Go toward the light, Carol-Anne

Hopefully that is what the recording industry may be doing at long last. Last week at a Norwegian summer resort by the name of Kristiansand, representatives of the many and varied facets of the music industry got together to hold hands and sing.

Ok, maybe no singing occurred (hopefully not considering most of what they put out sounds like cats and other small creatures being tortured) but the fact that this snake pit of a business actually played nicely is momentous in itself. As for holding hands, I’m sure if they could let go of something else dear to them then it just may have happened.

These doyens of industry discovered:

1. Prosecuting end users is silly – when you can monetise them
2. Since “piracy” today means “get free music”, the future has to offer something that “feels like free”
3. Vastly wealthier industries than the music business today profit from the demand for recorded music – without giving anything back. That isn’t fair, and it’s got to change
4. Digital music services of the future need a better deal than the begrudging and piecemeal licenses offered so far by rights holders: but these have to be so attractive only the suicidal would want to turn it down.

Essentially, these collective minds came up with what we’ve all known for years – looking at the list, number 1 and 4 seem absurdly obvious. Of course, when they do finally dip a toe in the waters of the ocean of reality, it will be heralded as ‘groundbreaking’, ‘momentous’, ‘visionary’ etc, etc, and there will be much mutual backslapping and self-gratification. For the rest of us, we’ll just shake our heads, and be glad that they’ve finally come to the party.

For more details, Andrew Orlowski from El ‘Reg has the goods

Edit: El ‘Reg has more on this.

Update: Having thoughts on this, with regard to a new approach. For my latest on this, see here.