Music Business Propaganda

I go away on vacation for a couple of weeks and all hell breaks loose. Well, maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but none the less, it must have been an eventful fourteen days for more than the four thousand people with me on the Royal Caribbean cruise that left out of  Bayonne on June 10th.

When I got back at 8am on Saturday morning there was a strange peacefulness in the air at Cape Liberty. Our ship had reached its final destination overlooking the Statue of Liberty @ Ellis Island. The views from my balcony were surprisingly just as stunning as the waters near Kings Warf, Bermuda where we had started two weeks before. It wasn’t until the baggage handlers began hurling our luggage into what looked like garbage bins at ground level, did I and the other passengers onboard realize that this wasn’t at all paradise.

Just over the Hudson River stands a world that used to thrive on the sales of recorded music. Manhattan has had its moments of decline and eras of overspending, but nothing quite like the mess that major record labels find themselves in today. Executives were like Emperors in the 80′s & 90′s when I first started my journey as a music professional.

The evidence that this has finally changed is in a letter forwarded to me by a colleague while I was relaxing on the beach in the Caribbean. In this bit of music business propaganda, the CEO of Universal Music, Jim Urie pronounced a mandate for the entire music industry to negotiate a voluntary deal with the Internet Service Providers…voluntary being the operative word.

Dear Xxxx,

I’ve received hundreds of e-mails enthusiastically reacting to my “call to action” at the National Association of Recording Merchandisers convention last month.  The music business is facing huge challenges from piracy and theft. Never before in American history has an entire industry been so decimated by illegal behavior.  Yet the government has not responded in a meaningful way to help us address this crisis.  My call to action is for all of us to become more aggressive in lobbying our government, more outspoken in drawing attention to the problems caused by piracy and more actively engaged.  We cannot win this fight alone.

Governments outside the U.S. are legislating, regulating and playing a prominent role in discussions with ISPs (Internet Service Providers).  Sales have dramatically improved in these countries.  How is it that the U.S. – with the most successful music community in the world – is not keeping up with places like South Korea, France, the UK and New Zealand?

As I said in my speech, I hope that the industry can negotiate a voluntary deal with the ISPs. We need our government representatives to encourage this.  But whether or not we reach a deal with the ISPs, our government needs to know that we’ve got a piracy problem and we need real solutions.  To accomplish this, our government needs to hear from all of us, so they know that their constituents are out here.  Join me in calling on our elected officials to fight piracy.  Please help by forwarding this email to your colleagues, friends– everyone who loves music.  And consider enlisting your entire company to help in this fight.  Then by clicking on the link below a message will be sent to your representatives in Washington.  Help us launch a viral campaign to cut off access to the online sites that are used to steal our music, our property and our jobs.  In only takes a second but it can make a tremendous impact.

Click HERE.

Please help us by forwarding this link.

Sincerely,
Jim Urie
Learn More at www.musicrightsnow.org

For years the record labels and the associations that support them have tried curtail the effects of digitization by implementing laws that no one cares to follow. I don’t pretend to be a no it all on the legalese of copyright infringement, but this letter looks like a re-election speech. The majors want the industry back and they are reportedly spending a lot of money to get it. In a perfectly coordinated pitch, Jim (who I do not know) leans on his friends like a lobbyist for the tobacco industry to band together and stop illegal file sharing for good.

Do you think they will succeed?