An old news dating back on the 3rd of November with Peter Jenner was only been picked up by TechCrunch yesterday. It can be summarised as an idea/discussion to replace DRM with a tax system. Ridiculous? We think so too, so do hundreds if not thousands who has heard it!The music industry has changed quite drastically over the years. Before TV or radio, music is localised. Even then, it didn’t really kicked off until the globalisation of MTV! These days BIG Four earns from the global market! CD sales, concerts, advertisement support, broadcasting, etc. all generate money to BMG, EMI, Sony and Universal. And now, we have online music shops! Don’t all of these generate millions if not billions of dollars per year?? Looking only at the dip of CD sales shouldn’t be the justification for anything. The only justification for any increase in music price is the greed and increase expenses of the organisations.
It is known that the Big Four take a huge cut from royalties and retail prices (source). A bigger fact is that total cost should have dropped tremendously when online music shops came alive! Transportation (logistic) fees, artwork, cd casings, retail/rental space, etc are phasing out! There’s no need for such things in the online world. The biggest cost is the infrastructure for the online shop, which is much less. So why aren’t prices lowered? Are we paying the price for top executives, chiefs and directors on their questionable business expenses? Or are we paying for the real value of the music? But alas, even online legal music quality aren’t up to par with CD quality (source).
Music has always been in our blood. The beat, tune, ambience, dance, emotions and culture of music is something everyone cherish. But with all the drive for economic and financial gain in the music industry, things change! The Big Four has placed negligible emphasis on sharing and music culture as a whole! In many ways, the pure enjoyment of music is not as widespread as it should be. A new direction needs to be in placed. I guess that is why there are so many music sharing communities and music recommendation sites e.g. Mercora. And soon – MuSMo?
