Flutterby™! : Artists on RIAA

I've stayed silent on the whole RIAA doing their best to piss off music purchasers even more thing, as CD purchases decline more quickly than file sharing and Apple's iTunes service thrives, because others have been speaking much more eloquently. In this case, it's the artists that the RIAA claims to represent:

"This is not rocket science," said David Draiman of Disturbed, a hard-rock band with a platinum debut album on the charts. "Instead of spending all this money litigating against kids who are the people they're trying to sell things to in the first place, they have to learn how to effectively use the Internet."

And some of this discussion ties back to the debate around that Clay Shirky article that Shawn linked to on Tuesday:

"Bruce Springsteen probably earned more in 10 nights at Meadowlands last month than in his entire recording career," said rocker Huey Lewis.

For years, most of what the artists have been getting out of record contracts has been fame, and it's been up to the artist to leverage that fame into money via performance. If that model is to remain, the record companies are going to die. I'd like to see the artists able to make something from their efforts, but it sure won't bother me to see the L.A. lawyers go broke.