Hurray! At last someone actually willing to stand up to the BPI bully-boys. Let's just hope that the government listen to the recommendations from this thinktank and actually have the bottle to enact a law that protects the rights of the consumer over the rights of the multi-national entertainment conglomerates who think it's ok to install stealth software on your PC should you dare to listen to a CD on it.
We know what the big five want - they want the same ridiculous rights of ownership of their "product" as the software companies currently enjoy. They don't want you to own music, they want you only to own a license to listen to it. That way they can make you pay as many times as they like if you want to keep listening to it. I'm waiting for the first online store to try charging for a "music upgrade"; "but it's been remastered so that's another fiver you owe us."
Unfortunately it's the only way that they can see to retain their monopoly on music distribution - if they stitch up online distribution now by tying us all into proprietry DRM and music leasing they will eventually close off the internet to all the independant artists, through technology and consumer inertia.
None of the BPI recommendations are pro-artist, unless you sell so many units the record companies need you more than you need them. I think musicians are starting to realise that.
The record companies don't even have to pay huge advances anymore - they just pick up bands that have got a following themselves through hard work, the internet or a reality TV show. The Strokes even recorded their own first album - they paid for it.
CD's still cost less than 70p each to produce for quantaties over 1000 (that includes cases and artwork) yet we are lead to believe that £9.97 is "supermarket cheap". Yes, it costs to distribute them but a cd weighs as much as what? A banana? Bananas come from the tropics. On a boat or even by plane. They have a supply chain; producers, marketers, distributors, and sellers. They don't cost £10 each.
