The Domestic Terrorist - Steal This Album?

“STEAL THIS ALBUM”....

Don’t dare do as System of A Down suggest. They don’t want you to actually take inspiration from the title of their latest release and actually “Steal This Album“. They need you to buy it. Despite talking the talk, they don’t walk the walk. They’re fakers, liars, and hypocrites.

Like many new CD’s, their new album is copy-protected with Key2Audio, some new fancy form of copy protection that means that your CD’s don’t play in your CD players, DVD drives or PC’s, and if you don’t like it, you don’t get your money back.

The industry is cutting off it’s own nose to spite it’s own face. It’s deliberately selling faulty products to the public. No other industry would have the arrogance and ignorance to sell faulty products to the public and then deny us the right to use them or even get a refund.

EVERYONE IS A THIEF

In their eyes, every single consumer is a thief. Irrespective of the fact that people buy millions of records every day. Despite the fact that everyone who buys a records can – if they want – just download an MP3 from the internet then burn onto a CD without any cover art, packaging, or extras. (just the new ‘no-frills’ packaging of the new System Of A Down album)

Yet people still go out and buy the record. It’s something people still want to do. But why should we buy CD’s when they don’t play on our PC’s? When they don’t work? Why should people buy ANY CD’s when they don’t play in CD-players?

About a third of people I know don’t actually own an audio CD player. They play it on their PC or their DVD player. If they buy CD’s that don’t play - CD’s that when placed into an Apple Mac crash the computer so utterly it needs to be taken apart by engineers to prise the CD out (as Celine Dion’s album does to anyone on a Mac) - they’re not going to buy CD’s again.

And yet the industry doesn’t seem smart enough to realize this.

GUILTY WITHOUT TRIAL

Why, when the most sophisticated anti-copying devices can be defeated with a felt pen run around the rim of the CD, do the industry persist in excluding and insulting it’s customers?

Anti-copy protection is costing the industry sales. It’s that simple.

The industry is clutching at straws here. It’s not the fact that MP3 and file sharing devices exist that causes the lack of CD sales. CD-Burning is the new home-taping. And given the fact that almost all the music I love originally came on copied audio-tapes from my friends, I think the Industry should be grateful for the free publicity. Without battered cassettes of “Appetite For Desturction” back in 1987, I would never have bought as many records as I have. That’s probably about 4,000 less sales for the industry. Around £40,000. It should be thankful. Not spiteful.

For once, Bono was right. And it hurts me to agree with him. But he was right :

“They say that home-taping is killing music, which is bullshit. It isn’t home-taping. Bad music is killing the music industry.”

BAD MUSIC IS KILLING THE INDUSTRY

The industry can bleat about the decline in sales, and be paranoid by the proliferation of CD-Burner, file-sharing devices, and options open to the consumer, as much as it likes. But it’s forgetting why music sales are dropping.

In their race to outlaw everyone from doing anything they can’t control the industry is treating us all as criminals. Failing to grasp the real reasons why CD sales are plummeting. Looking for a scapegoat for its own stupidity.

Because the Music Industry ISN’T giving the public what it wants. Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt, baby.

Sure, there are huge sales of some artists - Robbie Williams for example. But every time the industry launches some new boyband, be they S Club Juniors (can’t we prosecute the perpetrators under that new law for ‘grooming’?), or Fame Academy - The Failures, all it is a shortsighted profit-geared moneyspinner in a business run by accountants. And it costs the industry a fortune. Which means we pay to be peddled rubbish we don’t want or need.

There just aren’t that many people who are so keen on music they have to go out and buy a record every week. CD’s are poor value for money - £13.99 for 50 minutes of music. And DVD’s, each of which has up to 6 hours of video, cost £17.99 (or less, depending on where you look). The industry is failing the customer.

THE MUSIC FACTORY

No longer will the industry allow steadily selling bands like U2 or REM come up through the ranks. They’re got to make a return on their album or they’re sacked. They’ve also got to make enough profit to pay for every band the label signs that don’t make any money - every failed attempt at a cynically marketed teenband and every “authentic” but manufactured indie band… and there are more of those than you think.

For every expensive disappointment of a failed teen-band with super-expensive videos that cost more than the album, there’s a brilliant band playing on a small stage in the back room of a pub somewhere in your town. For every ream of faceless, cynically marketed, meaningless crap written by a committee that’s thrown at the shelves in the hope that people really need a soap, football star, or film star, or even a reject from a talent show performing yet another version of “Unchained Melody”, there’s a great band plugging away in obscurity. A great band that could, if only the industry wasn’t focused solely on prising pocket money from teenagers and bored middle-aged mothers, become the next like U2 or REM.

CORPORATE SUICIDE

So as you can see, it isn’t MP3’s and Napster that’s killing the industry. The industry is committing it’s very own form of suicide and blaming the Internet for its own shortsighted idiocy. A market will only buy what it wants. Declining CD sales mean we don’t want the music they try to push us in the shops.

MP3’s are the best form of publicity there are. You don’t need to be told what you like by MTV, ITV, or Radio 1. You can download it yourself. Power truly goes to the people;. And that’s what frightens them.

You don’t need to go to HMV to spend £13.99 on a product you might not like and then be stuck with it if you realize it’s as crap as the rest of the music in the store. Even in the unlikely event of it playing in your CD, PC, or DVD-player.

And with a proper business model for MP3 downloads, the industry can prosper. Why not allow PC-users to download their own ‘watermarked’ tracks, legally, for a fee of say 50p or a pound per song?

The industry need not worry about home taping then. There’s no revenue to be stolen. You buy the song. And it can be any song. No need to worry if it’s deleted, out-of-print, hard to find. It’ll all be there for 50p a throw. Everyone wins. The public get to choose anything they want. And the industry still gets royalties.

But the problem is the industry is scared. It still wants to sell us shiny little overpriced discs, own the means of production, dictate the market to us. It won’t succeed. For everyone with a CD-Burner owns a factory.

TECHNOLOGY IS DEMOCRACY : THE END OF THE DINOSAURS

It’s time for record companies to realize that their days are numbered. Their time is running out. Adapt and survive. Evolve or die. The companies are dinosaurs. Slow to react, stupid, and in danger of extinction.

Bands will market the music directly to the public. Pay a fee, get the song. No record company. No middle man. No bloated corporation stealing from the artist and the public.

The Electronic Revolution is here, and technology always wins. It’s up to the record companies to decide now if they want to live or die. Because we’re going ahead anyway,with or without their permission.

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