Legal digital music is commercial suicide says Michael Robertson (The Register)

If you are interested in the digital music turf (well, yes, ehem.... is there any other?) this is a must-read: Legal digital music is commercial suicide | The Register. Michael Robertson gets it exactly right when he writes:

"Go legal and die
The internet companies I talk to don't mind giving some direct benefit to music companies. What torpedoes that possibility is the big financial requests from labels for "past infringement", plus a hefty fee for future usage. Any company agreeing to these demands is signing their own financial death sentence. The root cause is not the labels - chances are if you were running a label you would make the same demands, since the law permits it. The lack of clarity in the law is the real culprit - and it's the huge potential penalties that create an incentive for the big record labels' law firms to file lawsuits. Without clear laws and rulings from the court about what is permissible, every action touching a copyrighted work is a possible infringement, with a large financial windfall if the copyright owner can persuade a Judge to agree..."

If you want to know more, read what happened with my own company, Sonific, here.