Current location:	exbiblio
Current mood:	frustrated
Current music:	fuck it.
Entry tags:	boycott, music, restaurants, sue

Boycot the recording industry
    Over the past few years, we've seen the recording industry take a hard stance against copyright theft.  They sued students, and they brought down a lot of 'normal' people to prove a point.  I'm sure we were all very proud of the recording industry and their lawyers for these very public successes.  Great musicians like Metallica  and Sir Elton John will now be able to continue to scrape by and everyone wins.  Yay.

   But today the I read an article that really made me feel as though the music industry had taken it a little (err.. a lot) too far.  It seems that The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) is no longer content to stop internet downloading of music.  No they are not focusing on DRM, and CD copying (which if you haven't heard we have a right to do with our own purchases as long as we don't give them away).  No, they are now suing restaurants who play songs without paying explicit rights to play those songs in public.  The sickening part of all this, is that restaurants who pay for CDs to play in their venue, and pay for subscribed music services, are still apparantly (in the eyes of ASCAP) committing a federal offense, and they are suing for big money.  Buying the CD does not give you the right to play  it for people who are not friends or family, and the industry is sending spies into clubs and restaurants to figure out who is 'cheating'.

Now, i know i took a jab up above at Sir John and Lars and company.  I actually am not angry at the musicians most of whom are getting screwed by the record labels harder than we are but I'm really frustrated at the recording industry for this cheap jab of a lawsuit.  I know very little about the internal workings of the industry, but i do know that some really famous and wealthy people are represented by ASCAP - the article i reference above mentions Coldplay, Dr. Dre, Avril Lavigne and Elvis Costello - and it would be nice to see them stand up and defend the people who listen to their work.  The industry is going farther and farther in attacking even the people who support them, and if they don't start standing up for their customers, they should expect a backlash.  This comes at a time when getting music for cheap or free (even legally) is very easy.  Tons of bands have tracks available on myspace and other online venues, and the relative cheapness of recording equipment has opened up recording to a bunch of small time (read - not suing their customers) labels or bands directly.  Choosing to not support major labels does not mean giving up on music.

I used to feel a certain sense of wanting to support artists (at least some of the time) with the music i listen to.  But the system is breaking.  Paying so much money ($10 for a digital album?) for music just doesn't make sense when the bulk of the money is going to guys who are suing restaurant owners for $30,000 a track (see the article) for playing CDs that have been payed for...  I'm still happy- more than happy- to pay for concert tickets.  Apparantly the concert tickets support the artist a lot more (even if much of it still is owed back to the label in the end, it covers artist debts to do so), but i think i'm donepaying so much for CDs from big labels.