RIAA, Are You Reading This?

Now, I am very conservative when it comes to copyright laws. I think that "ripping" music files that you don't pay for is stealing - theft pure and simple. But I am so frustrated with how the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is going about enforcing copyright laws.

Album sales are down. Yeah, file sharing has something to do with it. But perhaps RIAA, it has something to do with album quality. It sucks. The last five CDs I have bought have had mediocre music quality, and the last two albums I purchased would not work in iTunes or on my iPod. Albums I legally purchased, mind you. Penalize the legitimate purchasers - great concept, guys.

Additionally, there is such an opportunity for music labels to do something compelling with the CD form factor. Cool jewel box graphics, an included DVD with video snippets, actual album lyrics. Now the Dance/Trance/House genre gets it, with artists like Paul Van Dyk and Moby including some of these things to "encourage" people to buy the albums in record stores. And they get the cool packaging concept, too - with funky paper jewel boxes and jewel box dust covers/wrappers that give someone an incentive to buy the CD. They realize that the audio information encoded on the CD is "art" as well as the CD packaging. What happened to that thought with mainstream artists? You're buying something tangible here. Product design is still important!

But the mainstream artists are still scratching their heads, wondering why no one is purchasing their fair-quality CDs in cheap plastic jewel boxes with one-sheet cheaply-printed album covers.

So, I buy my mainstream music off of Apple's iTunes Store. Cheaper, iPod-able and I can still print out the album cover and make my own CD jewel box if I want to. Dance/Trance - I'll buy the cool packaging at a record store (at least until they all go out of business). But if it weren't for that, it would be iTunes all the way.

So, back on point. Long rant there. Steve Winwood gets it, as this article in Wired notes today.

-aB