Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on August 01, 2003 09:29 PM
The RIAA was effectively a music production-to-distribution cartel.
Previously, an artist presumably needed assistance in recording their work, someone to sort out all those tedious manufacturing details and the distribution to retail. In order to make it a profitable exercise, volumes probably had to be significant, especially if the middlemen (ie. record companies) took a cut for making it all happen. Thus, promotion supposedly became necessary to hype up the artist in order to get those volumes.
But now, with widespread availability of manufacturing, or the absence of it given digital distribution which itself removes the need for middlemen to exert their influence at the retail level, the bar is lowered enough for many more people to get into music publishing and distribution.
So, back to the RIAA: they're just representatives of the old school end-to-end practices of the business, but arguably they only exert influence over the distribution side of it. Now that file sharing has come into the picture, their cartel risks losing the last foothold that they really have, since it's much easier for anyone to make and manufacturer music even using traditional media.
If people stop going to stores and buying top 20 "hits", the need for a traditional record industry will be threatened. Hence the RIAA are doing everything they can to prevent this. Does music and do artists really need the RIAA and the traditional record outfits? That's the objective line of questioning here.
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Posted by: Anonymous Coward on August 01, 2003 09:29 PMPreviously, an artist presumably needed assistance in recording their work, someone to sort out all those tedious manufacturing details and the distribution to retail. In order to make it a profitable exercise, volumes probably had to be significant, especially if the middlemen (ie. record companies) took a cut for making it all happen. Thus, promotion supposedly became necessary to hype up the artist in order to get those volumes.
But now, with widespread availability of manufacturing, or the absence of it given digital distribution which itself removes the need for middlemen to exert their influence at the retail level, the bar is lowered enough for many more people to get into music publishing and distribution.
So, back to the RIAA: they're just representatives of the old school end-to-end practices of the business, but arguably they only exert influence over the distribution side of it. Now that file sharing has come into the picture, their cartel risks losing the last foothold that they really have, since it's much easier for anyone to make and manufacturer music even using traditional media.
If people stop going to stores and buying top 20 "hits", the need for a traditional record industry will be threatened. Hence the RIAA are doing everything they can to prevent this. Does music and do artists really need the RIAA and the traditional record outfits? That's the objective line of questioning here.
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