For all the RIAA faithful that maybe reading the board, may I humbly, as a contrite (albeit previous) consumer of $22 CD's, suggest a "business" model that is ideally suited to your needs. (wiping out the downloading habits of individuals such as myself)
Enter the spammer - lonesome, greedy, somewhere in Asia or Philly and desperately in need of corporate strictures. Over 90 percent of all emails sent are spam, and if the RIAA could learn to utilize this kind of indiscriminant market penetration ... oh wait... you already sue dead mac users.
Because you already assault your listeners with unwanted shards of viral-like intelligence that parasitize the lowest common denominator of humanity it’s only a small step to evolve into a self-sustaining global infestation. Or rather you can massively promote a mix of factors that like any economic system is arranged to maximize marginal returns on various products. Similarly spam is sensitive to swings in consumer spending, and then follows up the holidays with a deluge of credit schemes. Think about it – pop lyrics roughly follow the break down of spam into 20% adult products (love songs of all stripes) 40% pharmaceutical products (oldies), 20% finances (brother, can you spare a dime?) and 20% products (stuff you want if you’ve already got youth and love, but not money). While it is understandably distasteful to undertake any task that smacks of innovation, but remember that occasionally neurons = $$$.
Previously the main foray into the actual content of p2p networks was flooding them with bogus files. In fact, the road to financial success lies in giving consumers exactly what they want - just way more it. Popular music needs to be so easy to access, so omnipresent that desire never has a chance to lead consumers away. Why would anyone want to see Britney Spears nude when they can see Britney Spears nude while listening to her current hit? A large part of the recording industry functionally creates spam - it's time it starting behaving like that and living off scams on the viagra of sound - musical creativity. Because so many people choose the blue pill - what they think of as free(music)dom will be the shackles of the system. Any move to preserve the system is actually counter productive, because by economically pushing people outside it only leads to the discovery of other musics.
Apparently it only takes four percent of the populations clicking on these links to create a insidious social ill that costs $50 billion world wide to control. "Insidious social ill," - now that got your attention didn't it! You already have the material, just look to spam for delivery methods. But wait, the most attractive part of the arrangement is that it will enable you to devote your efforts to phagocytosing the efforts of talented individual artists and capitalize on high profit margins generated by music lovers desperate to hear them. The amount of money you can accrue from selling patches to the hole in XP that allows random mp3’s to clog a user’s hard drive more than covers the damages claim from current p2p usage. Don't fight the digital music revolution, don't try to adapt to it, certainly don't reduce your prices because of it, just corrupt it. Once you have actually created a problem, you're free to charge people to solve it.
But wait, you learned how to add (and that thing where you do the reverse) in ninth grade. What about the revenue from your current hits? Don’t worry, just as bad money drives good money out of circulation, so will the value of what was previously specialty markers skyrocket and enable you direct the digital wheelbarrows of excess.
Lousy music can take care of itself – by focusing of promoting excellence in music a sizeable market share will hooked on your (sort of) product. Oops, now that sounds like a decent business model, somewhere along the way I must have gotten off track.
To find out more send me $50 or forward me Mitch Bainwol's email address and I'll send you a free i-pod.