Don't put My Morning Jacket on your iPod!!!!

Sony is getting sued. And will probably be sued again, and again, and again by different government organizations for the same reason. Why you ask? In my estimation it's because Sony is dumb. Sony put a "rootkit" on a bunch of recently released CD's including My Morning Jacket's "Z" that will, upon inserting it into a CD-Rom drive, install a program on your computer that monitors your computer. It's a cloaked program, which leaves your computer susceptible to other viruses. You can read more about the subject Here! and Here!

Despite just being just plain irritating, this is highly unethical, and we'll soon find if the courts think it's illegal, which I truly hope they do.

This whole issue of course is wrapped up in the music industry's constant whining that music downloads are keeping food off of their overstuffed table. There is one part of me that would like to argue that the music industry has enough money as it is, and doesn't need whatever it's losing. But in the capitalist world we live in they're really allowed to make as much as they want, and sue if anyone is keeping them form making more, so I'll take this in a bit of a different direction.

The problem here is that the music industry has failed to learn their lesson here. The music industry has failed to realize that it's businesses practices are so idiotic that people feel justified in resorting to stealing music. I'm not condoning piracy in any way, but from the perspective of the music bigwigs, I would be reconsidering my business strategies once people across the world feel ethically motivated to steal. The music industry really only needs to do one thing, a very complicated thing, but one thing to win back the hearts of music consumers: Give us a reason to support you!

The music industry I believe puts too much emphasis on marketing, and not enough on the actual product we're buying: The music! If they put some effort into making a really great product, we would be more inclined to pay for that product. I think Wilco is a great example of this. Wilco's popular album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was pirated all over the place before it was released. Due to conflicts within the band, and with Warner Brothers (who wanted the album to be reworked because they didn't think it was marketable) the album was delayed heavily. In the process tracks were leaked to fans, and they happily downloaded all they could get. When the album was finally released, did Wilco suffer because of downloaders? Quite the contrary, the album was a hit. It charted high, and was praised by critics as one of the best albums of the year. The band, to this day, credits the illegal downloads as helping promote their album and making it their most commercially successful ever. Here is an example where hard work pays off. Wilco gave us a product that was worth our payment. The album is fantastic and I'm sure will be remembered for years to come. Wilco, and other groups that gave the finger to the record industry and took their own road, like Aimee Mann for example, have found that by providing a good product (The MUSIC) they can be successful without a record label.

On the flipside, there is the price. Has it occurred to the record industry that DVD prices are dropping like mad right now? I’ve caught myself standing in the checkout line at Target, and I see a DVD that I hadn’t previously considered purchasing and suddenly the $7.99 price beckons to me and says “buuuuuuuy me Aaron! I’m only the cost of twooooo rentallls!” And I’m tempted. All the while CD's prices have ridden a slow climb in price. It was about 11 years ago, when I started frequenting record stores that I developed my sense of music sales: When a big artist, with big backing, and big financial success released an album, it was fairly cheap. Because it was so mass-produced, a record company could afford to release the album at a lower price. When your small local band releases an album, it's a little more expensive, because to produce each CD costs the band a little more, and they have fewer resources. Over the years the independent albums have remained at a moderate price, while the big label records have only increased in price. The record companies may cite illegal file sharing as the reason for this, but this steady rise in price predates Napster as far as I can tell.

And what studies have found, like this one reported by the BBC here mp3 and other compressed audio downloads have increased in sales substantially. The study also states that people who illegally download music purchase more legal music than anyone else. What this means to you bigwigs in the music industry: people will pay for it! You just need to get it together enough to offer them a reasonably priced, quality product. I think on the whole fans of the music want to support the musicians, but not the record industry. If the record industry started offering good products, and conducted good business, I'd want to support them too!