The Music Industry’s Last Stand Will Be A Music Tax

The economics for the artist will work out like this:

1. The artist (or record company) will front the cost of recording the material.

2. The material will be released on the internet.

3. ISP’s will collect money (on some plans according to usage)from people downloading the album. You see, there is no such thing as downloading something for free.

4. The artist receives no direct return on his investment, which would be acceptable if nobody was profiting, but in this case one party is eating the cost of producing something and another party (who has invested nothing) is taking the profit.

Of course there are complications to this idea. How do you know what people are downloading? And if you could know, wouldn’t someone just write some code that would hide this info?

The only option for the artist (probably how this will all shake out eventually) is to stop considering recorded music a source of income and treat it as a promotional item to draw people to the live show. Smart artists like Madonna (I said smart, not good) are already going this route.