No huge corporation is interested in conversation, and they don’t have any concerns beyond profit in the short term. So a system set up to make things easier for them isn’t going to have to do with the social side of music unless they figure a way to profit from the social (i.e. interactive) part, rather than trying to stop the interactive stuff. Not sure what will make them choose to do that, although bad press and better laws might help.

Unions or organizing, whatever you want to call it, is one way to try to rebalance the battle of individuals & the social, against the big corporations.. If not a union per se, organization by community (creative community, cultural community, whatever) might get some traction, both in terms of public outcry, and since US copyright laws are not supposed to be pure trade policy.

Another tactic, suggested above, is to have more control over the actual data, the servers themselves, the, ahem, material component (can I call it the means of production, even if bloggers don’t necessarily see themselves as workers)? that way the battle could actually be about the value of what bloggers do, rather than google & Sony coming to a deal over our heads..

As I’ve said over on the elbo.ws forum. This issue brings to light the contrast, once again, between major and indie labels. Now you see why we choose which to work with, it’s not always about the music

Generally speaking, music fans tend to take a chance and buy a new album after becoming familiar with one or two songs. Give them that album and you run the risk of them either not enjoying the rest, or worse, enjoying it and simply not bothering to pay for it.

Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

I’d love to think that a far-sighted industry might see ‘singles’ as a free promotional item for an album. But then this is the industry that would rather sell us music videos – that staple of 80s TV – than allow them on YouTube.

We really don’t have a problem with bloggers writing and sharing individual tracks on a release, as long as they use the “covermount” track we provide to everyone for free, or get permission from us to use another track. We do have a problem with bloggers posting entire albums and we file complaints against them with their hosting service provider.

We have our own semi-automated system (which I wrote myself) to deal with the actual takedown notices. It’s more expensive to do things this way, but using the automatic systems the IFPI and others have developed comes at a cost in terms of the relationship artists and labels have with the fans. I think the industry organisations like the IFPI and its members the BPI and RIAA are far too heavy-handed with fans and people, like bloggers, who have less traditional roles in the music business. Educating people about the difference between what a normal independent artist earns from their music, and what a major-label-manufactured “act” makes seems like the right approach. Let’s just say that almost of the artists on our label won’t be quitting their day jobs any time soon.

Over the past 15 years, a new generation of music fans has developed in an environment where music is omnipresent and seemingly free. Music is not given the same value that previous generations might have attributed to it, and it is now difficult to explain how those 15 years of “free” were actually paid for by the people who produce music.

Of course there are “bloggers” who produce no original content and share entire releases, often ahead of the official release date. I don’t think these bloggers are motivated by any (or much) genuine love of the music. I think their motivation is similar to that of the pirate/cracker BBS community in the computer software world–prestige and bragging rights–but these bloggers can’t even claim to be particularly clever since ripping a CD is not even remotely as difficult as overcoming copy protection on software.