Sounds like it's only a matter of time before you get rid of DRM and the idiot who signed off on it. You don't have a choice really. Without a massive worldwide task force to police every single online transmission, and punish offenders, you simply are not going to stop file sharing. Remember when CDs came out and people could make high-quality copies of new releases from CD to cassette tape ? Remember how you cried yourself to sleep thinking of all those lost dollars? What did you NOT learn from that experience?

Remember Buisness 101 Law of Supply and Demand? Until the price of songs comes down to meet the demand, people will simply P2P their music, or pass on it. Its a mixed blessing: the prevalence of instant music accessibility has driven down the price point. Accept it, and bring the prices down enough that your customers will gladly pay to download the song from you than to try and figure out how BitTorrent works. Hell, if songs were a quarter apiece, I'd probably pay you to download it again, instead of walking out to the car to get the CD!

Instead of crying about how the price of music has gone down, rejoice that your distribution costs have reduced exponentially! Rejoice that you can reach markets you never dreamed of, in countries where CDs have to be sent in by carrier pigeon or camel-ed across the desert!

Now that that's all cleared up, where is the next "Hotel California"? Where is the next "Jagged Little Pill"? Where is the next "Nevermind"? The crap you put out now is the 'Reality TV Programming' of music. You are quick to push shitbands like The Fray, but have you even heard of Vampire Hands? Jagged Spiral? Nothing Gained? Betty X? Where is the imagination? Where is the experimentation? Is Trent Reznor the only Visionary you could find? You need to MAKE new genres, not try to copy ones which were designed to poke fun at you. Let the kids have their "Indie", and make something they haven't even dreamed of.

Stop wasting your resources fighting a losing battle AGAINST YOUR OWN CUSTOMERS, and spend them on making it even easier to get music to your customers!

Get in bed with companies no one else could imagine. Fire your marketing staff, and hire some 16-year olds to run the think tank. Give away free mp3 downloads with Happy Meals or Apple Jacks or Little Debbies.

Figure out why people can't buy a song the second they hear it, anywhere, anytime. If there was a "MINE!" button on your radio, and it cost a quarter to push it, and whammo-o! people could own a copy of the song they were listening to... If there was a way to access the song purchase via cell phone... If there was a simple way for people to provide access to your downloads through links on their own website or e-mail signatures...

If you diverted your funding away from lawsuits against your customers and into technology like this......can your tiny minds grasp how much money you would make?

Also, get people to think about music when they are NOT near their computer, because if you read http://lefsetz.com/ he will tell you that radio simply isn't doing it.

One more thing, abolish Dashboard Confessional. In fact, abolish the entire Emo genre. It is the open chancre sore on the the face of music history.

No charge for this advice.

Love,
-CZ

Labels: DRM Sucks, Music Industry, Open Letter