Two news items which allude to what could have happened with digital music if recording industry executives had been more clueful.

Bertelsmann settles over naughty Napster | The Register

DMCA architect lambasts music moguls | The Register

Not that these items really prefigure what might happen from this point on, but the winds are slowly shifting.<—908b52d9b89efbf1b3d8cc391c432aa7—><—146c0b37716af8ae3a40e5e01fc09f97—>

At last, something the Recording Industry Association of America won, hands down:
RIAA Wins Worst Company In America 2007 – Consumerist

(The name of the trophy and some of the comments are a bit vulgar…)

The runner-up was Halliburton. Both the RIAA and Halliburton are well-known for political reasons. Of course, the RIAA is more of a lobby group than a typical company. Yes, they represent the “Big Four,” major labels for recorded music, which work like typical companies (making profits by selling the output of work done by people who have contracts with them). But the RIAA, like WIPO, is something like the network of these Big Four which then tend to represent an oligarchy.

The RIAA’s interactions with “consumers” (The Public) have mostly to do with lawsuits and disinformation campaigns. The RIAA’s main impact on those consumers is a series of copy-protection schemes which make digital management of music less pleasant. Some of the musicians who are represented by the Big Four may have some involvement with the RIAA but, even there, the RIAA is often seen as the problem in music-related industries, not the solution.

So it’s no surprise that the RIAA should be viewed negatively by a majority of people. They’re probably perceived by a very small group of people (executives at the Big Four), even though most label executives (besides our friend Edgar Bronfman Jr.) are realising that they need to adapt to the new conditions (which the RIAA isn’t doing). Apart from that tiny group, the RIAA is not having any positive impact whatsoever. Hence the image problem.

What’s funny is that, if the RIAA members eventually wake up from their torpor, they will still think that the image itself is the problem and will go on a massive campaign to make people think they have done something useful. Not looking at the situation as a whole is what will eventually kill the RIAA.

Not sure who will cry over the loss.

Amie Street signs major artists to sell DRM-free music
While the system has been in place for a while, the fact that some well-recognised musicians are now included in the Amie Street catalogue is major news. In a way, it rewards music exploration and demonstrates the concrete implications of popularity in the sale of musical recordings.<—fb1a703622804670e1242de69bab66c8—>