Putting 'Em On The Glass

I'm a little heated right now. I'm about to put the RIAA on blast. I'm sliding in a fresh clip and cocking back the hammer, cuz I'm about to put some fools on the glass, Sir Mix-A-Lot style.

First, read this.

Or, for those that didn't click that link, or might have missed the larger point, there's this summary by the Music Business Journal here:

"A Daily Texan article shares some startling numbers about the Recording
Industry Association of America's (RIAA) litigation campaign: The RIAA has
settled 8,423 suits with an average settlement of $3,000. The Daily Texan
works out that this is a total of $25,269,000.00 (twenty five million two
hundred and sixty nine thousand dollars) and the newspaper claims that not a penny of which goes to the artists." (Emphasis mine)

Anyone else see why I'm heated? For years, the RIAA has been waging their war on P2P services and file traders in the name of the artist. "You're taking money out of the pockets of your favorite artists! If you loved these musicians as much as you say you do, you wouldn't share their files!" And now, you come to find out that these artists, these starving musicians are seeing all of... absolutely nothing from this crusade, and the RIAA is keeping it all for themselves.

But see, I'm not all that surprised by the fact that the RIAA is holding onto this easy almost $26 million dollars. Because the RIAA is the legal action arm of the five major record labels. The same five major record labels that fuck artists all the time on there contracts, sometimes only giving a dollar per record sold (after money spent on videos, promotion, and advance is recouped, of course). Most artists make most of their money on the road touring-- are you that surprised, looking at that contract? Unless you're a superstar, you've gotta sell a boatload of records to make serious money.

And that's why I never felt guilty about downloading music. I wasn't naive enough to believe that me downloading an album made all that much of a difference to an artists bottomline. And when I read a prominent rock manager say in Rolling Stone a few years ago something like "If you can guarantee me that the tour is sold out, I'll give away 500,000 copies of the album," I was convined all the more. Hell, the Offspring (back when some people still cared about the Offspring) tried to give away their album online, only to be sued by their record label. Weezer encountered the same thing.

And you know what? In a way, downloading-- or stealing, if you choose to look at it that way-- a bands music often led me to putting more money in their pocket, when all was said and done. There have been literally scores of bands that I've discovered through downloading, albums I never would have been willing to take a risk on. But through hearing that album and discovering that band, I'll spend money to go to their show. Might even buy some merchandise. I'm giving far more money to the band than I would by actually purchasing their record. Think of my download as a promotional cost. The reason the RIAA cares-- and is sueing the very fans that support its indsutry-- is because they are the ones that are getting screwed, not the bands you love.

And make no mistake, as much as major labels cry about downloading, it's an incredible promotional tool. I know that it has been postulated on various places, most notably at Altercation (can't find the exact link, but it's in one of the posts that deal with Fiona Apple), that major labels have deliberately leaked albums, as a promotional tool.

And it definitely is. Without file sharing, sites like Stereogum and Music For Robots and Fluxblog probably don't exist. And sites like those, that get lots of hits, can definitely influence opinion and create a buzz. There is still no video hot enough to take the place of word of mouth-- except nowadays, you can tell 10,000 of your friends about a band if your blog gets enough hits.

So, these lawsuits are even more of a joke to me than they were before. If you're going to sue me, at least tell me that at least part of my money is going back to Bloc Party and Eminem and Thursday and Arcade Fire and...

-- Since were putting things on blast tonight, why don't we just go ahead and cook up a mess of meth, why don't we?

What I don't understand is how the meth scourge hasn't hit the East Coast yet. I swear that I read about meth in Rolling Stone when I was still in high school, so that's gotta be at least 5-6 years ago. I would figure that meth would have made it here by now. Maybe you don't have as much wide open space in New York, so there's no place to stash a trailer and turn it into a meth lab. Or maybe I'm just broadcasting that I'm simply an out of touch, middle-class suburban kid who has no idea what's really going on?

And yeah, I know that most of the really large meth labs are housed out West, largely fueled by illegal Mexican immigrants (at least I do now, after reading Jane's piece). But I would have figured that given five to six years, some enterprising drug dealer would have figured out a way to penetrate the East, and turn it into the next hot drug a la Ecstasy. I mean, these are the poeple that figured out a way to push heroin, another horrific drug. I would have figured that meth, for as horrible as it is, would at least be on its way to achieving that "cool" drug status like Ecstasy was for a minute, or cocaine in the 80's.

I hope that Jane is wrong. I hope that it doesn't take meth breaking big on the East for this side of the meth story to get national attention and a serious push from politicians to stop it. I hope that we won't have to wait ten years, for the meth version of Traffic to hit theaters before anyone stands up and take notice.