Hi Jack, and thanks for an interesting link!
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Aram Sinnreich, an industry analyst with Jupiter Media Metrix, said the spate of acquisitions had dashed some peoples' expectations that the Internet would become a "democratizing influence" to mitigate the role of the major record companies.
"A lot of people used to gas off about how the Internet was going to kill the major labels," he said. But the Internet has turned out to be "one more instrument for the major media companies that own the major record labels to consolidate their power and influence."
"It ultimately means that neither consumers nor musicians will have much greater choice than they had in the first place," Mr. Sinnreich added.
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Mr. Sinnreich seems to identify strongly with the wishful thinking of the major media companies. So far the giants have been pretty clueless about what to do with online music and the developing p2p technologies. They wasted their time on SMDI while Nappy and related technologies kept growing. Now they concentrate on suing and buying the centralized services but have no idea how to make them attractive to the consumers. Not to talk about the booming decentralized technologies that they have hardly addressed yet. It is curious how the big public has taken a clear initiative in testing and adopting cutting edge distribution technologies while the media giants are just doing their best to sabotage them or water them down. A major reversal of roles.
Quote:
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But, echoing Mr. Sinnreich, Mr. Scheirer said the acquisition of MP3.com could be frustrating to independent, unsigned musicians who hoped the Net would reduce some power of the labels.
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Independent musicians will likely suffer from deals like this along with us, the consumers of art. But we both have enjoyed the free centralized services on borrowed time. They all are on sale if the price is right, and the same applies to the new decentralized services like Morpheus and WinMX. I expect to see more stable and consumer-friendly solutions only when we - with the help of the open source community - can provide our own p2p software and sustain our own networks without any critical dependencies to the centralized services. At the end of the day we really need just our ISPs and a handful of skillful programmers to establish a digital luxury zone.
- tg
