The Death of The Music Industry

It’s pretty sad to see this although it lines up with something we always knew and have said in this blog often.  The big business record labels are no friend to the artist and no friend to the music fan either.  Their betrayal of the very customer base that made them rich and cocky is evident in their willingness to sue the pants off of anyone who dares to join in with the music industry as it actually works in this century rather than in the dead music industry that they want us to respect.

But their betrayal of their own artists is evident in how they do all they can to screw artists out of royalty funds at every possible turn in the road.  So now you have a band from our past, The Bay City Rollers having to go to war against their own old label, Arista Records because Arista conveniently never paid the band what was owed to them.  This will  be the same label that will cry big tears over P2P file sharing “robbing them” of what they are owed and making poetic emotional statements about how we all are robbing from the musicians who seek to bring us joy by doing business digitally rather than the way they want us to operate. 

Meanwhile the same business is more than happy to rob royalties that these very artists need to feed their families, and continue to be professional musicians to make their corporate coffers bulge.  No wonder people turn a deaf ear to their pleas for us not to use MySpace or P2P file sharing because they want us to “play by the rules.”  Well the rules have changed and the new music industry is just dealing them out.  So pay the rollers what you owe, Arista.  Maybe at least you will be able to sleep better at night.  It won’t get you anywhere in the new music industry as Indies and innovative bands and new distribution methods quickly deal the death blow to the old music industry.  But at least if the big labels treated their older bands with some respect, it would be a dignified way to die.

http://www.reuters.com/article/musicNews/idUSN2039758620070321

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