The record industry is dying. We all know it – Rolling Stone wrote an article and Fake Steve even chimed in (amongst others) – but the Record Industry is determined to go to the grave kicking, screaming, and suing dead people). Artists don’t see much of the money that the RIAA collects (and apparently piracy is good for the artists) and I’m pretty sure that “illegal” downloading is here to stay (I’m not stopping). In fact, Prince gave away his latest CD with copies of a British newspaper (which really pissed off the record labels).

In yet another flailing attempt to cling to every last cent on their way down, the record labels have been trying to impose higher royalties on all those poor little web radio stations – you know, to pay the artists and stuff buy more caviar for their execs. The webcasters say that they cannot afford the increased royalties and will be forced off the air if such royalties are imposed. This debate has been raging for over two years, and in May the Congressional Copyright Royalty Board (somehow that just doesn’t sound right) declared the new fee structure, which will apparently increase royalty income by over $1 Billion a year! That’s a lot of freakin’ caviar, my friend. I guess they wanted to buy some fancy ceegars too.

With great effort, the webcasters have managed to delay the increased royalties a few times, but it appears as if they’re slowly being dragged toward utter doom, er increased payments. In the latest round of extortions talks discussions, the record industry has agreed to cap some of the payments in exchange for the souls of all internet DJ’s some sort of magical DRM on all broadcasts. When they figure that one out… oh wait.

I think the record industry is retarded and I’m waiting for them to die. They missed the boat big time and without a major (and for them, I believe impossible) turnaround, they are destined for the grave. I say you should download your music (“illegally” or otherwise), broadcast your own pirate radio station (without paying anybody anything), and support the artist in other ways. Lets see – donations, attending concerts, buying merchandise, sending them love letters… all viable options which don’t involve the freakin’ record idiots. The artist makes more money, we support the ones we like, everybody wins (well, except the record label) and gets more music. I think that Prince was onto something when he gave away his CD: using the album as a form of advertisement. By getting your music out to the people, you might just gain some new fans. These new fans might just like you enough to attend concerts and buy a few t-shirts. Hell, I don’t like Prince but I might download this new CD just to see what’s going on. Brilliant.

But of course I don’t have all the solutions. Just ideas.

I also think we should have pirate broadcasts on the air waves, but that’s a topic for another post.

Update: BoingBoing has more insight into this issue here.