I have hit something of an ethical dilemma here. Science Girl says I’m over-thinking it. She may be right – the odds are certainly in her favor there – but it’s still something I’m thinking though. This seems like as good a time as any to take y’all along on my train of thought. Please keep your hands and arms inside the car at all times.
As I’m sure you already know, the RIAA are evil. Through their single-minded focus on their clients’ bottom line, they are doing their level best to destroy the music industry they exist to support. Their latest unbridled dickery is their (quite likely successful) attempt at crushing streaming radio with unreasonable, if not astronomical, “licensing” fees. Fees which are not levied across the board, by the way – deep-pocketed creeps like Clear Channel pay no such fees. Big surprise there, eh?
As a sometime streaming broadcaster (I had my own stream for awhile & occasionally spin at a community website), this is yet another slap in the face. Get slapped often enough and eventually you tire of turning the other cheek. Most of the contemporary music that I buy is released on independent labels; for the rest, I would happily turn “pirate” at this point, if it weren’t for the fact that I firmly believe that artists should be compensated for their work. (Don’t let the RIAA fool you on this count, by the way; they represent the interests of the labels, NOT the artists signed thereto.)
What does all this have to do with a blog dedicated to music of the seventies? Well, back in the bad old days, if you didn’t record for a major label you most likely didn’t record at all. I would venture to say that something on the order of 90 – 98% of the music I want to cover here was/is released through RIAA-member labels. By encouraging people to go out and hunt down the music of the artists I write about here, am I in turn promoting the idiocy of their record labels? I’ve been working on a piece on Blue Öyster Cult. They originally recorded for Columbia, who’ve since been swallowed up by Sony. BÖC mean a lot to me; they played the first concert I attended, they provided the name for this here blog, and their first four LPs (Blue Öyster Cult, Tyranny and Mutation, Secret Treaties, and the live On Your Feet Or On Your Knees) are perennial faves of mine. Yet I feel uneasy finishing the piece now, as I don’t want to direct custom toward the dunces bent on killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
While I certainly have no intention of shutting things down, I’m unsure as to how to proceed. I’d be interested to hear what you folks out there think about this.
I can only speak for myself, but I don't buy a ton of music to begin with and would almost certainly not buy a brand-new BOC (or whomever) CD after I read a post about it. But I might run across a used copy somewhere and pick it up, or borrow a CD from a friend, or at least just perk up my ears the next time I hear it on the radio or playing on a jukebox in a bar.
I guess you can't avoid promoting the product along with the music itself, but I think you and your readers would lose a lot more than the RIAA would if you stopped writing about what you love.
Posted by: Joolie | March 13, 2007 at 02:35 AM