Michael Arrington made a post talking about the wonderful idea from the music industry to create a music “tax”.
Yes. That’s right. Imagine paying for music by being charged 5 dollars more on your internet bill. Music labels had such a strangle hold on the music industry before more and more people starting downloading (mostly) free music. Because they failed to plan for this advancement in technology, they were hit with a huge dilemma.
With the large decrease in CD sales 
and the rising number of downloads of songs, the large music labels were 5 steps behind the rest of the world trying their best to gain back lost revenue by suing their own customers.
Terrible idea. And yet they don’t learn from their terrible ideas.
Putting a “music tax” on people’s internet bills is an extremely unethical way to try to regain control. What if the user doesn’t download music? and doesn’t plan on downloading music in the future? Too bad for them I guess.
I’ve said this since I first started downloading music.
Music artists should have to WORK for their money. By having more concerts, etc…. and not rely on having a one hit wonder to bring them any success.
I don’t know if the major music labels have explored all of their options, but there could be several ways they could survive.
1) Change the way they do business.
Instead of focusing on the “Label” aspect of music, and producing CDs, look more to having more control on concerts.
2) Offer the product via their websites
They currently DO offer downloadable music via their websites however it is equal with the price of a song with iTunes. Not that competitive in price, and must rely on high levels of traffic through their websites (which iTunes has much of)
3) Offer packages
The music labels could vary well offer subscription packages monthy/or annually and allow the user to download a certain amount (or unlimited) of music in that time frame.
I came across an EXCELLENT post by Gerd Leonhard called Gerd Leonhard’s Open Letter To The Independent Music Industry. In his post he terms the new way of consuming music “Music 2.0″, and continues to talk about how much different ways of consuming music are effecting us. The music industry must realize this new force, and act upon it. If they don’t they will be their own worst enemy and suffer greatly.
–Jerry
