Warner’s Latest Evil Plot
Warner Music has hired industry veteran Jim Griffin to spearhead their latest evil plot: a monthly fee to be added to your internet-service bill in exchange for unlimited access to all music ever made. Consumers get ‘free’ music, artists and copyright holders get paid. Sounds like an awesome deal for everyone, right? Wrong!
I think the whole idea is not only evil, but also fundamentally flawed. Under the plan, consumers would be be taxed regardless of their actual music consumption, which can hardly be called fair. Also, the organization in charge of collecting the fees would have the impossible task to fairly distribute the money between all artists and copyright holders based on what metric? Certainly not the Nielsen Soundscan and most definitely not any popularity data that is provided by the major labels. The only fair metric I can think of would be scrutinizing all internet traffic and then hoping that every single MP3 in there is correctly tagged so it can be attributed to the rightful copyright owner. How is that for a mission impossible? Finally and perhaps most importantly, this plan would play into the hands of those in the music industry who after all these years still haven’t figured out this internet thang and take legitimate business away from those who have.
That’s not progress. It’s backwards!
