Death by a thousand cuts

So, the big music news of the last two weeks, with the obvious exception of the favorite songs of the Democratic presidential candidates, has been Universal cutting it's CD prices and the RIAA actually suing close to 300 file-swappers.

First, the price cut. On the one hand, yes, finally, someone gets it. On the other, it's entirely possible that it's too little, too late. I've maintained from the beginning of the Napster saga that consumers just needed a better value proposition than $18 for a CD, especially in light of the perceived dropoff in quality, track-for-track, versus the eight- or nine-song LP for $8. That it was free was just a bonus. While competing with "free" on price seems like a losing proposition, all that anecdotal evidence about how people like to hold a disc in their hands and look at the artwork has to be good for something, and that's not the case if the conventional wisdom is that a plastic disc and some artwork is hideously overpriced.

Of course, there's also the prevailing theory that consumers won't buy music from an industry that sues 12-year olds, which brings us to the RIAA. I know it's not a popular position to take, but the notion that the major record labels are pure, unadulterated evil, and that CDs have been, as mentioned earlier, hideously overpriced doesn't make file-sharing any less illegal. The fun part of some of these stories is the light shining in on the less technologically adept and the less well-read on the subject. The Trib quoted a local woman who assumed that, since you have to pay for the software to download music, that it must be legal. Sorry, but that doesn't really get you off the hook.

Look at it this way. If all the press and the publicity campaigns and whatnot were unable to convince John and Jane Q. that this is illegal, what other recourse is there?

Trick question, of course. Offering legal download services is the obvious answer, but while that seems simple, history would indicate that it's not quite that easy. Apple's iTunes and EMusic still are the exceptions rather than the rule. And they're still competing with free, and the largely ignorant segment of the population that assumes that Kazaa is legal because you can choose to pay for it is still going to prefer free to not free. If they're not bright enough to realize the legal ramifications, they're really not going to split hairs between a peer-to-peer sharing network and a central server owned by the majors.

As usual, the whole thing is a big mess of legal, ethical and commercial turmoil. The largely irrational thing is to expect that this resolves itself quickly and painlessly. The magnitude of the transformation of the modern music industry to a digital world dwarfs nearly everything that has happened before it, unless you count the initial introduction of sound recordings. None of this is to say that the RIAA has handled itself with any sense of decorum, but on some level, they may be facing their own extinction, so the reflex action is to defend yourself. If you're defending yourself from a 12-year old with a broadband connection, then so be it.