E-Dribble

I was utilizing the various tubes of the internet 2.0 to find some new music a few nights ago when I came across “Cage the Elephant”, some Kentuckians that transplanted to the UK.  Man, some seriously fantastic music(check out “No Rest for the Wicked“).  I knew I needed the album, so I checked to find out who their label was.  It’s getting tougher to plow through all of the faux-hip sounding names that the publishers are using to hide the real owner, but eventually  I found it to be Sony BMG, so I bought a used copy.

That’s beside the point.  During my search, I found this fantastic article. In it, the CEO of EMI Records laments that while he knows that a divide exists between EMI and it’s customers, he’s not sure what he can do to lessen that gap.

You guys remember that about a year and a half ago, EMI was taken over by some hip non-industry types and things were going to change!  They stated that they would cut(or altogether end) funding to the RIAA because they didn’t think suing their customers was the way to sell an album.  ars technica went so far as to speculate that it might be the end of the RIAA.

So what happened during that time?  Well, they sued every entity that they could think of.

Seriously.

I’m not shitting you.

It’s mind boggling really.

But it’s the truth.

It’s really quite impressive that a group of people that foretold the death of the old system ended up not only embracing it, but damned near rewriting the book on it. See, they go after innovators.  Entities that are trying to change the face of music delivery.  If it’s groundbreaking, you can almost rest assured that EMI is suing the group that brought it to you.

And in spite of all of this, Mr. Leoni-Sceti isn’t sure what he needs to do to to make things right.

I promise not to tell if you don’t.