Originally Posted by kane

You are correct, if record companies don't think fast they are in deep deep trouble. There was an amazing article on Rick Rubin a few weeks back in the NY Times. He is the guy that founded Def Jam records and has a produced albums for some of the biggest acts in the world. He was just hired by Sony to run their music division and "save" it. The first thing he did was bring in a group of 18-24 year olds and asked them to be honest in how the found new music and bought music. Most of them said they get new music either from friends suggesting it or hearing it somewhere like radio/TV and that almost all download the music, don't pay, but don't consider it stealing. When asked why they didn't think it was stealing they said that over the years the industry had taken enough of their money. There have been too many CDs that had one or two good songs (the ones you hear on the radio) and the rest sucked. so you just spent $15-$20 on two songs. They figure they don't want the other stuff, so taking a few songs they like is no big deal.

Rubin claims that two things need to happen for them to survive. First they need to get out of the singles business. The last 10-15 years the music industry has become all about the single. They sell the single and forget the rest of the CD. With a hit single they had the luxury of making people buy the whole CD to get it. Now people can just get the single for free, or buy it for a couple of bucks and they don't have to buy the rest of the crap on the album. Rubin says they need to get away from this and get back into the art business. Remember that music is art and sign and develop artists that will make good records. He also says they need to rethink how they distribute. He thinks a subscription type service might work, but there are a lot of logistics to that that need to get worked out. There is also mention that the record companies would sponsor the tours and take some of the revenue from that. Either way, the record industry is dying fast. The more they sue, the more hard feelings they will create with the music buying public. It's a strange irony, but true. Look at what happened to Metallica. They were the biggest band in the world and have never really been the same since going after Napster and the people that downloaded their songs.

We (meaning this industry) have a big lesson to learn from this. As P2P and torrents and tube sites get more and more popular we are now facing the same problems as the music industry. I don't know the answer on how to fix it, but if something isn't done in 4-5 years we will all be sitting around wondering what went wrong.