The RIAA going out of business?
Once again, Mark Cuban is my hero. His latest blog entry discusses the commoditization of music, especially since Yahoo launched its subscription music service. The Yahoo service costs $4.95 a month for unlimited access to over a million songs. You only have access as long as you pay the subscription fee, but hell, for less that $60 a year you can keep listening. Mark’s point is that now music is worth $5 a month. So is the RIAA really going to sue illegal downloaders when really all they are doing is costing the industry $5 a month? How will that make ANY sense?
Personally I don’t see how anyone is making any money at $4.95 a month. I mean, if you think of the bandwidth costs alone, how can ANY money go to the artists. Even with Napster’s $15 a month plan I’m hard pressed to think that much of the profits (if there really ARE any) are making it back to artists. If someone really uses these services, Why would they buy a CD, EVER? The answer is, they won’t.
Mark is right. Now that music simply costs $5 a month, how can downloading be much of a crime? I dunno, but I know I’ll be sticking with CD’s that I OWN, not music that I rent. I may sign up for Yahoo simply as a way to sample new artists, but for some reason I know I’ll be in the minority.