If you are of a certain age, you will have been a member at one time of either the RCA BMG Music Club or the Columbia House Music Club. This fine service, like its inspiration, the Book of the Month Club, will send you n number of 8 track tapes records cassettes CDs for only one (1) penny! (And then charge an arm and a leg for “shipping and handling,” for which they settled a class-action suit sometime early in this decade.) A long while back, four years to be exact, I took them up, again, on their fabulous offer. The only catch, aside from the shipping and handling, is that I needed to purchase four CDs within four years. That shouldn’t be too hard, right?
Except their selection is so boring the only time I bought anything was ten minutes ago, in order to avoid having to pay the inflated price for not buying anything.
In discussing MGM v. Grokster, Paul Hoffman opens his remarks with the observation that the conventional journalists are writing filler.
The media coverage of the Grokster decision is so slanted towards the current big music industry that one wonders if the RIAA has spent more money lobbying the press than they have Congress. Nearly every article I have read can be summarized as “this is good for consumers because now they will be able to buy more music.”
Perhaps this cream of the journalistic crop should venture out into the empty, irrelevant music stores, or join a has-been music club, or listen to the radio. Then they might begin to wonder if the RIAA pays penniless students to fill the seats at the Grammy Awards.