Following up on the last posting I made here, I see that Cory Doctorow has written an article in today’s Guardian, about how the music industry is slowly commiting suicide:

This month’s announcement of a back-room deal between ISPs (internet service providers) and the big record companies to spy on suspected copyright infringers and reduce the quality of their internet connections is just the latest paragraph in the record industry’s long, self-pitying suicide note, and it’s left me wishing they’d just pull the trigger already and stop beating their chests and telling us all how unfair it all is…

I couldn’t agree more with him. That the music industry is in such dire straits is mainly their own fault for ignoring new technologies for so long, and hoping that they’d just go away. There’s plenty of money to be made by offering innovative services at a reasonable price as we can see by looking at services such as:

• iTunes (music downloads – 5 billion songs sold and counting)
• Rhapsody(music streaming on-demand – 5 million songs available)
• Last.FM (music streaming on-demand – 21 million users)
• Shazam (identify snips of music you have heard – 4 million tracks cataloged)

So come on, music companies – stop moaning and start innovating!