A Lovely Month For An RIAA Boycott

[DudeAsInCool]

Jefitoblog should be praised by all music lovers for his in-the-face-editorial on continued harassment by the RIAA against music bloggers and music lovers everywhere. I am publishing it in its entirety:

A Lovely Month for a Boycott

Tuesday March 06th 2007, 3:29 pm

Filed under: music, meta

I missed the boat on posting about this last week, when everyone else was doing it, but apparently Gizmodo has declared March Boycott the RIAA Month. There’s an element of futility to this — it isn’t just like those periodic calls to boycott major gas stations for a day, but there are similarities. I like the idea, though, and there’s probably never been as much non-RIAA affiliated indie music on the market as there is right this very minute — so we can give the finger to the major labels without giving up our daily fix.

I’m writing about this now because the RIAA also seems to have finally made up its mind about us mp3 bloggers, and things don’t look good. You may remember that, a few weeks ago, our buddy Kurt got whacked by the Association after posting a Mika track. At the time, I chalked it up to the fact that the Mika record still wasn’t out yet, and that Kurt should have known better than to leak it, but the hitlist seems to be growing.

What we’re doing, obviously, is illegal, and we can’t pretend otherwise. A lot of us believe it’s beneficial, though, and that the law is wrong (or at least outdated), and we’ve been willing to ride the intellectual-property frontier until forcibly prevented. I love music, you love music, we all love music; if we’d been around 70 years ago, we’d be having LP parties. Folks from my generation still remember making mixtapes (sometimes off the radio!). Now we burn CDs, swap iPods, e-mail files, et cetera. Love of music is a communal thing — what we enjoy (or don’t enjoy) hearing, we like talking about. And all of this is good for the RIAA.

Not everyone is downloading files to try before they buy, or even to discuss the music; I get anywhere between 1,300 - 1,700 visits a day here, and most posts never get more than 20 comments. More tellingly, I average 25-40 Amazon purchases through the site every month, which I appreciate immensely, but still represents a pretty low clickthrough.

But the RIAA, apparently, wants to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I wish I could say I was surprised. I’d like to think the fact that I’m getting links and CDs from major labels actually meant something, but all it signifies is that the left hand doesn’t know what the right one’s doing, and there isn’t a publicist in the world who’s going to lay down in front of the train tracks for us when the RIAA comes steaming through Bloggerville.

Here’s another example of the Association’s short-sightedness and stupidity, courtesy of our friend dmax:

Bill Goldsmith has his own wonderful, independent internet radio station, RadioParadise. It’s the best independent internet radio around, I think. Check his playlist.

Recent changes in royalty rates will require Goldsmith and his colleague/competitor independent internet stations to pay a higher rate of royalties to the record industry, and the new rates will bankrupt them. Goldsmith estimates that new rates are 125% of his current income. You might want to read Bill’s discussion at his website as well.

FM stations and Clear Channel conglomerates pay nothing. The elimination of independent internet radio puts our listening choices square in the laps of the big 5 record companies.

As Bill notes: “The RIAA can, at any time, agree to strike a deal with independent webcasters to allow us to pay a more realistic royalty, one based on a percentage of our income. We’re hoping that if all of you make enough noise they’ll be more inclined to do so.”

The industry is in panic mode, obviously; we’ve all known that for some time. They’ve repeatedly acted to protect short-term profits at the expense of consumer goodwill, long-term success, and quality music — but that’s been the RIAA’s method from the beginning, and everyone was up to their necks in hookers and blow just ten years ago, so why change now? Why not keep swindling/blaming artists and consumers?

I think the short-term prognosis, for all of us, is pretty grim. The majors will continue to merge, purge, and litigate, and mp3 blogging will become something you don’t do for long unless you really enjoy host-jumping every few months. I love doing this — I’ve made some wonderful friends here — and I think this site is pretty far down on the list as far as RIAA targets go, because I don’t cover the newest & hippest very often. But if/when the shutdown comes, I think that’ll probably be it for me; I just don’t have the time or energy to keep finding new hosts.

The sad irony here, I think, is that filesharing probably won’t ever die. It’s just too easy, and appeals too deeply to our need to have common experiences. The RIAA can’t do anything about that — all it can do is piss people off — and instead of adapting to lower (read: more realistic) profit margins, reinvesting in A&R, and partnering with the people who care about its product, it seems committed to emulating a monkey with its hand in a coconut trap.

So — back to boycotting these fuckers. As you may already be aware, I don’t purchase much major-label music as it is; the new releases I cover for Bullz-Eye are freebies, and there really isn’t much I care about on the release schedule anyway. But what I can do is devote more space here to coverage of new music from independent bands. I’m putting out the call for submissions, both here and at CD Baby, and will be doing my level best to review as much new, non-RIAA music on the site as I possibly can. I’m still going to keep up our regular series, but this site has been a little too retro for my tastes lately, and this is a good way of fixing that…

Thanks to Idolator for the heads-up on this article and their colorful .jpeg :)

[slum_goddess]

i'm in such deep shit, it's pathetic (not w/A3 music) just sayin'. :(

[DudeAsInCool]

i'm in such deep shit, it's pathetic (not w/A3 music) just sayin'. :(

hang in there...whatever it is, it will pass

[CTC Command]

I would have to have been buying RIAA shit to boycott them...

It's been a long while since me and thems parted ways. Fuckers.

[slum_goddess]

hang in there...whatever it is, it will pass

not, as i've heard recently, w/the RIAA spiders that crawl the internets, looking for unauthorised mp3s posted.

fuck 'em all.

[Redneck4sure]

hang in there...whatever it is, it will pass

That's what my wife said and she was right. It was just gas and now I feel all better. :happy: