E-Dribble

Jonathan Lamy, chief spokesperson for the RIAA has chimed in to let us know that DRM is dead, kaput, no more and finally no longer endorsed or condoned by the RIAA.

Which reminded me of when the RIAA stated that lawsuits against the consumer were dead, kaput, no more and finally no longer endorsed or condoned by the RIAA.

You can probably use the same grain of salt for both statements.

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.

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Regardless of who you side with, you can not argue that the music industry’s relationship with their customers is in the crapper.  If you’re like me, you view this as a good thing.  Even if you’re not though, you can’t really be wondering why, can you?  In times when Warner will force the removal of audio in a satirical youtube viral vid, you can be sure that they don’t have much of a sense of humor about anything any more.  They’ve run out of things to sue over, so they just throw hail mary’s where ever they can.  Lyric and chord/tablature sites, people with radios turned up too loud, parents of kids that might have shared songs, some guy that chose Gn’R of all bands to leak tracks of….  It’s truly comical the lengths to which the whole industry is going to completely decimate their relationship with the people that put them in their Beemers and Versace.

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vexatious: vex·a·tious

Pronunciation: \-shəs\
Function: adjective
Date: 1534

1    a: causing vexation : distressing <vexatious delays>
b: intended to harass <a vexatious lawsuit>
2: full of disorder or stress : troubled <a vexatious period in her life>
- vex·a·tious·ly adverb
- vex·a·tious·ness noun

Are we clear on the definition of vexatious?  I’m hoping so, otherwise you won’t know why everyone is laughing so hard.

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Well, when it comes to lawsuits against their fans.  When it comes to providing their music in new and innovative ways, they’ll wait until it’s been proven economically feasible before they’ll try it.

You’ll remember that Metallica was one of the main proponents in the initial lawsuits that brought down Napster. Now, they’d like you to know that it was never about downloading music.  They just, you know…. didn’t want you to do it then.  Now it’s ok of course, because Trent Reznor made an assload of cash doing it.

What really happened is this:  Metallica got caught hugging an antiquated music distribution system.  When the fear of sales dropping touched their wallets, they lashed out.  Over the years, they’ve held their stance, because nobody else broke the mold.  Now that bands like Radiohead, Trent Reznor and others have proven that you can sell a lot of music this way, they’re willing to try it.  Oh, and hey, let’s just forget about that whole “attack our fans” phase we went through.

Hey, who am I to judge?  I’ll download their new album…. If they offer it for free.

Hey, I’m no pirate.