Pandora and other Internet Radio could be forced to close their virtual doors
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2008/08/music_biz_still_trying_to_kill.html
It’s brain-dead what the music industry is doing to itself. They’ve already lost touch with the modern world so much that they’ve marginalized their product to the point where people find no value in owning a copy of it. Making the discovery of, and purchase of, new music less-easy is an ingenious way to flush new-found money down the toilet.
The Internet Radio Equality Act needs to be put in place. Terrestrial radio gets their content for free (thanks to the corporate-owned lobbying they have) for the same content Internet radio and satellite have to pay for.
Watch as illegal avenues of music acquisition become more popular again when outlets like Pandora fall. And those illegal outlets don’t have links to iTunes and Amazon for legal purchasing, nor do they intuitively introduce me to new content I would like. I don’t endorse stealing music as an alternative, but when the system’s as broken and tainted with lobbying corporate interests at heart, and not the artists’, consumers will just turn to whatever’s easiest, regardless or any moral dilemma the recording industry attempts to enlighten them with (which also is a waste of money). Wasn’t this clear years ago, when we saw the Superbowl commercial Pepsi put together to promote their iTunes give-away to the tune of Green Day’s cover of “I Fought the Law, and the Law Won”?
I think if this continues, the musicians are the ones who will suffer most from these actions. They’ll be forced to continue to actually do even more live performances to earn that “Performance Royalty” fee they get every time their music is played because the number of outlets for these “performances” will diminish to the point where they’ll have AM/FM only again, and the only way people will pay to hear music (and the only way performers will get paid) is some Clear Channel or Live Nation event house. Or you’ll see a band 10 years old (or less, at the rate of how quickly musicians become “Yesterday’s News”), playing at your local bar for far less than they ever thought, desperate for the same buck that could have been made if Pandora were still around…
