Short-Sighted NARAS Speech

At the Grammy Awards, the NARAS President gave his annual speech. Rather than issuing a call to artists and labels to try to meet the demands for consumers for online music, he lashed out at online song swapping. I agree that it’s illegal and that artists see basically nothing from the current crop of online music systems (including the major label systems, from what the press reports). Rather than whining about it on national TV, they should be taking some risks and trying new business models that just may be what consumers want.

As they exist today, MusicNet and PressPlay are not the future, because they don’t give consumers what they want. (BTW, not all consumers have a primary goal of getting free music…)