RIAA is dead


...they just don't know it yet.

...they just don't know it yet.

I've been thinking about this for a while. I've mentioned this idea before, but it's a good one, and I have new evidence.

First, there's the phenomenon of podcasting, which I've blogged about before here. One of the issues that podcasters who want to play music face is the legality of playing commercially available music. Recently, Adam Curry, one of the leading lights of podcasting, mentioned a meeting with one of the Big Labels (I think it was Warner) where he asked them to consider a new type of license to play commercial music, a podcasting license. He thinks that podcasters would be willing to pay $5 to, say, iTunes Music Store to have a license that allows them to play the tune on a podcast. The Warner dinosaurs wouldn't go for it. Even though it's 5 times what they make on a single sale, they are worried about the song then residing free of DRM on thousands of computers of the podcast's listeners.Even if the restrictions include voiceovers on the song while it's playing (making it less valuable for ripping as a separate track) Warner wouldn't budge. Curry doesn't mention the attitude of other major labels, since perhaps he's still trying to talk to them, but it's certainly possible that they will take the same attitude.

There is a huge irony here: one of the unspoken but very clear goals of the RIAA is to preserve their monopoly (or oligopoly) on hit music. They have had a chokehold on the means of creation and distribution of popular (and not so popular) music. The barriers to entry for a new player in this traditional market are high. Musicians are essentially slave labor to the labels. A few make it big, but most starve and by many accounts, are routinely cheated by the labels they sign with. Traditional radio plays into this, with a choke hold on the means of popularizing new music.

Podcasting changes all of this. First, it gives a way to do an end run around the Clearchannels of the world, and therefore gives a voice to anyone who desires to speak. It lowers the barriers to entry into the broadcasting world, especially now that some radio stations are packaging and playing podcasts. Secondly, it provides musicians who are not signed with the labels with a way to become known, completely independently of the labels. And I think this is the first hint that the RIAA will not ultimately survive. When most musicians find that they can make a decent living by ignoring the labels and distributing their music directly, the role of the labels will become much less significant.

It's too early to tell for sure, but I think it's possible that podcasting is the wave of the future. Even more than blogging. All it would take is for Apple to build a podcatching client into iTunes, thereby validating the trend, and 1) Traditional radio is dead; 2) RIAA is dying. Already, the iTunes Music Store provides smaller poorer labels and even independent musicians with lowered barriers to publication; podcatching will drive another nail into the coffin.

And there's nothing ultimately that the RIAA can do about it. See Grove's Law.

Posted: Wed - May 18, 2005 at 03:46 PM        

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