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The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed yet.
The big labels want music to be free to move about the internet (as long as they get a cut of it.) Who listens to major-label music anymore? Except as a joke. Wired’s Listening Post has a story on Jim Griffin’s plans for an ISP music tax.
Should the music industry apply top-notch accounting to the mp3 files that move over the last-mile, they might be surprised at the growing percentage of them which do not belong to any label, but are instead truly independent.
I’m a little doubtful that there will be a way for me, as an independent producer, to tag an mp3 file as my work, and the receive a share of the music-tax.
If anyone can do this fairly, Jim Griffin can. The technical and cultural hurdles to providing compensation for the garage-bands and bedroom mashup artists who will be making an ever growing slice of this pie are hard to overestimate. Who gets paid when I listen to The Grey Album?
If I only listen to stuff like the The Grey Album, where does my money go?
These questions may not be burning for Sony execs, but the right answer here could make all the difference in the cultural flowering the internet promises. Failing to answer them would mean just another litigation inspired tax (like the blank-cassette) that does little to encourage artistic effort.
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