The Evil Internet

[HejiraNYC]

Perhaps it's time to just gut the system and start from scratch again anew. While I do respect songwriters/musicians who create original works of music, I also believe that enough is enough when it comes to "intellectual property" rights, residuals and royalties that are paid in perpetuity forever and ever. Sure, artists deserve to be paid... but why is their compensation structure such that they must continue to be compensated for work that they expended years and decades earlier? A painter doesn't get paid every time a person looks at his/her painting. An author doesn't get paid every time somebody checks out a book from the library. IKEA doesn't get paid every time you sit in one of their chairs. I don't know if there is a better way to structure compensation than what currently exists. But that the same time, I would like to think that musicians who are in this to make music, first and foremost, should not be getting their panties in a knot just because their music is now being introduced to new audiences in a new medium. If anything, they are effectively trying to stifle innovation by making this type of music access prohibitively costly to operate.

Regarding the specific case with Pandora, I tend to agree with Pandora. It is unfair for Pandora to be charged on a pay-for-play basis when terrestrial broadcast radio pays nothing. And musicians cannot make the argument that Pandora somehow increases digital piracy; those digital streams are nowhere even remotely close to the audio quality of a CD. The difference, it seems, is that digital streaming media has become a completely different business model even though it essentially provides the same service as broadcast radio. And it's all due to the fact that lawyers, labels and musicians got wise to a new revenue stream- a new way to make money. If the standard being applied to Pandora was applied across the board to all broadcasting media, music and radio would completely cease to exist; it would be tantamount to the leaves deciding to kill the roots of the tree because they weren't delivering enough water. At some point these artists have to realize that broadcasting media of any sort is essential to the viability of their musical catalogs. Pandora is part of their lifeblood and should not be scapegoated for any drop in musical revenue. I would much rather see artists go after the REAL enemy- monolithic broadcast monopolies like ClearChannel that stifle competition in major radio markets and prevent musical diversity with homogenized, rigid playlists.