Re:Heh (Score 1)

One really must wonder if they'll ever wake up and embrace new ways of getting music to the people

If I had a penny for every time I've heard in this forum that the record companies should come up with a new model for distributing music (note its nearly always 'distributing' seldom 'selling'), I'd have a lot of pennies. On the other hand, not so many pennies for realistic and practical methods/models for doing this.

The music business has only been around for circa 100-110 years. For all but 5-6 of those years, it maintained copyright control by the simple means of the media and technology in use. The freedom to copy and distribute music electronically has created an irrevocable change in this model, and it is unclear that the music business can ever hold water financially again. I have yet to be convinced by any of the alternatives so far introduced or discussed.

I despise most of the people in these companies as much as the next person, but I have a degree of pity for them now, as their current actions look more and more like those of a dying and desperate industry. The real sadness is that with less money to invest, fewer bands will be picked up by labels, and many people who could have made life-changing music, had they been given the chance of a full-time job in what must unfortunately be termed the 'industry', will now end up behind a desk or in a factory somewhere.

We may yet look back on the 20th Century as the only one in which people could make a living from selling their musical recordings.