The music industry is fucked up and failing. It’s in a downward spiral, and I have no sympathy whatsoever. Let it collapse, with no government bailout, no subsidy, no fucking fanfare. Goodbye because WE DON’T NEED YOU. We don’t need to be told how and where and when to consume music. We don’t need to be sued for being a fan of artists. We don’t need to pay $17 for a disc of 15 songs, 2 of which are good, and 13 of which are total filler shit. We just don’t need Carson Daily telling us what’s good. We don’t need Brittany Spears or N’Sync. We don’t need carbon copy bullshit music churned out weekly and promoted everywhere, just because “the suit fits” like Johnny Bravo. We don’t need Chingy, or JLo, or Puff P Sean Diddy Combs Daddy, or Kelly fucking Clarkson.

The RIAA has it all wrong, and has convinced the politicians and half the public, through fear and lies, that sharing is wrong. I learned sharing was good in preschool, but it seems the terrified music industry can’t figure out what’s good for it after 100 years of experience.

There are millions of people “stealing” music online, yet more records were sold this year than last, contrary to the lies the RIAA would have you believe right before they sue you. The reason is simple, the majority of people stealing, with no intention of ever paying, is made up of college and high school students who don’t have enough money to pay anyway. They weren’t going to buy anyway. Many more are stealing to sample the music before they buy. These are the honest majority who want Avril Lavine to get her money. More still steal music because they want the single or a few songs and don’t want to pay $17 for them, just like me. And another handlful steal because Sony Music refuses to release Fiona Apple’s latest album “because it doesn’t have a good single.”

I steal music all the time. I use Acquisition for OS X, and I get many, many songs, seconds after I hear them for the first time on MTV, for free, forever. You want to know why that’s not wrong? Because 90% of it sucks complete and total ass, and I download and listen to it twice, and never again, because it blows. I would never pay the money to figure this out, and the RIAA isn’t missing out on a goddamned thing. And when I like an artist, I go to their concerts, and I buy their t-shirts, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll buy their CD, if it has enough decent songs on it.

I have an iPod, and it changed my music listening life. ALL of my CDs are now ripped and loaded, and currently living in dusty crates in the attic. For the record, there are about 900 of them (@ a conservative $12 each, that’s $9,600 worth or music) The fact is, that MP3s and portable music is lifestyle changing. I walk around all day long, in my car, at work, in my home, at my computer, with every single song I’ve ever even liked in my life. Currently that equals 4994 songs, in 23.9 GB, or the equivalent to about 15 straight days of music. I actually listen to about 100 songs regulary, and would never have paid for most or the rest of it in the first place. And a new song is only a few clicks and minutes away. I used iTunes for months, and I spent probably about $200 on individual songs and a few, very few, whole albums. I recently stopped, and it is not because I don’t think iTunes isn’t the best option available. The reason is simple. Locking me into an incompatible, closed format, at a low bit rate, and low quality, whether it’s from Apple or Microsoft, or Napster, or Yahoo, is bullshit, and it’s the RIAA’s, not Apple’s, fault. Apple would be happy to sell you unrestricted MP3s for a buck or two, but the RIAA won’t let them.

Here’s my vow: If Apple, or anyone for that matter, sold 256bit MP3s, or some other universal format audio format, I would pay $1 per song, for every song, and never complain and never steal. But we’ll never see that while the RIAA lives and breaths. Hopefully that won’t be for much longer.

The RIAA, in all of their infinite wisdom, has chosen to sue it’s biggest music fans, and the backlash is surely going to be swift and sever, but has yet to show itself. Trust me on this, the lawsuits do not, will not, and can not work. It is a huge mistake, and they are slowly but surely losing all their legs to stand on.

Yahoo just joined the ranks of online music retailers offering unlimited, UNLIMITED, downloads of music for a fixed monthly fee. Napster was the first, followed by everyone else. The pricepoint is typically $15ish per month. Yahoo slashed that down to $6.99/month, or an annual subscription of $59.88, billed annually (that’s just $4.99 a month). $5 a month! For unlimited downloading and listening, even to a portable device (though not an iPod because of incompatible formatting). Steve Jobs refuses, so far, to believe in a subscription service for iTunes, but I am sure it’s just a matter of time. At the $5 price point, Apple can’t ignore it, and quite frankly, it absolutely does not pay to steal. But the stealing will continue, simply because of formatting and freedom.

The RIAA no longer has an argument for suing students for thousands of dollars when “caught stealing” if they can allow Yahoo to charge $5 per month for unlimited downloading (or $15 from Napster or Rhapsody) They are considering the total value of each digital consumer to be some fraction of that number per month, per year, after Yahoo, Napster, and Rhapsody take their cut, the artists take their cut, and they scrape up the rest. $5 a month is $60 per year. In a LIFETIME of 70 years of music theft, that’s the equivalent of $4200 in damages. It is complete and total bullshit to have students settling for thousands of dollars based on the lost revenue from the music they “stole” or shared. Mark Cuban, controversial ex-dotcom billionaire, current owner of the Mavericks, and avid blogger, recently wrote about the same thing, and it’s worth a read.

Here’s what I propose, and I am dead serious. Free the Music. Take the $5, or even $10 from me, from my taxes, from my ISP, from my credit card, from wherever, just take it – for the rest of my life. Divvy it up and give 75% of it to the artists. Give it them. The deserve it. Take the $10 from everyone in the country. Seriously. $10 from every human in the country. Then leave us the fuck alone. Put the music on a server somewhere and stop bothering printing CDs. Just let us distribute, share, remix, reformat, copy, paste, shit on, throw away, whatever the fuck we want, with all music. All of it. Let me have my fucking music. Let me post it on my website and share it with my friends. Let me fucking spread the joy of a great song with anyone who will listen. I would gladly give you $60 a year for the rest of my life for that privilege. Trust me, you will benefit.

Let’s look at the economics of it for a second:
$5/month x 12 months = $60/year, per person (that’s the equivalent of less than 4 CDs)
$60/year x 200 million people (I extracted kids under 7, and elderly over 70) = a whopping $12,000,000,000 ($12 BILLION) per year.

Take your $3 BILLION (the other $9 billion goes to the artists) and do whatever the hell you want with it. Use it to give the MPAA a clue, and explain to them that BitTorrent is a format, and not at all responsible for the bootleg spread of Revenge of the Sith, which, by the way, totally fucking sucked, despite what Kottke says, and will still break nearly every box office record anyway.

Let me conclude with a short, open letter to the RIAA.

Dear RIAA,
You are breaking your own business. You are suing your biggest fans for too much money. You are ruining music with the expert help of MTV’s TRL, Cribs, and Chingy. You are creating the wrong kind of enemies. You are trying to control technology and behavior that you and the government can never possibly control. You are hypocritical, and you are outdated. Get a clue, change your model, your tactics, and your attitude, and pray for the forgiveness and loyalty of the fans you so desperately need.

Sincerely,
Chris DiClerico