MCAndre

thedigitalmusicweblog describes how RIAA will be reducing artist royalty payments. So I’m not allowed to listen to my music on my computers, back it up when the CDs scratch, or enjoy the music without spyware or even kernel kits that take up my resources and steal my personal data. Artists can’t choose how their music is distributed, packaged, or priced. I can buy a full-on CD-mp3 player for the same price as the Matrix: Revolutions soundtrack, and you’re going to slap the producer and consumer in the face by shortchanging the artist? WTF dude!

I don’t understand with today’s technological resources why all artists don’t become their own record industries. I have my own weblog. I can podcast. I can be my own merchant with eBay and PayPal. I have my own website. I can share my media with who ever I want, and I can license each file under Creative Commons, LGPL, BSD, Apple, Apache, PHP, or MCAndre’s Shortchanging ScrewYou License 0.2 freaking Beta. You don’t need a TV tycoon to have a show. I watch YouTube videos more than any TV show. I TRUST online news articles more than any major news channel’s, because online articles have comments, trackbacks, links, ratings. Everyone is a producer and consumer. When Lazy Sunday went viral, NBC whined instead of enjoying the buzz and hosting the original, high quality video.

Web 2.0 is how your business interacts with both consumers and other businesses. The iPod works with Apple Macs and Microsoft PCs. The Zune doesn’t even work with the latest version of Microsoft Windows. It shows that Apples understands the players in the market and cares about each one. Microsoft is still under the old grab, lock, and choke model. I switched to Linux because I was tired of proving that my copy of Windows is genuine every time I installed more RAM or needed the latest security patch for Internet Exploder.

In this global economy, there are so many solutions for any problem I have, if yours sucks, I can probably find a better one *for free*. I’ve yet to purchase a Mac, but some reports claim the dollars and man hours spent maintaining a Windows PC outweigh the price tag difference of a Mac.

If you don’t understand the market, get out of the business. People download songs because downloading is free, fast, and lets you use the music however the heck you want to. They download albums if they like *most* of the songs and they have the moolah. Lower your prices and people will buy more. That’s the first lesson in economics, RIAA.

I don’t have an iPod yet, for two reasons. One, the copy-protection mechanism is stupid. Two, no API is available, so formats such as Ogg Vorbis are nor supported. Linux can be installed to solve both of these problems, but it introduces its own. Anyway, the “mythical” wireless widescreen touchscreen video iPo may debut next week.