I just stumbled across one of the most scathing reprimands of the music industry ever to be put on paper… and I wanted to share a few points with you and encourage you to read the article in its entirety. But before you do, allow me to issue the following warning: If you had any qualms about downloading music for free off the internet, prepare to have that conviction challenged…

I tagged along on $1500 artist dinners paid for by the labels. Massive bar tabs were regularly signed away by record label employees with company cards. You got used to people billing as many expenses back to the record company as they could.

Music isn’t thought of as an art form, as it was in the earlier days of the industry where labels were started by music-lovers – it’s a product, pure and simple.

Oink was not only an absolute paradise for music fans, but it was unquestionably the most complete and most efficient music distribution model the world has ever known.… If the music industry had found a way to capitalize on the power, devotion, and innovation of its own fans the way Oink did, it would be thriving right now instead of withering.

I used to reject the wishy-washy “music should be free!” mantra of online music thieves…. But I no longer believe that, because the … ownership-obsessed major labels will never let it happen

So maybe music has to be free. Maybe taking the money out of music is the only way to get money back into it. Maybe in the hands of consumers, the music marketplace will expand in new and lucrative ways no one can even dream of yet. We won’t know until music is free, and eventually it’s going to be.

And, should I otherwise fall victim to the “let’s use someone else’s blog post as my own to make my blog look better (cough… Priscilla)” pithole… allow me to go on a rant of my own…

If the utter disregard for financial realities and wasteful spending is indeed symptomatic of the music industry, then it seems that whatever actions consumers took to correct this market ‘defect’ were justified. The record industries had years to figure out that it’s consumers prefer ipods instead of cd players before they found themselves fighting against mammoths like OINK and the Pirate Bay. If the industry would listen to consumers instead of USE them… they might have been able to save themselves, but it is, alas, too late.

Instead of paying attention to consumers, they raised CD prices. Instead of rewarding consumers who made their artist’s music MORE POPULAR, they brought lawsuits. Instead of letting the consumer marketplace find great artists through it’s collective decision-making … it force fed us garbage in the form of Brittany Spears, Paris Hilton, Celene Dion, and New Kids on the Block (remember them?? admit it…). Instead of giving us artists, it gave us sex objects and rappers. Instead of giving us musicians, it gave us models. Instead of giving us art, they gave us the same product… over and over…

Instead of finding real talent, it created “talent”.

Nuff said. Comments anyone?