Embrace Technology or Die!

When I look at the situation the RIAA has created for itself, I see one glaring, and soon to be fatal mistake. The RIAA zigged when i-Tunes zagged and that difference is why i-Tunes brings in massive amounts of profit when all other forms of music sales are going broke.

The "zig" that the RIAA made was a fundamental decision to resist technology. Admittedly, it is the same mistake that I started to make in my hesitation to get into the blogging world. At first, I saw it as a silly way to pass time and a great way to beg for identity theft. In much the same way, the RIAA has looked at peer to peer networks and digital music as a great way to steal music and nothing more.

I was shoved into an epiphany of sorts by a former colleague of mine when his blog post suggested that a digital footprint could in fact be used as an asset for things like college admission. This got me thinking about all the positive ways to utilize these new technologies, and ultimately lead to this blog's creation.

Unfortunately, the RIAA has no such former colleague, and as such is digging it's grave. The market clearly doesn't want to buy CD's any more. We demand much more convenience than before, and more importantly, easier access to our music and videos than ever before. CDs are now seen as cumbersome relics of an era foregone, but the RIAA clings tightly to it regardless.

Before the RIAA began to sue its customers (another HUGE mistake), they should have looked more objectively at the data surrounding music and file-sharing. If they had put their biases aside, they would have realized that file sharing actually INCREASED the volume of CD sales, largely attributed to the "try before you buy" scenario it presented. This singular piece of information should have forced them to find a way to embrace this new technology, rather than fear it.

It is amazing to me that the industry insiders missed such a golden opportunity. They has all the knowledge, power, and resources available long before Apple ever thought of i-Tunes. They could have put their heads together and created at least some viable alternatives to the i-Tunes model, but instead the took the opposite approach and tried to stop the adoption and usage of this technology. As we're seeing now, that is going to be their undoing as they spiral ever downward into oblivion as i-Tunes continues to perform very, very well.