Roger Ames, the chief executive of Warner Music Group, said any plan that handed control of the industry's licensing to the government would simply shrink its revenues and prevent it from financing artist careers. As for the taxation idea: "It sounds like communism," Mr. Ames added.
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If there's one thing I can't stand, it's fat cat record executives clinging to a worn out business model. They say they need the high CD prices to make up for the fact that they promote so many artists, but only a few of them make it "big." This is a bunch of crap. The companies determine what is sucessful by paying for certain songs to be on Clear CHannels's play lists and on MTV. Thus, the record companies create the demand. Yes, it's expensive, but they created the system. It's artificial and it's designed to get money into the hands of record company people (and their massive corporate parents), not into artists hands. I may download a lot of music, but I go to tons of live shows, which is how bands make most of their money, b/c they get the money, not the record company. After tonight, I'll have gone to 4 shows in 8 days, with tickets costing between $15 and $50, and paid gladly. Do I spend less money on CDs now? Yes. Do I spend less money on music, broadly defined? No. The $0.25-$1.00 that the artist looses from the CD sale forgon is more than made up by the tour money, and hey, I may even by them a beer if they play at the Casbah. Why should I subsidize the big 5 record corporations when all they want to do is shove the Backstreet Boys and Avril Levine down my throat? Fuck them. The corporate music scene these days is characterized by no variety and poor quality, just like a Soviet department store.
What sounded like Communism again????
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