As some of you probably already know, the RIAA won its case against a Minnesota woman who was accused of sharing songs through Kazaa.  The judge told the jury that the RIAA didn’t have to prove that anyone actually copied the files, or that the woman had herself put them on the network…only that she own the computer in question, and that the files Had been made available.

In a lot of unsavory ways, the RIAA is like the owners in baseball, whose only contribution to the sport is to act as a gateway to the game, through which both players and fans have to pass.  The fans hate them, the players hate them, but they own the game, so to speak, so you have to deal with them on their terms, like it or not.  But unlike baseball fans and players, music lovers and musicians now have a way to bypass completely the RIAA, and I think it’s time now that more of us concentrated on doing just that.  There are plenty of legal means, if online sharing still pricks your conscience.

Rather then buy a new CD, I’ve started looking for titles I want on the used market.  I get a CD at half, to a quarter the price, and it rips to my iPod just as easily as a new one, and the sweet part of it is that the RIAA doesn’t get a penny of my money on it.  Of course, neither to the musicians…but if they want to sell to me directly, as Radiohead and others are now doing, I’ll be more then happy to buy from them.

What looks like commercial suicide is, in today’s reality, sound business sense. Records, CDs or downloads now have all become downgraded to the status of promotional tools – useful to sell concert tickets and fan paraphernalia. While there is still good money to be made in music, and particularly on the concert circuit, the record business – blame it on piracy, too many CD giveaways or the advent of the recordable CD – is a busted flush.

A revealing story doing the rounds in America tells of a young rock band who decided to stop selling their CDs at gigs after they discovered that by offering their CDs for $10 they were cannibalising sales of their $20 T-shirts. The truth now is that a rudimentary cotton garment with a band logo stamped across it that has probably been manufactured for pennies in a Third World sweatshop costs about twice as much as an album recorded in a state-of-the-art western studio. And even at that price, recorded music isn’t selling.

That Times of London article relates something I’ve seen happening for quite some time now.  Once upon a time concerts were promotional tools used by the record industry to sell albums.  That’s completely reversed now, and recorded music exists mostly to give people a reason to go see concerts.  And go they are…

The reprioritisation in recent years of live music over the recorded variety has been dramatic. Attendance at arena shows rose here by 11% last year. By the time 2007 bows out, 450 music festivals will have taken place in the UK.

Every week brings news of another frenzied assault on the box office. Last Monday Ticket-master reported that 20,000 tickets for the Spice Girls’ first reunion concert at London’s O2 arena in December sold out in 38 seconds, with 1m fans registering to buy. Three weeks back more than a million clamoured for seats at the forthcoming Led Zeppelin reunion. Glastonbury disposed of its 135,000 weekend passes for this year’s event within two hours – taking more than £21m in the process.

Ticket prices, especially for A-list artists, have soared as the price of CDs has tumbled…

Music, is a performing art, unlike say, painting (William Alexander and his student Bob Ross notwithstanding).  A recording can only capture a performance.  It’s great to be able to do that, some performances should live forever, and its wonderful to be living in an age where you can carry a thousand performances around with you on your hip and listen to them whenever and wherever you want.  But the soul of music is the stage, not the recording studio.