Medium Happiness

Again, another link to a Boing Boing post.

It looks like the RIAA has been doing some heavy lobbying and jockeying and they’ve gotten congress to add a rider (is that what it’s called?) to the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 which essentially makes it funding with strings attached. Recipients of the monies would be required to police their networks for kids downloading music illegally. Draconian measures for deterrence so rarely work as they’re intended to, this can’t be the best way to staunch the flow of thieved music.

The more and more I think about it, I don’t see any long-term alternative to selling music online other than offering it as Radiohead did, in a pay what you wish format. Most bands today, when they’re just starting out and aren’t trying to be the next Fallout Boy have a much better chance of making money through licensing, touring, and merchandise. It’s almost like the music business has been bifurcated: on one side you have people like Justin Timberlake and Nickel Hack, then in the other camp there are the smaller, for the most part quality driven acts that have no real chance of selling millions or even hundreds of thousands of records.