Industry Friendly Yer Butt

Record companies plan to use Bezos to destroy Apple and consumer rights.

Get It Try It

The International Herald Tribune are running a major piece entitled 'Amazon benefits from music industry's anger at Apple'.

'At the Super Bowl next month the music industry will be switching teams - from Apple to Amazon.com.'

Four years ago Apple teamed with Pepsi for a Super Bowl, using Green Day's cover of 'I Fought the Law'. Four years ago iTunes was just starting up. Today it's dominant.

'Record executives now complain that Steven Jobs, Apple's chief executive, wields too much clout in setting prices and other terms', write the IHT.

Too much clout? Oh really. Let's look at the facts.

Four years ago these impressively untalented excuses for corporate leaders were concentrating on harassing little old ladies and single mothers in housing projects. Four years ago they were trying to get their own abortive subscription services to work. Four years ago they were systematically rebuffing Steve Jobs and his cohorts who tried to convince them they had their collective head up their proverbial backside. Four years ago the music industry was a mess.

The act of diplomacy in getting these royally inhuman people to agree to the iTunes idea was a major achievement, perhaps more so than the technology created to distribute the music. And suddenly these hapless Geckos are making money instead of losing it. And you'd think they'd be the least grateful. But no. Almost immediately they tried to put the clamps down, to overtake control. And everyone knows what will happen if they do.

'At issue now is whether the labels can help popularise a more industry friendly service and accelerate the pace of digital sales.'

Industry friendly? Read: consumer hostile. These are the people who continue to harass the little old ladies and single mothers. They employ the equivalent of mercenaries to go out and literally ruin people's lives to scare off the rest. All the while iTunes continues to rake in the cash for them.

There's a common concept known as 'redeeming social characteristics'; these people have none of that. None. It's no wonder that movements such as Rickard Falkvinge's Pirate Party gain traction. If these people had their way you wouldn't be able to lend your CDs to a friend; you'd only be allowed to listen to them a limited number of times; you'd probably be prohibited from playing them at your place of work or for friends at a party; anywhere they can make more money sucking at the legacies left to them by their more consumer friendly predecessors they will do so. And as Rickard Falkvinge said: they'll always find new markets, new ways of making money. Or at least they should. The trouble with the current execs in these companies is they have no talent: they know only how to intimidate and usurp.

If Jeff Bezos gets a foothold in the music business then good for him. That's the way these things work. The good guy who paves the way for others often gets a knife in the back. But don't for one second be fooled.

Not everything Apple do is for the best of the consumer. But what they're doing in the music business is a lot better than what an 'industry friendly service' would do. Regardless of whether Steve Jobs was pushed into declaring support for DMR-free media or whether he really believes in it he at least said it. Which of the record companies have done the same? Aside from EMI - no one. Not a one.

The staff at Rixstep include semiprofessional musicians; coincidentally - and in no way a matter of cause and effect - none have ever used the iTunes download service. But that doesn't mean this isn't an important issue for them. Download consumers must grasp they're far better off with Apple and iTunes than with the proposed 'industry friendly service' alternative.

Don't be the fool. Don't be part of the problem. Be part of the solution. Always buy your media from the sources that give you the most freedom. In that way perhaps the execs at the record companies will catch on. And in a few years they might retire. And hopefully be replaced by a more humane, less 'industry friendly', and more 'consumer friendly' generation.

The RIAA's legal crusade against their customers is a classic example of an old media company clinging to a business model that has collapsed.
 - Marc Fisher Washington Post

See Also
IHT: Amazon benefits from music industry's anger at Apple