RIAA Should Be Worried

Click here to read a recent article on Research done at the University of North Carolina. The study states that despite many espoused opinions to the contrary, file downloading makes little or no effect on record sales. As you can imagine, this has outraged many RIAA supporters who clearly state that declining sales is the fault of file sharing programs, starting with Napster and moving down the line. Never mind that the current state of the music industry is stagnant, focused only on first week album sales while sacrificing quality and variety. (Boy, that sounded mean!) Far be it for Record Executives to take the blame for the industry's downturn; it must be their target customers fault!

This is yet another example of how passing the buck makes the music industry miss the real issue - folks don't trust you, don't like your product, and are looking for alternatives. They don't like being bullied, prosecuted, or assumed to be criminals. One cannot alienate potential customers and then complain that they don't buy your product.