Digital Motion dot net

Music Tax Details From Source: “Pay Us Not To Sue You” (TechCrunch)

We learned yesterday that Warner Music, the third largest music label, is gunning for a $5/month music tax on U.S. residents.

The death throes of an industry that hasn’t figured out how to adapt. One thing that I never figured out about the music industry was it’s inability to be innovative around it’s business models. At the independent level, sure. But at the top-end, they are working on nearly the same model since the day the industry originated. For an industry that is all about “cool,” this is surprising. Their current set of challenges aren’t new. They are dating back twenty years! Remember “Home Taping is Killing Music?” The technology has been evolving for decades and rather than embrace it and figure out how to work with it, the music industry has fought it every step of the way until we reach this point: “Pay us in case you might want to pirate music.”

This is extortion and the ISPs need to band together to fight it.