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Originally Posted by Mattyk72
Digital music has presented a number of new challenges to the recording industry which I believe they have been slow to react to and haven't gone about it in the best ways (remember all the lawsuits thrown at people downloading music?).
Along with the easy access to free and or cheap music, I think we have to consider part of it was a backlash against CD prices that were getting a little out of control before Napster came along. I know I'm guilty of downloading free stuff, but I've since changed my ways. I think $9.99 is a pretty reasonable and fair price to pay for albums. But I recall a few years ago seeing CDs going for $19.99 and above in some of the big music chains and just being totally disgusted by those prices. I feel bad for the artists who have been caught in the middle of the battle between the industry and consumers. But I place most of the blame on the industry.
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I agree. The industry failed to realize a game changing technology was taking hold and that efforts to thwart it would ultimately fail. If they had opened their eyes to digital music early on they could have been in on the ground floor of iTunes and so forth and probably had made a better position for themselves. I think it is pretty reasonable to pay .99 for a song. I do it it now after spending years of just "stealing" the free ones. The industry needed to figure out ho to make money this way and totally blew it when they didn't.
A part of this that is often overlooked is the relationship between the "industry" and artists. Most artists don't make all that much money off album sales (relative) because labels take most of it. They make their money touring and so forth. These artists don't have much motivation to fight piracy because of that. If the labels had realized that their best assets in the fight against piracy were the artists themselves then they could have worked better deals for the artists to motivate them to fight this. Only the mega artists like Metallica have a true stake in album sales nowadays. You know who else is a dick about this stuff. Good ol' Kid Rock. Another fight the establishment type. He doesn't even let his stuff get sold on iTunes.