The Reason The Music Sucks

Record companies.

There. I said it. The reason that music sucks is the record companies. Creativity and business are generally at opposite ends of the spectrum, but sadly that understanding seems lost on music biz execs.

But there’s more to it than just that the record companies suck. Creativity can be fast or slow, but it cannot be rushed out in time to meet the pre-holiday sales period. Yet that is what happens. I think that CDs should be sold in a format whereby the more units that are sold, the lower the price per unit becomes. This might encourage people to wait until an album is a proven winner before snapping it up in huge quantities at the lower prices. For hardcore fans that buy everything their favourites release you could buy a membership in a fan club that would grant you access to fixed pricing.

And then there is the topic of digital downloads. Every song should be available for 99¢ on iTunes. With record companies getting 70¢ (that’s the current rate) for a product with nearly $0.00 in production cost (I know it costs money to record, produce, market, etc…), they should be over the moon! But they aren’t. Universal Music Group (UMG) wants a share of each portable music player sold. They negotiated a deal with Microsoft where Microsoft pays UMG $1 from each Zune sold. As I think the latest sales figures for the Zune are hovering around the 64 units sold mark, I think that Microsoft pulled a fast one on UMG, but when you look at Apple – 100,000,000 iPods sold, that’s a lot of money going to UMG. Why should UMG profit from the sale of an iPod. If I, as an educated consumer, fill my iPod with music from strictly non-UMG artists, why should they benefit? On the flip side, if I fill my iPod with music from UMG artists why should they benefit twice? Once with the sale of the music to me, and again with the sale of the iPod?

Come on, this is just ridiculous.