The Article<\/strong>: Spinning Into Oblivion<\/a> by TONY SACHS and SAL NUNZIATO in today’s New York Times details the short-sighted nature<\/a> of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) — the infamous music label conglomerate that’s too busy suing college students<\/a> in a hope of reclaiming profits lost<\/a> from pushing terrible music<\/a> for the past decade and not understanding ‘technology’<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Text:<\/strong><\/p>\n

DESPITE the major record labels\u2019 best efforts to kill it, the single, according to recent reports, is back. Sort of.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll still have a hard time finding vinyl 45s or their modern counterpart, CD singles, in record stores. For that matter, you\u2019ll have a tough time finding record stores. Today\u2019s single is an individual track downloaded online from legal sites like iTunes or eMusic, or the multiple illegal sites that cater to less scrupulous music lovers. The album, or collection of songs \u2014 the de facto way to buy pop music for the last 40 years \u2014 is suddenly looking old-fashioned. And the record store itself is going the way of the shoehorn.<\/p>\n

This is a far cry from the musical landscape that existed when we opened an independent CD shop on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 1993. At the time, we figured that as far as business ventures went, ours was relatively safe. People would always go to stores to buy music. Right? Of course, back then there were also only two ringtones to choose from \u2014 \u201criiiiinnng\u201d and \u201cring-ring.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our intention was to offer a haven for all kinds of music lovers and obsessives, a shop that catered not only to the casual record buyer (\u201cDo you have the new Sarah McLachlan and … uh … is there a Beatles greatest hits CD?\u201d) but to the fan and oft-maligned serious collector (\u201cCan you get the Japanese pressing of \u2018Kinda Kinks\u2019? I believe they used the rare mono mixes\u201d). Fourteen years later, it\u2019s clear just how wrong our assumptions were. Our little shop closed its doors at the end of 2005.<\/p>\n

The sad thing is that CDs and downloads could have coexisted peacefully and profitably. The current state of affairs is largely the result of shortsightedness and boneheadedness by the major record labels and the Recording Industry Association of America, who managed to achieve the opposite of everything they wanted in trying to keep the music business prospering. The association is like a gardener who tried to rid his lawn of weeds and wound up killing the trees instead.<\/p>\n

In the late \u201990s, our business, and the music retail business in general, was booming. Enter Napster, the granddaddy of illegal download sites. How did the major record labels react? By continuing their campaign to eliminate the comparatively unprofitable CD single, raising list prices on album-length CDs to $18 or $19 and promoting artists like the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears \u2014 whose strength was single songs, not albums. The result was a lot of unhappy customers, who blamed retailers like us for the dearth of singles and the high prices.<\/p>\n

The recording industry association saw the threat that illegal downloads would pose to CD sales. But rather than working with Napster, it tried to sue the company out of existence \u2014 which was like thinking you\u2019ve killed all the roaches in your apartment because you squashed the one you saw in the kitchen. More illegal download sites cropped up faster than the association\u2019s lawyers could say \u201ccease and desist.\u201d<\/p>\n

By 2002, it was clear that downloading was affecting music retail stores like ours. Our regulars weren\u2019t coming in as often, and when they did, they weren\u2019t buying as much. Our impulse-buy weekend customers were staying away altogether. And it wasn\u2019t just the independent stores; even big chains like Tower and Musicland were struggling.<\/p>\n

Something had to be done to save the record store, a place where hard-core music fans worked, shopped and kibitzed \u2014 and, not incidentally, kept the music business\u2019s engine chugging in good times and in lean. Who but these loyalists was going to buy the umpteenth Elton John hits compilation that the major labels were foisting upon them?<\/p>\n

But instead, those labels delivered the death blow to the record store as we know it by getting in bed with soulless chain stores like Best Buy and Wal-Mart. These \u201cbig boxes\u201d were given exclusive tracks to put on new CDs and, to add insult to injury, they could sell them for less than our wholesale cost. They didn\u2019t care if they didn\u2019t make any money on CD sales. Because, ideally, the person who came in to get the new Eagles release with exclusive bonus material would also decide to pick up a high-speed blender that frapp\u00e9ed.<\/p>\n

The jig was up. It didn\u2019t matter that even a store as small as ours carried hundreds of titles you\u2019d never see at Best Buy and was staffed by people who actually knew who Van Morrison was, or that Tower Records had the entire history of recorded music under one roof while Costco didn\u2019t carry much more than the current hits. A year after our shop closed, Tower went out of business \u2014 something that would have been unthinkable just a few years earlier. The customers who had grudgingly come to trust our opinions made the move to online shopping or lost interest in buying music altogether. Some of the most loyal fans had been soured into denying themselves the music they loved.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the recording industry association continues to give the impression that it\u2019s doing something by occasionally threatening to sue college students who share their record collections online. But apart from scaring the dickens out of a few dozen kids, that\u2019s just an amusing sideshow. They\u2019re not fighting a war any more than the folks who put on Civil War regalia and re-enact the Battle of Gettysburg are.<\/p>\n

The major labels wanted to kill the single. Instead they killed the album. The association wanted to kill Napster. Instead it killed the compact disc. And today it\u2019s not just record stores that are in trouble, but the labels themselves, now belatedly embracing the Internet revolution without having quite figured out how to make it pay.<\/p>\n

At this point, it may be too late to win back disgruntled music lovers no matter what they do. As one music industry lawyer, Ken Hertz, said recently, \u201cThe consumer\u2019s conscience, which is all we had left, that\u2019s gone, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s tempting for us to gloat. By worrying more about quarterly profits than the bigger picture, by protecting their short-term interests without thinking about how to survive and prosper in the long run, record-industry bigwigs have got what was coming to them. It\u2019s a disaster they brought upon themselves.<\/p>\n

We would be gloating, but for the fact that the occupation we planned on spending our working lives at is rapidly becoming obsolete. And that loss hits us hard \u2014 not just as music retailers, but as music fans.<\/p>\n

Analysis:<\/strong> A bunch of international corporations creating an unstated monopoly and colluding to artificially raise price<\/a>s, bankrupt small distributors and labels<\/a>, and smashing any iota of independence in the music market. Thanks a lot RIAA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Article: Spinning Into Oblivion by TONY SACHS and SAL NUNZIATO in today’s New York Times details the short-sighted nature of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) — the infamous music label conglomerate that’s too busy suing college students in a hope of reclaiming profits lost from pushing terrible music for the past decade […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n