it’s finally happening!
OK, so I’ve been wondering for some time now when the hell the outdated dinosaur of a business model which is the recording industry in the United States would finally die its last, pathetic, gasping breath.
You can only sue your customers, extort your clients, swindle your business partners, and strong-arm those that promote your product for so long before it catches back up to you. You can only shove unwanted, intrusive technology down the throats of the people who give you money for so long before they decide they don’t want your stinkin’ crap any more.
First Radiohead, then Trent Reznor, followed by Oasis and Jamiroquai, and today Madonna. All of these top-billed artists have decided to give the RIAA the finger and either sell their music directly to the fans or forge their own deals with their own promoters.
As TechCrunch wonderfully puts it:
“The only real question now is how fast will the music industry model come tumbling down. When Radiohead led the way in offering their music directly to fans many predicted that the move was the beginning of the end; Madonna may well be the tipping point from where we will now see a flood of recording artists dumping record labels and where todays model will shortly become a footnote in Wikipedia.”
I’ve never been much of a Radiohead fan ever since the local rock station played “Creep” about every third song back when it was popular, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be buying their new album online. Thank you, Radiohead, for leading the charge. History will smile kindly on you.
