QotD: The End of the Recording Industry

The recording industry as we know it is as good as dead, having overdosed on a toxic cocktail of arrogance and stupidity. Its failure to embrace downloadable music at a critical juncture — ca. 2001, when a mutually beneficial deal with Napster was the only option that made sense economically — will go down in history as the business equivalent of Napoleon sending his armies into Russia.

In the market, the quickest way to commit suicide is by badgering your clients, rather than listen to their needs; by willfully crippling your products, rather than enhance them; by stubbornly defaulting to litigation, rather than innovation.

So sue me (ha!): I no more shed a tear over the industry's last gasps than I would over the demise of coal-fired trains. Truthfully, I'm rather entertained by the spectacle of seeing formerly high-flying record executives twisting in the wind.

Rogier van Bakel, "The Music Industry: Tonedeaf and Near Death", Nobody's Business, 2007-07-02