Replacing DRM with Music Tax - Stupid, I Agree

Today’s post comes as just a link to another article about Peter Jenner’s views on DRM being replaced by a music tax. Along with Michael Arrington at Techcrunch, I can’t help but highly agree with Mr. Arrington. History shows that when governments intervene in industries, the results are most always disastrous.

Michael Writes:

Music industry revenues will be a set size, regardless of the quality or type of music they release. Incentives to innovate will evaporate. There will only be competition for market share, with no attempt to build the size of market or serve less-popular niches. Forget labels building new brands and encouraging early artists to succeed - they’ll bleed existing big names for all they are worth and work hard to keep anything new - labels, artists, and songwriters - out of the market. New entrants just means more competition for a static amount of money. Collusion by existing players will run rampant.

I will be tracking this one closely. There has GOT to be a better way to manage the selling of music in today’s markets. Bringing this issue to the form of a brute tax is not the way to foster innovation and come up with interesting, more effective business models for the music business.