It seems incomprehensible that the recording industry has tried to bury its head in the sand regarding this new technology, instead of accepting it and working with Napster to secure a royalty based system with the download music giant. You can be sure, though, that the big record companies are afraid of losing their grip on how music is distributed. The movie industry was initially resistant to the rental and sale of videotape copies of movies. Now it's 20 years after the inception of VCRs into everday life, and everything's fine. Consumers, artists, and middlemen are content with the distribution and royalty system for videotapes.
The fact remains that despite the Napster craze,traditional CD sales were up last year. Granted, sales were down at college campuses, as college students are more apt than their parents to eschew store-bought CDs and simply spend hours at the computer downloading.
First, let's get something straight - most of the material on Napster is copyrighted.The copyright owners are not receiving their money! When I first found out about Napster, I couldn't believe they were allowed to let people trade copyrighted songs for free for even one day. Of course the artists should receive a royalty for every song downloaded! I don't think anyone is disputing that. Except for kids and pre-teens who have been raised in the "computer culture"and now expect to get all their music for free, people know downloading from the current Napster system is stealing. But they do it anyway - it's way too convenient, and the selection is mind-boggling and impossible to resist.
What I can't understand is why there has been all this back and forth between Napster and the record industry. Its very clear what needs to be done, and everyone knows it.
A fee-based service should have been established - or at least seriously studied - months ago. Instead of spending all this time bickering back and forth, all parties would have been better off working on a compromise. The big record companies may purposely be stalling to bide time til they are able to offer their own fee-based downloading services.
Now that people are used to downloading music off the Internet, they are not going to discontinue it and go back to paying $17 for a CD just to hear 1 or 2 songs they like.
Go To Page: 1 2
