As I said in an earlier post, the shift by music artists from record labels to their listeners is growing.

Madonna has signed a $120 million deal with L.A. based concert promotion firm Live Nation to distribute three studio albums, promote concert tours, sell merchandise and license Madonna’s name. While this is not yet the same business model as followed by Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead it is worth noting Live Nation is not a record label.

Tony Long at Wired posts on the success of the RIAA’s anti-piracy efforts:

The RIAA, faced with plummeting CD sales and increasingly restive artists, wanted to “send a message” to all the lowlifes out there who download music for free and undercut their profit margins.

The message, apparently, is this: “We’re idiots.”

And Rotophonic offers their analysis in a post entitled: Music Industry Launches Four-Pronged Effort To Destroy Itself:

1) destroy the goodwill of music fans by entrapping the children, the poor and the technically illiterate then suing them;

2) continue to release music that no one would be caught dead sharing;

3) turn their back on profitable, legal sales by backing out of deals with legal music sales entities, like Apple’s iTunes music store;

4) finally, gut fair-use by pursuing those true thieves–their own customers–who burn mix CDs or rip their own music for their iPods.

What we are witnessing is nothing less than an epochal moment in the recent history of world culture. There is no going back. Those who would whine and complain and litigate should take a moment and look at the big picture. The Recorded Music industry, as we know it, has only been in existence since 1877 - that’s when Edison invented the phonograph and what followed was the creation of a commerical enterprise based upon the use of technology to listen to music. The sellers of sheet music went ballistic in much the same way as the RIAA is doing today but since they had little lobbying clout there was no changes to the laws at that time - although John Philip Sousa gave it the ol’ college try:

These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy…in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape.

- John Philip Sousa - 1906 submission to Congress.

130 years.

That’s not something entrenched or even remotely etched in stone. It is but a passing fancy. A fad. Music, even remotely related to what we listen to today, has existed ever since human beings had the abiltity to pound the Earth and utter sounds. For those of you who don’t believe in the farce known as Creationism or Intelligent Design this would be a time span of a few million years. If you count the calls of other animals before us as music then it is safe to say the influence of Euterpe has been with us always.

130 years is but a blink of an eye in the passage of time through the life of the sounds we call Music.

And yet the RIAA, and all they represent, think of music as something they own and are entitled to control - even if it means destroying the very culture which surrounds them, destroying the people who listen, destroying the creators and - ultimately - destroying themselves.

Music lives in the hearts and spirits of all of us. We create it, listen to it, move to it and are moved by it. Our ability to share this music, either in a room together with instruments or by grasping audio moments in time for later listening, lies at the very heart of what it means to be a communicating creature - a human being.

A sheaf of paper with notes printed on it, a simple wax spindle wrapped in a spiral of scratches, a platter of vinyl with similar scratches on its surface, radio waves captured from the air, a roll of tape coated in magnetized oxide, a laser-etched optical disk, a compressed digital file - these are but mere cups and bowls to carry the rich broth we consume to sustain ourselves.

The business is not in the music - it is in the delivery mechanism.

Prior to 1877 if one wanted to hear a song or listen to a band they had to be in the same place and time with the creators of the music. Those who heard Mozart were those who could afford to pay for him, or other talents, to perform - or else make the effort to play the music themselves. Popular songs were sung. The business of music was patronage - paying for creation. In time, as various technological developments rendered new business opportunities, the delivery of music became its own business. It was a mere 10 years from Edison’s invention of recorded music to Marconi Nicola Tesla’s radio. Each advancement in the ways and means by which music could reach the ears of paying customers transformed and expanded the music industry.

A horse and cart are a delivery mechanism. So too is an automobile. When Henry Ford rose to prominence there was no Horse Industry lobby insisting that every Ford vehicle must use a horse in addition to its gasoline engine. As the rapid and exponential growth in human technology continues we will see more and more “established” industries fall from prominence and power. The wealth and power of these industries are a threat today because of their desperation to retain what they see as their entitled positions of control. They warp our laws and democratic processes through lobbying, propaganda, bribery, and coercion. They stifle and stagnate the culture of our world - our world, not theirs - in an effort to maintain an industry whose time has long since passed.

The established recorded music business is not the business of music. It is a delivery system; and, like the horse and cart, it’s time has come to an end.

130 years is a pretty good run.

The RIAA, and those who huddle under its umbrella, should set aside their wealth and power and do something that is truly good for the business of music:

Step aside.

Let us listen.

Cheers.