This was posted on the allaccess.com net news section regarding P's PE.


Steve Meyer
President, Smart Marketing

"Music fans spend much of their day, if not their life, sitting in front of their computer, discovering and downloading music. Today's power brokers no longer work in the steel-and-glass towers of the traditional record business; instead, they're tech geeks, bedroom bloggers and Silicon Valley visionaries." -- BLENDER magazine editor-in-chief Craig Marks this week in the article referenced below, 'Jobs Tops List Of Online Music 'Powergeeks'.
A few years ago (2004 to be exact), Prince angered a whole bunch of music industry people when he decided to give away a "Musicology" CD with the purchase of a concert ticket. He also made it available commercially via his Web site, www.npgmusicclub.com, and the disc was in record stores at a later date.

This week the news was all over the web about Prince's latest CD, "Planet Earth," being distributed in the Sunday edition of London' DAILY MAIL newspaper. (See the story below: "Prince CD Angers Music Industry")

Sunday circulation of the MAIL is estimated to be between two to three million. That's approximately how many copies of Prince's new album was distributed in one day. In essence, Prince sold a couple of million albums in one day! Not a bad day for the "Purple One" at all. The financial information about how much the MAIL paid Prince for this deal was not disclosed, but I would imagine Prince got a nice big fat check.

Prince's label, SONY/BMG, decided to pull the album from its UK release after Prince announced this deal. I'm guessing Prince expected that and doesn't really care. At a time when CD sales are dropping precipitously all over the globe, he took matters into his own hands and did what he thought was best. He's also giving the CD away to people who purchase concert tickets to any of his 21 London area concert dates. As of this moment, he's reportedly already sold over 200,000 tickets. Add the concert money he'll earn to the money he received from the SUNDAY MAIL deal, and you can see how loud his cash register is ringing. Lots of CDs sold, lots of concert tickets sold.

Many now see this as the beginning of the end for record labels in the UK. Such deals could make a label obsolete. But, not every artist has the stature and legacy of Prince and others who have made similar deals. Labels are going to have to work harder to establish and develop new talent if they want to stay in business - especially because the next generation of artists are, as it says above in the quote, "tech geeks, bedroom bloggers and Silicon Valley visionaries."

What is certain is this: Established artists with a legacy of great music can make more money by taking a label out of the picture entirely. New distribution methods are needed and artists are seeking them now. (Just ask Paul McCartney about his Starbuck's deal) Could Sony/BMG have shipped 2-3 million CDs to retail in one day and guaranteed Prince a paycheck for that? Of course not.

If anybody in the business is angered by what Prince did, they should first ask themselves what they would do if they were in his shoes. All he did was what any artist should be doing: He made the best deal possible in a fast-changing music retail environment.

Whether industry people are angered or not, this won't be the last deal done this way. Other artists will now wake up and see the opportunities that exist for them outside of traditional label distribution.


-----

AS I WAS SAYING...
I did a search of my archived commentaries, and found the word RIAA several hundred times in dozens of articles written over the past five years.
Most of those articles have been critical of the RIAA's do-nothing-except-file-lawsuit policies that have done nothing to help the industry the association allegedly serves. (And it's five years and I'm still waiting for anybody to e-mail and defend the RIAA and talk about what they've actually done to help the industry through these tough times)

This week, RIAA defendant Deborah Foster was granted an attorney fee award of $68,685.23, as the result of extended and delayed legal issues. US District Court Judge Lee R. West actually granted the award months ago, but now it includes a specific dollar value. Ms. Foster originally demanded the fees after the RIAA dropped its claim in Capitol v. Foster, and instead focused their energies on Deborah's daughter, Amanda. Deborah claimed no infringement liability, and argued that the label trade group subjected her to unnecessary fees. The court agreed, and rendered its decision this past Monday.

This is the first attorneys fee award against the RIAA. (You can read the entire decision here: http://tinyurl.com/2nrs82 ) But now the tide has turned, and it's likely that others now might fight similar cases against the RIAA. Which means, of course, the RIAA risks spending more time in court, but this time defending itself, not the industry.

With this precedent in place, the RIAA now has to decide if the risks of filing future lawsuits against alleged illegal downloaders are really worth it.

The answer, of course, is NO. The lawsuits have not accomplished a thing. Even if they win some lawsuits, the RIAA loses by their inaction to do anything else more meaningful at a most critical time.