Create Digital Music » Universal, Microsoft Screw Over Artists, Set Absurd and Dangerous Precedent with Zune:
The interesting question is, why would Microsoft agree unless they’re completely out of their minds?
Don’t bother bringing up the “pirated music” argument, because that doesn’t make any sense, either. Piracy, of course, isn’t mentioned in the Microsoft press release. The New York Times claims piracy was part of the argument. But let’s not kid ourselves: this isn’t about piracy, it’s about money. My strong anecdotal suspicion is that most of the music on people’s iPods, for instance, is actually ripped from their CD collection. But record labels don’t care that that’s theoretically legal, because they’d rather charge you again each time you move from one storage medium to another. The record companies were always in the business of making money off of distribution. If the money to be made shifts to electronics manufacturers and they don’t get a piece of it, they’re unhappy — not because they’re concerned about the ethics of the situation, but because they want to make more money than they’re making now, not less. And frankly, that’s their prerogative; the job of corporations is to make money, which is why we don’t look to them for a moral compass. But why Microsoft, also in the job of making money, would give money away is another question. Apparently, Universal scared them into doing so under the threat of removing their releases from Microsoft’s Zune store. This is tribute money, nothing else. But the fact that Microsoft agreed is a little scary, and it’s even scarier in terms of what it means for artists.
3:51 AM
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