Aah, I go away for a week and all hell breaks loose at London Calling. Former Island Records MD Tim Clark declaimed about the, er, “fucked” state of the industry, as reported at The Register.

What’s interesting about that post is a comment at the bottom, which is so succinct in its analysis I think it deserves to be reproduced in full here:

On behalf of the public, I want:

1. DECENT quality recordings out for me to download when I want. That’s high quality, so when I listen to the product I have just purchased I actually hear it properly on my new expensive sound system.

2. Freedom. Fuck subscriptions, I don’t care about them. Charge me 50p or something for the song, and as long as I don’t make it easily accessible for everyone to copy from me (putting it on BitTorrent etc.) you should ensure that I can put it onto a CD, or my phone, or my Creative MP3 player, or even onto another computer. DRM free please - When I pay for my music i’m paying for the right to listen to it when and where I want, using whatever technology I decide I want to use. i’ve paid for it, let me listen to it on what device I want when I chose.

3. Reasonable prices. Stop feeding us this crap. It’s still costing around £8 for an album on iTunes - nearly the same as what Play.com charge. If they can charge £9, and you charge £8 - then what the hell is all that crap about distribution and media costs for? An artist is in a studio, send it electronically to the distributors (Napster, iTunes etc), job done. There’s no comparision to the CD or cassette market, so stop pricing it like there is.

So in summary:

If I can get, for 50p a track (or £4.50 for an album) 320kbps quality tracks with no DRM then i’ll stop borrowing mates CD’s and ripping them, and I’ll stop using BitTorrent.

Then, and only then will I be prepared to part my hard earn’t cash - e.g. when the product and service is worth it.

Very well put, and sentiments wholeheartedly supported by A Song A Day.

The Turtles – You Showed Me

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