RIAA Likely to Be Wiped Out as Music Industry Faces Uncertain Future

A decade ago, the music industry was a monolith of epic proportions and unbelievable power and influence. For the better part of the century, it had managed to remain ahead of the curve, carefully adopting new technologies, improving methods of production and distribution to increase its profit margins and developing, if not perfecting, a marketing vehicle that could effectively formulate windfall profits and sell millions of copies of single albums.

Now, however, after 9 years of long, unwanted changes, from the development and disassembly of Napster, to the progression and proliferation of P2P 2.0 sites like Pirate Bay, the Music Industry is grasping at straws to simply maintain—let alone restore—its greatly reduced power and influence.



Though Pirate Bay is still undergoing trial in Sweden, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the entity almost single-handedly responsible for lobbying against digital rights, pressing lawsuits against file-sharing networks and individual file-sharers, as well as lawsuits against competing recording, distribution and search technologies, might be going under.

An announcement was made at the RIAA saying dozens of employees would be laid-off, with most offices closing and the majority of personnel being shown the door. The future of the RIAA is still uncertain. It could potentially merge with its European Counterpart IFPI, which is responsible for incompetently suing Pirate Bay, but even the IFPI’s days seem numbered.

Yet, as the world of music and video content continues to move away from its proprietors into the hands of the world at large, the demands by others in the upturned music industry are beginning to get desperate.
Choruss, Warner Music Group’s ongoing marketing “experiment” that seeks to exact a licensing fee from University networks and national ISPs, came under critical scrutiny at the Digital Music Forum East for its tax-like nature that would force all Internet users to pay royalties, causing CEO Jim Griffin to lash out at critics, citing the typical precedents for the music industry’s case against the world/Internet.

Who is right and wrong, the critics or the WMG’s latest “experiment”, is beside the point. The truth is that, for better or worse, the world has turned. While the demands the music industry makes might be sensible—or even fair—to a degree, music downloading has gone from esoterically illegal to ubiquitously casual, making the demands and rebuts made by the Jim Griffins of the world sound shrill and appear defeated. Though things could turn in favor of the music industry through legislation and innovation, it appears the 20th Century monolith has effectively been upturned, and could be a relic within another decade.

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