Letters to the Editor
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listen up
Music industry whining drives me mad. Rewind 15 years or so: after much hemming and hawing and reading reviews, I buy a CD in a record store. I can't listen to it because the record store only has a few listening posts and they choose what's playing, not you. I get home and ugh, I hate the music. But I read about another one that sounds good, so I take the CD back and exchange it. I put the new disc on my portable CD player (cutting edge!) and listen to it - not bad. I like most of the tracks. But it's frustrating - it took two days to buy!
Now, by contrast, I can listen to music all day on last.fm, find a load of stuff I like and download it. I have 20Gb of music on my mp3 player, an amazing mix of pop, post-rock, nu-jazz, hip hop, emo, whatever, and listen mostly on shuffle. I buy hundreds of tracks. I haven't listened to new music so constantly since I was 17 - in 1969.
The music industry are shooting themselves in the foot if they can't even keep up with old ladies like me. They are sad old suits and deserve to lose out if they think they can force the world to play by THEIR rules. Their naked greed and control-freakery turns people off and away. Instead of trying to stop the future happening, they should embrace it and join in: add value to their downloads by including hi-res artwork and video clips, for example. Or drop download prices and restrictions and see sales soar.