Good Things Come to Those Who Wait

After nine years of waiting, I have finally bought Dream Theater's A Change of Seasons. I've had the MP3 for the past nine years, but the title track is such a good song that I've always wanted to buy the CD. Lest you think I bought a CD just because I liked one song on it, "A Change of Seasons" is 23 minutes long and is basically the CD; the other songs are all live covers.

Maybe I'm a little strange, but if I like the artist and like the album, I'll buy the CD. It might not be right after I listen to the MP3, but it'll happen eventually. In this case, it took nine years. But if the RIAA had its way, I would never have listened to "A Change of Seasons" to begin with, or for that matter most other stuff that I listen to, and consequently, I would never have spent the $10.99 now lining the coffers of an organization too narrow-minded to see it's rapidly becoming obsolete.

Would there be no more music if no one bought CDs or songs from iTunes? In China, piracy is rampant, and yet somehow they happen to have a thriving music industry. How do they do it? Instead of relying on record sales, artists make their money from concerts, memorabilia, and so on. This way isn't better or worse than what artists in America do; it's just a different way of making a living, for both the artist and the music industry. Obviously the RIAA will want to stop people from file sharing; it represents a threat to their current business model. But instead of realizing that things can't stay the same anymore, they seem to hope that if they just push hard enough, everything will be all right. In other words, we're not facing the end of music, but just maybe the end of the RIAA.