees has just dropped. Odds are that if the middlemen reduce their cut to ten cents per, iTunes and the rest could probably meet that twenty cent mark. Oh, and also, DRM insanity is no longer required.
The end result would be Russian music sales existing successfully alongside equally successful more mainstream offerings, everyone making money (albeit not as much for the fatcats as in the pre-mp3 days). Consumers would get what they want: music that is DRM-free and of digital quality. Everyone wins, even the RIAA.
Of course, the price scale could be adjusted according to quality. If a consumer insisted on CD-quality, it would cost a premium.
But a standard mp3, say about 160 kbps, would be a twenty-cent item.
There's your business plan, RIAA. Either accept it, or die. If you choose to die, save some money to hire pallbearers.
