One Of Our Favorite Music Bloggers Turns Withering Gaze On The RIAA

We’ve been longtime admirers of the cassingle-blogging and Idiot’s Guides posted at jefitoblog, and his take on the RIAA’s hassling of music bloggers is a must-read for anyone with an RSS reader, especially since it’s kind of a downer:

The industry is in panic mode, obviously; we’ve all known that for some time. They’ve repeatedly acted to protect short-term profits at the expense of consumer goodwill, long-term success, and quality music — but that’s been the RIAA’s method from the beginning, and everyone was up to their necks in hookers and blow just ten years ago, so why change now? Why not keep swindling/blaming artists and consumers?

I think the short-term prognosis, for all of us, is pretty grim. The majors will continue to merge, purge, and litigate, and mp3 blogging will become something you don’t do for long unless you really enjoy host-jumping every few months. I love doing this — I’ve made some wonderful friends here — and I think this site is pretty far down on the list as far as RIAA targets go, because I don’t cover the newest & hippest very often. But if/when the shutdown comes, I think that’ll probably be it for me; I just don’t have the time or energy to keep finding new hosts.

The sad irony here, I think, is that filesharing probably won’t ever die. It’s just too easy, and appeals too deeply to our need to have common experiences. The RIAA can’t do anything about that — all it can do is piss people off — and instead of adapting to lower (read: more realistic) profit margins, reinvesting in A&R, and partnering with the people who care about its product, it seems committed to emulating a monkey with its hand in a coconut trap.

We’d say the RIAA’s behavior is more akin to that of a just-tranquilized bear, but aside from that quibble, we pretty much cosign everything he has to say–and add that an MP3 blog world that didn’t have jefitoblog is a grim one indeed. Seriously, the people who actually remember one-and-out bands like Kingofthehill should, at the very least, be somewhat appreciated by the RIAA.

A Lovely Month for a Boycott [jefitoblog]