Mike over at Techdirt has a very interesting read about the music business. As a long-time musician, songwriter and, most importantly, music fan, the parade of bad decisions made by the music industry over the past few years has just about driven me nuts.

As Mike points out, a large part of the problem is that portions of the music industry, primarily the record label cartel represented by its henchman the RIAA, is trying desperately to hold on to what is quickly becoming an obsolete business model. Beginning with the re-examination of industry economics that led up to Courtney Love’s excellent piece in Salon back in 2000 (which proves either the value of ghost writers or that Courtney isn’t the complete nincompoop she generally appears to be), through the emergence of online distribution as the channel of choice for the new generation, and up to the current spate of lawsuits against children and dead people that have coalesced all manners of opposition into a line of defense that is starting to turn the tide of battle, the music industry has struggled to figure out a way to preserve what has long been the highly profitable role of both gatekeeper and banker to the music.

The music industry in general and the record labels in particular have not faced the fact that the world has changed- and all of the lawyers in the world can’t change it back. The bag is empty and the cat hasn’t been seen in years.

Which leaves the music industry with two choices, and only two choices: find a new business model or hold on as hard as you can until the cash pipeline dries up. The smart choice is to take some pain now to become a part of the new world order. The dumb choice, which seems to be the way the industry is going, is to sue everybody in sight for moving your cheese. Those lawsuits work on underfunded individuals who have no choice but to capitulate. They don’t work on an entire movement or on moms from Oklahoma.

Other than the fact that you can’t turn back time, the most aggravating and self-destructive part of the record label’s strategy is that it is attacking the very people whose goodwill is a requirement to sell records. It takes biting the hands that feed you to a new level. No one would complain too loudly if the RIAA sued people who share thousands and thousands of songs with anyone who wanders by. But the RIAA decided early on to sue all comers, thus the public relations war was lost at the first battle. Sometimes it takes more than money to prove you’re right, and sometimes even the Deathstar blows up. I don’t think that ever occurred to the record label executives, even though the automated voice has to be saying in the back of their minds “auto-destruct sequence initiated, this ship will self destruct in 4 minutes.”

In my opinion, driving force behind the record labels insistence in trying to stuff the cat back into the bag is that the record labels historically made so much of their money via the creation and distribution of the media (meaning the actual CDs and before that LPs and tapes, as well as the album art, etc.), and they know that the margins of old are not going to be available under the new distribution system.

When your entire industry is based on huge margins, it’s not surprising that you’d resist anything that threatens the status quo. Additionally, if songs are sold online for a buck a piece, the artists are going to quickly realize that it’s cheaper for them to rent some studio time, pay a producer and take the finished product directly to the online distributor.

Without the ability to serve as the gatekeeper, the record labels recognize that their position in the entire process is precarious. That’s why the RIAA isn’t going to buy into Mike’s plan of artist promotion, more product and resulting loyalty. Which means that the only alternative is to take the record labels out of the equation- their own short-sighted actions in effect becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Like it or not, the world has changed. While the change was bad for the record labels, they should have known the gravy train wouldn’t last forever. And over time this change will prove to be very, very good for artists and consumers.

It’s time to clean up the milk and go back to work. Let the record labels keep searching for the cat.

We know they’ll never find it.

Not satisfied with suing people, both alive and dead, who enjoy listening to music, now the priority-challenged music industry is threatening to sue guitar tablature sites, where users exchange tips on how to play songs.

For those who aren’t familiar with tablature sites, they are web sites that contain a database of guitar tabs, usually indexed by artist and by song. I use tab sites regularly to learn songs. Sadly, my site of choice, Olga.net (Olga standing for On-Line Guitar Archive), and others have bowed to the pressure and taken their once expansive database off-line.

Normally, the way it works is like this. Let’s say I wanted to learn CCR’s Bad Moon Rising. I’d go to a tab site and search for either CCR or the name of the song. The page I would find would look something like this:

D         C   G    D        D     C       G      D
I see the bad moon rising,  I see trouble on the way
D     C    G          D          D     C   G     D
I see earthquakes and lightning, I see bad times today

Chorus:
G                                   D
Don't go around tonight,  well it's bound to take your life
C         G               D
There's a bad moon on the rise

(I have no idea if my tabs will translate to a feed. If not, see my blog for what it is supposed to look like.)

The letters, of course, are the chords used to play the song. Guitar players will recognize that these chords are the easy way to play the song. And that’s just the point- most tab sites are all about easy and none contain the full music notation found on purchased sheet music. In addition, tab sites often contain easier tunings that make songs easier for novice guitarists to play.

All of which tells me that the music industry is once again engaging in knee-jerk lawsuits (or threats thereof) that are addressing a problem that isn’t there. Lawsuits that will ultimately hurt the music industry from an economic as well as public relations perspective. Here’s why.

Many people who use tab sites for learning songs are either novice players or intermediate players trying to learn how to play more songs. Expert guitarists and most professional musicians typically either play by ear, use traditional sheet music which they purchase or use one of the various numbering systems that are completely different than traditional music notation. I’ll never forget the first time I was in a recording studio while someone recorded one of my songs. The session players listened to the demo tape once, without pausing, and then listened to the chorus and the bridge a second time as they transcribed the chord progressions into a numbering system. Then they sat down and played the song better than it had ever been played before.

This, of course, means that the typical user of a tab site is not going to run out and buy sheet music they likely can’t read to try and learn a song. They’ll just learn some other song or give up altogether.

Sure, they could go buy a fake book (a book that has chord notations similar to what I did above in addition to music notation), but those books are created for professional musicians, formal music students and others who are doing more than just trying to play Wild Thing and Louie Louie using the only three chords they know. Many of the people playing Wild Thing and Louie Louie today may continue into more formalized lessons later- or not. But it does nobody any good to stop them in their tracks before they have a chance to decide.

All it accomplishes is to quash someone’s musical ambitions before they have a chance to become a lifelong customer of the music publishing industry.

The music industry should stop suing all the music fans or there won’t be anybody left to buy their products.

I would really like to interview the decision maker behind this latest scorched earth attempt at stuffing the cat into the bag. If anyone can hook me up, please let me know.

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