The RIAA and other failures of business

Look, I know most people will buy a CD every now and then. I know that the RIAA and all the music companies have built themselves on the CD model and rely on it to generate revenues and keep producing music. But Blockbuster built its model on store based movie rentals and when new technology was used, they had a choice to change or die.

I am not sure what the right model is for the record companies. All I know is that suing your customers and trying to fight tooth and nail against the change brought on by new technology is never going to work out well for a business. Eventually they will either adapt or die. The $1/song download is a step in the right direction. But in all seriousness there is no way that it should even be that much. I do like the napster model of subscriptions unlimited, but again I think as long as the tech is out there, the music industry is fucked on the CD/Download model.

So what can they do? Easy, Concerts. Right now that is how the artists make their actual cash anyways. I personally hate concerts, but most of my friends love them. They will go to any concert they can for practically any price. But you can't really take away the cash from the artists. So why not create streams of that content. Use the advertising model, it works. Sell copies of the music from the concert. Sell T-shirts and schwag. Sell whatever, just realize that what you are doing now is fucking stupid.

-J