[Forked Lightning]

Thanks for posting that, it was a good read.

IMO it was over-generalised and stat-heavy, and stats can be made to mean anything.

The truth is that nothing is set in stone - not even the 'rights' of artists to expect payment for the work they do. With hindsight, the advent of the internet has signalled the demise of recorded music as a first-line, bona fide, guaranteed income stream.

Sure, its possible that labels will continue to sign acts, but labels/artists/managers are staring down the barrel, and they have to consider how advances are to be recouped and payments made if their record/cd/download sales are outgunned by the pirated versions of their own music.

Like the vast majority I'm involved in music because I love it. Just occassionally I have made a living. Most of the time though my fortunes have veered towards the 'ripped-off' end of the 'Success continuum': I have been bootlegged by the 'pressing-plant-in-Brazil' brigade; not been paid for recordings I've done for others; I've had plenty of gear stolen; 'friends' have ripped me off. C'est la vie. None of these were avoidable situations, nor could I change the outcome, I only became aware after the fact. The pirating/free download issue is no different, no-one saw it coming until it was too late. In fact, the moment the internet was born it was too late...
I suppose I'm trying to say there are 3 certainties in life:
1. Death
2. Taxes
3. Being ripped off whilst working in the music business.

FWIW these are just some ideas to rectify the situation..

1. Find a watertight way of beating the pirates, thus safeguarding the income stream derived from recordings.....hmm....

2. Release your music free to the internet and defeat the pirates...hmmm...

3. Don't release any more recorded music, so there's nothing to pirate...

4. We all set up our own individual web-sites offering our own encrypted or encoded music which cannot be pirated (is it possible to release unpirate-able material?)

5. Stop looking at iTunes as an answer, it is part of the problem. It is a centralised hub primarily making money for itself. After it has sold a tune it doesn't give a toss if that tune is then pirated. Furthermore it can't prevent it either. iTunes is just another middleman who got his foot in the door first, the biggest shark in a shrinking sea, or: different shark, same species.

For sure, some of the above is tongue-in-cheek but Pandora's box can't be closed now. I think the first mistake to make is to expect anyone else to create a catch-all solution to what is now a hydra of a conundrum.

A new indie revolution could be on the horizon; maybe the music biz is on the point of admitting: "There are now too many pirated versions of our catalogues, and we can no longer make enough money to survive."

What would be the tipping point for that?