Secrets of the "New Music Industry" that the "Old Music Industry" Doesn't Want to Know
This week’s news that the feds seized 82 websites based on allegations of copyright infringement demonstrated that government website seizures can silence innocent speech. But let’s take a broader view for a moment. The domain seizure debacle, the COICA Internet censorship bill, ACTA, and many other short-sighted efforts to eliminate copyright infringement all depend on (a) the traditional entertainment industry’s yowling wail that “piracy” on the the Internet is injuring the livelihoods of artists and (b) the US government’s chronically uncritical acceptance of those complaints. But the new services catering to musicians are struggling to tell their side of the story — a story that turns out to be substantially more optimistic and instructive. Jeff Price, CEO of TuneCore, posted a fantastic six-part series titled “The State of The Music Industry & the Delegitimization of Artists” that surfaces this new perspective that desperately needs to be heard in the debate.
