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Mu-Sly

Digital Audio Science

The RIAA's CARP (Crap?) Proposals : articles

The RIAA's CARP (Crap?) Proposals

Posted Friday 5th July 2002

When will this random craziness stop?

Music I have discovered on the Internet has been the sole reason for most of my CD purchases in the last couple of years. My CD purchasing (directly due to the Internet) has sometimes got to the point of being ridiculous, where I can hardly afford to buy food for a week or so! I've spent more money on CDs since the advent of filesharing and Internet radio than at any other time in my entire life.

So, why are the RIAA and the major labels trying to kill off the best thing that could happen to them - a free, global listening post that encourages people to get into more music?

In my opinion, these kind of laws do nothing except take money out of the hands of independent musicians and promoters and give it to the already established commercial "music" factories who are hardly at the cutting edge of what music is really about.

It seems to me that the RIAA's interests lie not in music as a whole, but solely in established acts.

Think about this: by promoting just a small group of elite artists, record labels can increase their profit margins to a higher percentage relative to the overall number of albums sold. If they sell ten million CDs by ten thousand different artists, their profit margins will be a lot lower than if they sell ten million CDs by ten elite artists (due to the additional cost of producing cover artwork, promotion and so on for the other nine thousand and ninety artists).

I'd wager that the reason the Internet is seen as such a threat by the major record labels is that it gives people the chance to expand and diversify their tastes in music by letting them find out what music they like for themselves, rather than being told what to like by commercial radio and the media. Artists who would normally not be accepted by the major labels (for being too far out of the mainstream) are getting their music heard over the Internet, and are generating demand for a more diverse selection of music.

What the RIAA and major labels don't seem to like about this is that they have no control over what Internet radio plays, whereas they can almost totally control what is played on commercial radio, and therefore promote their own interests at the expense of non-mainstream music.

For the first time ever, average people are being given the opportunity to find their own tastes in music, and it is taking money away from the big commercial labels and giving it to the smaller independent labels and unsigned artists.

So, MORE music is being sold, just not the RIGHT music for the major labels to make enough money to keep their hot-tubs full and their sports cars polished. Most REAL musicians out there are struggling to afford their food, but with the help of the Internet and some free promotion from Internet radio stations, they might just earn a few quid here and there.

This fact seems to have escaped the RIAA, who are seemingly not interested in music - just in how to make themselves and their benefactors more money.

I ask them this: how can you claim royalty fees from an Internet station like Soma FM (who almost exclusively play unsigned musicians from the Internet) and claim to distribute these fees to the musicians involved? The reality is, you can't, as the vast majority of the musicians will not be registered with anyone, let alone ASCAP or BMI! So, what exactly is happening with all this extra royalty money, and how do you plan to distribute it to the musicians who are supposedly being robbed of their wages?

The fact of the matter is that most musicians (myself included, but also many signed artists) would give their right arm for the kind of free exposure that Internet radio can generate. But that's just the problem, isn't it - it's free, and doesn't make any money for the RIAA.

The only people who stand to make any money out of Internet radio are the hungry home musicians, who by chance and a bit of luck might just get listened to and sell a few home-burned CDs of their stuff for $10 from their website once or twice a month. (If they were signed to a record label, they could possibly expect to see 3% of the purchase price of their CD if they were lucky.)

As I have always said, REAL music isn't about money, popularity, or who is "the next big thing" - it's purely an artform. How can you legislate an artform?

Struggling musicians are being blatantly ignored in the name of money, and the interests of the public are being blatantly ignored by the large corporations who are trying to pull the wool over their eyes.

It's time someone put a stop to this bollocks once and for all.

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