[ALL*MYTEE]

If the price of all cars had been fixed at $9999 for ten years, no one would ask why the quality was sh&t. And no one would question why American cars were worse than Korean ones. (Try finding someone to work for $1 an hour in the US).

Recorded music doesn't pay. It's just expensive marketing for tours and t-shirts and now soda and clothing lines.

A lot of people want to do it--and will do it for free--so we still have large quantities of music being made, but as even successful bands only make profits touring and on merch, that's what most of their time and energy gets spent on. Heard a great song from the Rolling Stones lately? The bigger you get, the harder it is to make good music. Except in hip-hop, where you buy your beats from someone else and just do the vocals. (They still have money making money, but can make some bangers after they're famous.) The big rock bands that make decent music--and they are very rare--often live and think like indie bands--and likely make very little money relative to their cultural importance.

The only solution is to do what is done in every other industry worldwide--raise prices for more popular music.

It's just math.

I know people will say that then people will just steal more but that's not true. People steal software and they still charge market rates for retail sales. The only industry where they don't figure the cost of marketing, promo and theft into the price of their goods is in music, film, tv, magazines and books. This is why the quality of our music, films, tv, magazines and books is so low relative to the quality of plasma televisions, bread-making machines, tennis shoes, golf clubs, grass seed, plastic containers, closet storage systems, and just about every other product we make or sell--industries that don't turn a profit can't attract talent as well, can't compete as well, can't keep talent and can't get credit.

You can say that the Strokes aren't like the Jam, or that Vampire Weekend isn't just a re-heated Feelies, but there's not as big and exciting a difference as between The Jam and The Who or the Feelies and VU (or as between a 1980 phone and a 2008 phone, a 1970s loft and a 2008 loft, a Chrysler LeBaron and a hybrid Lexus). The bottom line is that people spend money on what excites them, what appeals to them. And music isn't very appealing compared to electronics, cars, clothes, etc. It's falling behind.

I used to spend a huge percentage of my budget on music--and would spend every weekend combing record stores for old soul, new punk--anything that spoke to me. Now, I don't really care. I still keep an ear out, but all I really get is slightly better old stuff. Reheated 80s or 90s. No one had ever heard anything like De La Soul--I can't say the same about The Cool Kids, Lupe Fiasco or The Knights of Caberia (or whatever they're called). It's not that they're not good, they're just not bringing me many new ideas. There are, of course, a few wonderful exceptions, but good music used to come out every week.

Fixed price, or socialized industries, can't produce products that are as appealing to consumers as industries where the market sets prices. This is why socialism (and other fixed price systems like fascism) have failed all over the world.

The people I know spend lots of money on couches, cabinet knobs, rugs, massages, yoga, tattoos, clothing--all sorts of stuff--but they've given up on music because it's primarily boring, juvenile, depressed, angry and recycled. The Shins ideas and feelings aren't as new as Sebadoh's were. Finding something they like takes most people too long. And these are people who loved music for years and years--at shows four nights a week, huge obscure record collections.

But they grew up and music didn't. For music to grow up, it will have to pay adults to make it. Adults with mortgages, kids with braces, cars that run reliably and who won't go without dental insurance. It can't pay just to tour, because lots and lots of people have no desire in doing that. What adults that you know would hit the road for two years just to make $20,000 and maybe get a record deal that paid $10,000. Or even $100,000. After taxes and expenses, that's still $30,000 a year for living in a van away from everyone you care about.

For music to grow up, musicians will have to admit that they want more money and ask for it in the products they sell. Until then, what are we going to do? Put them up in public housing? They have a monopoly on a very valuable product--like holding a deed on an oil well--why should anyone do anything for them just because they're afraid to negotiate what they're worth in the market? Everyone else has to.