Stumbled upon this on a forum..very interesting..
READ MORE:The Music Industry’s New Extortion SchemeThe Music Industry’s New Extortion Scheme
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by Michael Arrington on March 27, 2008
Update: More details of the scheme are here.
Musicians themselves may just be crazy, but the music labels are dangerously stupid, and need to be stopped before they can do any further damage to the music industry. Case in point: Warner Music, fully aware that the days of charging for recorded music are coming to an end, is now pushing for a music tax.
This isn’t the first time someone has called for a music tax. Peter Jenner argued for it in Europe in 2006. Trent Reznor said the same thing last year (as did the Songwriters Association of Canada). Mathew Ingram has other examples.
But Warner Music is doing more than just talking about a music tax. They’ve hired industry veteran Jim Griffin to create a new entity that would create a pool of money from user fees to be distributed to artists and copyright holders. Lawsuits against their customers aren’t working (The RIAA sent out 5,400 letters in the last year, says Portfolio, settling with 2,300 of those individuals and suing 2,465 who didn’t respond).
The goal? $5 per month from everyone, or fees of $20 billion per year. That’s double the current size of the recorded music industry ($10 billion)