Kill the music industry?

My thoughts and feelings on "pirated" music and filesharing are constantly evolving, and basically evolving more and more towards a belief that there are better alternatives than the way the the record labels currently control it. (Okay, maybe that is a pretty obvious point. For a lot of us that grew up before CDs, the record labels lost any goodwill that we had for them when they forced us to pay full price for compact discs of music that we had already purchased as LP records.)

I used to have mixed feelings about copying some music. I didn't feel bad at all about copying music that I never would have purchased—either because I had never heard of the musician before, or because it just wasn't good enough music to actually throw down money for. But, I did feel bad copying music from musicians who I really respect. I felt better when I bought a new CD from an artist who I had discovered by getting a copy from a friend.

But, I'm learning more and more that buying CDs from artists doesn't necessarily support them all that much as it does the record labels, who get the biggest cut of the profit. Anyhow, I just discovered Downhill Battle which has a great web site and very clear arguments against the current record label monopoly.

Best of all, check out some of their hilarious web page campaigns:

"What a Crappy Present"

iTunes iSbogus

What I like the most is that they actually have a clearly thought out and feasible alternative—voluntary collective licensing—to the current system (look down the page in the right column of the iTunes critique to read an explanation of it).

The only problem that I have with the whole online music thing is that I'm still a sucker for good packaging, and would hate to see the death of the creativity that sometimes shows up in CD packaging.