BDA7DD
6th January 2002, 16:48
The RIAA says they're concerned with music piracy. They've demonstrated this concern by taking Napster to court, and they're gonna display this wrath soon enough with KaZaA in a matter of time. This piracy crackdown seems like a good idea, but I'm starting to question this whole ordeal... the way I'm starting to see things now, the RIAA isn't really at war with piracy. The real battle they're fighting isn't as simple... and it's definitely not as ethical either.
The truth of the matter is, the RIAA isn't really concerned about piracy. To tell you the truth, they probably couldn't give two shits about piracy. The way I see things, this whole "war on piracy" is just a charade, a diabolical blanket of conspiracy designed to conceal what... or who... they're really after.
You see, independant artists (a.k.a. "indies") now have a marketing tool available to them that they never had before. That tool is the Internet. Before the Internet, the indies had to get expensive agents to help them get into the music scene... someone who can work with the night clubs and the bars to get them some exposure... and eventually a deal with a big label. That was costly, time consuming, and more often than not the indies weren't even given the time of day from these agents, unless they had good connections (or a good body in some cases which I'm not gonna bother elaborating upon.)
Now the indies can get direct exposure to not just little night clubs and bars, but THE ENTIRE INTERNET. They can now advertize their own music, they can get their own audience all by themselves. The RIAA is pissed about this because now artists have the ability to market and eventually produce and sell their own music without the need of agents and record labels to get them through the door.
Most of you who listen to non-mainstream music know exactly how much good, unique, talented music is out there. Music that they never play on the radio or television. The reason it's not on mainstream media is because they're not with big corporate RIAA supported labels. MTV is nothing but an advertizing tool used by the RIAA to make the general public think that the cookie-cutter mainstream musicians are the "cool" and "in" things.
In the simplest way of analyzing the situation... the RIAA tells you what to listen to, the RIAA controls what you listen to, the RIAA decides what music is good and bad, the RIAA decides when certain styles of music are born, dead, and risen from the dead.
Now let's go a step further and look at the songs on those new RIAA supported, subscription based Internet music downloading services such as PressPlay... I dunno about you, but in my opinion, PressPlay should be called "Whatever the hell was on TRL last week: Internet Edition." It's basically the same crap you hear every day in a protected, proprietary digital audio format. You know why that is? I'll tell you why. Because the only music available on those services are those from multi-billion dollar record labels.
So... who's in agreement with me here? Who disagrees with these sentiments? If anyone wishes to comment on any of the above statements, this thread was created for that purpose. I've said my bit, now it's your turn to make yourself heard.
The truth of the matter is, the RIAA isn't really concerned about piracy. To tell you the truth, they probably couldn't give two shits about piracy. The way I see things, this whole "war on piracy" is just a charade, a diabolical blanket of conspiracy designed to conceal what... or who... they're really after.
You see, independant artists (a.k.a. "indies") now have a marketing tool available to them that they never had before. That tool is the Internet. Before the Internet, the indies had to get expensive agents to help them get into the music scene... someone who can work with the night clubs and the bars to get them some exposure... and eventually a deal with a big label. That was costly, time consuming, and more often than not the indies weren't even given the time of day from these agents, unless they had good connections (or a good body in some cases which I'm not gonna bother elaborating upon.)
Now the indies can get direct exposure to not just little night clubs and bars, but THE ENTIRE INTERNET. They can now advertize their own music, they can get their own audience all by themselves. The RIAA is pissed about this because now artists have the ability to market and eventually produce and sell their own music without the need of agents and record labels to get them through the door.
Most of you who listen to non-mainstream music know exactly how much good, unique, talented music is out there. Music that they never play on the radio or television. The reason it's not on mainstream media is because they're not with big corporate RIAA supported labels. MTV is nothing but an advertizing tool used by the RIAA to make the general public think that the cookie-cutter mainstream musicians are the "cool" and "in" things.
In the simplest way of analyzing the situation... the RIAA tells you what to listen to, the RIAA controls what you listen to, the RIAA decides what music is good and bad, the RIAA decides when certain styles of music are born, dead, and risen from the dead.
Now let's go a step further and look at the songs on those new RIAA supported, subscription based Internet music downloading services such as PressPlay... I dunno about you, but in my opinion, PressPlay should be called "Whatever the hell was on TRL last week: Internet Edition." It's basically the same crap you hear every day in a protected, proprietary digital audio format. You know why that is? I'll tell you why. Because the only music available on those services are those from multi-billion dollar record labels.
So... who's in agreement with me here? Who disagrees with these sentiments? If anyone wishes to comment on any of the above statements, this thread was created for that purpose. I've said my bit, now it's your turn to make yourself heard.