The changing music industry

This is one of the more unusual articles to which I have ever linked. It is a post from the blog of the band Counting Crows that they maintain on their official website. My wife is an obsessive Crows fan of the first order, and she pointed out this article, which was written by the band's piano player. The reason I am mentioning this article is because while I am writing this post, I am also downloading an enormous stack of CDs onto our computer in order to add the tracks to my wife's and my MP3 players. The gist of this article addresses exactly what I am currently doing. While the RIAA was cracking down on tweenyboppers and college students who were downloading free music off Napster and Kazaa, the recording industry was losing 97% of its money off people like me who burn and share CDs, not free music off the internet. That certainly explains why I was able to load the Counting Crows earlier albums onto my wife's MP3 player, but not the most recent CDs, because the Crows are one of the bands out there that have some sort of copyright protection code embedded on their discs.

The most poignant fact that I culled from the article was the very last sentence, where the author posited that these days, the Counting Crows make more money from touring than they do from selling records. In fact he said that once upon a time, a band would tour in order to promote a record; now, a band releases a record in order to promote a tour!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some CDs to rip.

Good Day to You, Sir