Re:RIAA should address the cause (Score 1)

Part of the reason that their net is so low is that so much is spent on advertising and legal issues so that *they alone* get that remaining 20%, as 50% of what they'd get if the market were less controlled would be less that 20% in the current state (no, I can't back those specific numbers up, I should've used x's and y's, it's the mechanism I'm trying to illustrate).

I'm dubious about the 20% number. I'm sure all the numbers we see have been passed through a black box labeled "highly skilled accountancy departement."

One of the reasons we have megastars selling immense amounts of music is the advertising, which is not cheap. The record store windows, full-page ads in magazines, weekles, poster campaigns, radio spots, and so forth... The record companies spend a huge amount there, and it adds markedly to their overhead. Dropping that and letting the music be promoted by word of mouth, Internet and less mammoth advertising approaches would reduce the cost by massive proportions, but the large record labels would lose the advantage they have in being able to afford those advertising campaigns and would end up sharing the market more evenly with smaller labels. This is not on their to-do list.

20% is more than the people who wrote and played the music get.

Ever notice that when you go to see a band, $10 is just about always the price of a CD? And that's without SonyGeffenVirgin's economies of scale. Of course, they're competing with the number of drinks you can still afford to buy and the cab home...