Current RIAA members are ripping off most artists they sign-up, and I don't buy the "save the artist" cry. Artists makes most of their money from concerts and merchandising, and only a select few ever make it big. I enjoy music, and most of the titles I love and cherish are from the big publishers, but, as the DRM/piracy rat race escalates and it's costs moves the big labels toward an online-only model, I can only hope that the higher cost business model; and ensuing price hikes in media will foster a re-birth of small music clubs where artists can actually make a living, and then, I hope, a re-birth of small publishing outfits selling analog audio, like Vinyl records. I think the best DRM is pride of ownership, something the big labels have neglected to promote.
Peer pressure and keeping-up with the Jones is the best way to keep people buying; when having the real item has value and has status symbol appeal, the consumer wants the real deal and snubs counterfeits. When I was young, we would copy tapes and record on tape vinyl records belonging to our friends, but these were never like the originals, and tape would either "cut" to early, or would have long blank spaces on them at the end of both sides. We eventually purchased our stuff because we wanted the "real deal", without the defects.
If studios went back to analog media support, namely Vinyl, (Which is hard and expensive to properly copy, ) and lower prices, they may stand a chance for a comeback. I'm pretty sure all the litigation and DRM research as chewed more of their bottom line than what it has saved profit-wise, but who am I to judge...
Then there's the whole issue of market targeting. With years going by, marketers have been getting better at "pinpointing" the target audience of "loose-spending" consumers; which we all know to be teenagers. The negative effect is that they are all gunning for the largest market, thus making each slice of pie very small, and ignore the potentially very lucrative niche markets of the adult audio fans, which typically have more money on hand, and if they are hard to get at, once you have them, you've got a paying customer... In the nineties, the music biz went all rapp and hiphop. Fine. The kids like it. I don't. Kids downloaded it, meanwhile, I purchased next to nothing new, because so little of it pleased my ear.
These days, I'm hunting down long out-of-press records for the late fifties and early sixties in used shops. These used vinyl shop are everywhere now, and they are also selling new, locally recorded stuff, up-and-coming true artists, pouring their hearts, souls and tripes into fantastic music with minimal means. I'm spending, on average, 100$ a month on new media, and in the last two years, out of all that money, only 3 albums was new stuff from the majors. A 10~15% portion is small, local artists, and the rest is just used albums for which the majors can no longer profit.
And this is not by choice, it's what they pushed upon me. They limited my choice by not serving my tastes. I have thus resorted to exploring the past. It's oddly satisfying and definitely rewarding to discover how rich our music history is, specially if you have a thing for acoustic instruments. I'm the best prospective buyer for a device like
Sony's HAP-Z1ES Hi-Res Music Player, But these idiots are so bent on preventing copy, even legitimate support media transfer, that I can't use it legally, even with my paid-for content.
The music biz is schyzo and sick. If the big labels can fall, and if the western worlds come to it's sense and reverts limits on copyrights to a shorter period, like 10~20 years, we stand to benefit, otherwise, the big labels will become nothing more than living dead corporations, big play rights collection offices for old stuff. If things keep going the way they are, they will one day decide that recording new material is "too expensive".
