Dear music industry: go fuck yourself.

Music royalty groups ASCAP and BMI are harassing online music stores such as iTunes to pay performance fees not only for the songs that they sell, but for the short clips that they use as previews. You know, the things that entice people to pay for music. They want to be paid for advertisements for their product.


Just how backwards is this industry? How many years can they continue to just not get it in such an extreme way? You would have thought that maybe it would have taken a few years for them to figure out the internet, but we're way beyond that. This entire industry seems to be run by people who don't just not understand the internet, but are aggressive about not understanding the internet. They have their old way of doing business and the old way the world works, and they'll be damned if any new fangled thing like a complete upheaval in the way people acquire and listen to music is going to change that.

It'd almost be funny if the people who were really being harmed by these jackasses weren't the artists. Bands aren't the ones pushing for something that will only end with their best form of advertising being pulled from the iTunes Music Store (because make no mistake, that's what will happen before Apple pays for fucking song clips). It's these royalties idiots, the same people who almost killed off Pandora.


So here's the bottom line, guys: you're doing it wrong. And you've been doing it wrong for a while. You need to figure out a new way of doing business, and that doesn't mean just shifting fees around and charging where you clearly shouldn't be charging. Earn your paychecks, because unlike the bands you purport to be representing, you're still getting them. [CNET via Electronista]