Is music's future on the Isle of Man? The IHT on the Music & ISP discussion, quotes me ;)

Image via WikipediaThis is a good read: Is music's future on the Isle of Man? - International Herald Tribune.... not just because they quote me (that's a good start, though;) but also because it's a pretty summary of the issues.  I paraphrase: 

"The island, a rainy outpost in the Irish Sea, is promoting an offbeat remedy for digital piracy, which the record companies blame for billions of dollars in lost sales. Instead of fighting file-sharing, the government wants to embrace it - and it is trying to enlist a skeptical music industry in support....Under a proposal announced this month, the 80,000 people who live on the Isle of Man would be able to download unlimited amounts of music - perhaps even from notorious peer-to-peer pirate sites. To make this possible, broadband subscribers would have to pay a nominal fee of as little as £1, or $1.37, a month to their Internet service providers"

"A lot of people in the business are concerned with how much money they are losing, but not with how much money they could make," Berry said. Under his proposal, the money collected by the Internet providers would be sent to a special agency that would distribute the proceeds to the copyright owners, including the record labels and music publishers. They would receive payments based on how often their music was downloaded or streamed over the Internet, as they now do in many countries when it is performed live or on the radio. The Isle of Man didn't invent the idea. The concept of a so-called blanket license to distribute music in digital form has been discussed since the days when Napster, before its rebirth as a legal service, thumbed its nose at the music industry"

"While the Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the major labels in the United States, has backed away from a nearly six-year campaign of litigation against individual file-sharers, the music companies' continuing effort to battle piracy in other ways dismays some analysts. "They spend 90 percent of their time trying to keep me from doing what I want to do and 10 percent of their time trying to make it possible," said Gerd Leonhard, author of "The Future of Music."

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Comments

[Vergel E]

These types of solutions are only as relevant as the music the mahor labels represent. Does the music industry honestly think anyone under the age of 20 is REALLY that interested in the music catalogs they represent?

Unless this type of solution also includes a process for small and independent labels / artists; a blanket tax will miss the future / evolution of the music industry.

[Quality of Life]

Wonderful blog. Does the music industry honestly think anyone under the age of 20 is REALLY that interested in the music catalogs they represent?