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Re:RIAA shuts down Muxtape by adrianwaj on Tuesday August 19, 2008 @05:04AM (#280220)
The RIAA has been doing this since Napster with concerted and ruthless effort - in other words for the last 9 years. I am a little sick of hearing about this type of news, as I am with the music of a now much smaller stable of artists the Big Labels have been pumping into the community during this time.

Here are some factors I attribute to the decline in the music industry:

- Artists are locked into contracts with RIAA labels

- Most artists still looking for the best deal. Label can provide advances and recording studios. Even big name artists speaking out against P2P.

- CDs, which were once the dominant format are now being marginalized, but only slowly. The equipment is still around and goes through a replacement cycle by users. Handheld and car players have taken time to be developed and purchased.

- Ogg and FLAC have only slowly risen in popularity, with MP3 a royalty imbuing format and yet the most prevalent.

- ISP bandwith costs for streaming have had to come down.

- Too many music sites competing for the same small-to-medium sized bands. No unified charts that could theoretically be created.

- Not enough umbrella organizations for non-RIAA sites and artists: does SoundExhange have an independent competitor?

- MusicBrainz (music metadata) not universal enough

- Micropayments not mainstream

- song-profiling, listener-profiling only a recent development, and proprietary

- Listeners still very much in love with old songs (RIAA back catalogue) with new music often of short-term quality

- Massive RIAA lobbying for home internet streaming laws, and legal action against P2P users.

- Semantic web features still in early phases to make audio and video a "free-floating" entity

- Home sound recording and production technology still improving to studio quality levels

- Ticketing and gig tracking sites: no clear cut destination.

- Does iTunes provide enough price differences between RIAA and non-RIAA content?

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