Germany's Boycott of the music industry

[Colin Dunstan]

Germany's (friendly) hacker club "Chaos Computer Club" calls for boycott of the music industry. At least someone is taking action now

You can read more here (German): http://www.ccc.de/campaigns/boycott-musicindustry
Babel-translated: http://babelfish.altavista.com/babel...p=de_en&tt=url

Btw, guess who makes the hit on Google for "boycott"...

[Paranoid]

To me it looks as if the music industry is bitten by their own greed.
They kept pushing up prices to the limit.
At first people pay the extra but then slowly start to buy less CDs.
Some will then just copy more others just keep listening to old CDs.
I'm a metal fan since the begining of time. Just try to find it in an average CD store.
Even with pop music. All the same mainstream crap. You have a non mainstream taste and you have an hard time to find a legal album. Often on the smaller labels. (not the ones that are moaning now)
Their other money machine is ppv channels. But they fail to understand that if ppl listen/watch in TV their appetite for more music is less when the only source of music is the CD store.
Sure they have alarming numbers of decreased sales like 20% down. But they fail to mention that they released 25% less titles.
Or that artists can't live of $0.01 per sold copy.
And why are CDs so much more expensive in Europe then in the USA.
And when the economy slumps guess what people stop buying first.

Instead of taking a critical look at their own business profile they choose to show legal muscle. Altough the music/software industry has some plitician in their pocket they will loose the battle. Everyone will loose the battle. Industry, performers and buyers.

And forget about that they will embrace the internet and other new technologies to get a good customer relationship again.
Yeah they did embrace technology. Copyprotection and cashdrain technology.
To name a few. CDs that self destruct in 5 days. Titles that only can played on one PC.
Titles that only can played on one date. (like your birthday)
Do you expect that we, the customer, gets more for less money? I certainly don't.
I have 200+ legal audio CDs I can listen them everywhere I like, as many times I like.
With new tech I can only listen to them when the music industry feels like it.
The result:
- ppl buy the cheaper internet music (in the beginning at least)
- CD shops hav eto close down becaue of less customers.
- Some ppl like me, like real CDs with a booklet to sing along. (me singing...) So we stop buying because there are no stores
- Music industry starts moaning about decreased sales.
etc

The battle is lost. For everyone....

[Colin Dunstan]

I don't know if the "battle" is truly lost or if it has just began.

Fact is that noone can stop technological changes, even not a heavy-weight such as the music industry. Actually, I think record companies are killing themselves by stamping out music downloads. Why should we pay $30 for a single CD, where 9 out of 10 songs are (often bad) copies of older songs. It seems these days in order to get signed as a music talent all you have to:
a) be a drug dealer or distributor and rap;
b) be in a no-talent boy group and have a big fat guy invest in you; or
c) kiss Carson Daily's ass. It's getting hopeless for real artists and very painful to listen to the radio.

<sigh>

[Paranoid]

Heavy-weight can't stop technology. I agree with that. But my point I was trying to make is that they will only use the new technology for making a few extra $$$ for themselfs.
Guess who pays that $$$

Paranoid. hoping he's wrong