Fredric Paul has a good piece in TechWeb titled Why Everyone Hates The Music Industry, as a response to a Forrester Research study titled Music Lessons: Is Your Industry At Risk?. One question I have is whether we should trust research opinions about record companies from research companies that charge US$249 for an eighteen page report. Anyway, Fredric’s opinion piece is worth a look:
the record companies’ real problem is that everyone hates them.
He Hate Me
Musicians hate them for habitually sucking the creativity out of the music and the profits from the CD sales. Usually they do it legally, if not morally, but all too often naïve musicians with few options end up swindled out of their rightful earnings.
And music lovers—don’t call us consumers; music can’t be consumed—see the record companies as greedy, clueless profiteers quick to jack up prices while placing limits on what music gets released and how you can listen to it.
Record companies add little real value to the process of creating and distributing music, and technological advancements make their role increasingly irrelevant. Movie studios and publishing houses still stand for something, some artistic orientation, but the big record companies don’t. These days, who knows or cares which label their favorite artists happen to have signed with?
Oren Sreebny 