There are 992 members of the Recording Industry Association of America. They make up the vast majority of the world's music market. They're all in the same industry, the companies within it that is, shouldn't they be competing? They say they're competing...but why is it that practically every CD is like $16? Smells a lot like price fixing to me. These punks deserve whatever P2P does to them. They've been ripping everyone off for years with their monopoly. Vivendi Universal, the ones that own Universal Music Group also own Blizzard Entertainment, Sierra, Universal Studios, even the Sci-fi channel. They couldn't have gotten that much money if they were honestly competing. I know I'm rambling here but I want to make a point - the RIAA is all about their own money. As you've seen through some recent articles - even the artists dont like the RIAA.
All this could easily be stopped, and everyone made happy if the top 5 RIAA members (Vivendi, EMI Group, BMG, and Warner) would just agree to create their own kazaa network. I know many things have come out talking about a paying service that is legal...but as long as kazaa and other networks are around they're not going to help the RIAA live. If the RIAA truly wants to live, they need to simply stop pricing music. Music was made free about 3 years ago, they need to adjust.
The full answer then? How about those 5 companies make a FREE service thats also LEGAL. That would destroy all current P2P networks within a week or less! Where do they get their money then? From advertisers of course. Advertisers pay a lot of money to be able to advertise to 4 million people instantly. I dont mind seeing a couple of ads if it means I can relax and just download music. And no one should give me the crap, "oh but they need more money than that" because they don't. Recording a single song costs around 2 cents..albums, if fairly priced would be around three dollars.
Think about it, a free and legal P2P service offering top quality songs for everyone. The amount of people on P2P would then be HUGE. Its already in the millions, I bet it could get to the tens of millions. The RIAA could also do their own ads on this service. Say you want to download a song, and then next to the link is another link to buy the album if you wish, poster, or other merchandise. The possibilities are endless - the RIAA is just afraid of technology. I've said enough, even though I could write pages more...somone please respond so I can expound more perhaps. Thanks for reading all that.
