Disturbed lead singer blasts RIAA

[Drunk On Duvel]

One of my favorite bands Disturbed lead singer blasts the RIAA for the recent lawsuits. He does have a point when he says

Draiman asserts that the actions taken by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) are protecting corporate profits, not artists: "For the artists, my ass...I didn't ask them to protect me, and I don't want their protection."

http://launch.yahoo.com/read/news.asp?contentID=214602

So even the artists themselves are getting pissed off, and with good reason. The RIAA is biting the hand that feeds them.

And he's not alone:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...11/MN12066.DTL

"Lawsuits on 12-year-old kids for downloading music, duping a mother into paying a $2,000 settlement for her kid?" said rapper Chuck D of Public Enemy. "Those scare tactics are pure Gestapo."

"File sharing is a reality, and it would seem that the labels would do well to learn how to incorporate it into their business models somehow," said genre- busting DJ Moby in a post on his Web site. "Record companies suing 12-year-old girls for file sharing is kind of like horse-and-buggy operators suing Henry Ford."

Many artists painted the record industry as a bloated, overstuffed giant with too many mouths to feed and too many middlemen to pay, selling an overpriced, often mediocre product.

"They have all these abnormal practices that keep driving the price up," said Gregg Rollie, founding member of Santana and Journey. "People think musicians make all that money, but it's not true. We make the smallest amount."

Many other factors along with the Internet are having an impact on the industry's financial slump: the poor economy in general, computer CD burners, the high retail price, and mundane, uninteresting music.

heh.

[keezel]

That's good stuff! This is the sort of post about the RIAA and the musicians that I like to read. Thank you.

[Ennis]

I think this is really gonna cause a backlash for the RIAA, they have misjudged their consumers and I think they will pay for it.

[St1cky]

I think they need to pay me for the 15 songs i don't like on teh 50 cent CD. I only like 4 of them.