“… This kind of ridiculous whining about other people making billions of dollars of the back of artists is usually reserved to industry lobbyists, Paul – what in the world happened to you?? It is nobody’s job to ‘save the recorded music industry’ but OURS i.e. those that are in this industry (counting myself in here, for now) – why would any of these people be responsible for the recorded music industry’s future? While I understand the emotional part I fail to see your business logic here, Paul. We could have provided licenses to all those companies and people a long time ago. We could have collected a revenue share. We could have used their networks to upsell to other music services. We COULD HAVE. But then there is people like you and all those incumbents you so happily count as friends that would rather stay in total control than collect those new monies, and that would rather call the police than to change their outdated assumptions and business practices.

Here is my bottom line to you, with all due respect for your great work with your artists, Paul: get with the new program or at least move out of the way, and plant your poison pills somewhere else.

Nobody wants the Internet you are calling for, and nobody will want that secure safe controlled and policed music machine you long for….”

@Loring – not an issue – thanks again for the link.

Your post got me thinking, its the middlemen who are stirring here. The internet delivery model should be a good thing for the artists if done properly…. U2 seem to have become the establishment

my thoughts if you are interested http://unreasonablemen.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=27&Itemid=42

As far as I’m concerned, when McGuinness rails against hippie values and the memory of Abbie Hoffman, while encouraging the bullying of ISPs, it virtually negates all the so-called do-gooder work Bono does in matters of debt and world hunger. Bono, say it ain’t so! Wait a minute – Bono bullied Negativland over copyright issues and cozied up to Paul Wolfowitz. Guess he was nothing but a creep to begin with.

The first place blame should be cast is labels – they have pretty much stuck to their high CD prices despite the cost of the medium going down, effectively robbing consumers. People do still buy music, but the labels are fighting the 99c model as well, why? – so that they can jack up the price on the songs they see fit, once again showing their greed.

( Just Kidding! )