Yep, these guys are probably right. Artists are still getting the short end of the stick when it comes to the iTunes music store. [see graphic below]

BUT I think that in the end, musicians will win. And we will win. And the Record Companies will lose… and they know it.

I realized this when I saw that good ole Ben Folds’ new method of music delivery skips the middleman. (He’s recording three EPs this fall with about 5 tracks per album, mixing the songs, and then delivering them to iTunes, with a small number of CDs given to some indie record stores and the rest for sale at his shows.)

Doing it this way, without involving the recording industry, he is taking home the share that would be the record company’s…

I mean, it just seems so simple, but for some reason I guess it will take some time for musicians who don’t quite trust a new system to start doing this… but once they do, whether it’s iTunes or some other online store - or a bunch of online stores, or whatever, it will be interesting to see how the record company reacts to being an eliminated middleman.

But then again, we might just crash the power grid and all of this talk involving this Internet “mumbo-jumbo” will be pointless. But that’s silly.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 26th, 2003 at 11:54 pm and is filed under Copyright. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.