An Open Letter

An open letter to the talking heads of the music industry

So, you're the big kid on the block. You win through intimidation. You're a bully. You sue people for downloading songs off the internet. Rich people, poor people... it doesn't matter. You want to make an example of anyone and everyone that would dare "steal" from you.

But, just like most bullies, you're dumb. You're so self-centered and self-absorbed that you fail to see how simple a resolution to this issue really is. As I'm driving in my car, I flip from radio station to radio station, listening to whatever I want (well, ok, whatever station I want but what I actually listen to is limited to what is being played). Anyway, the point is this... I'm not paying for it. It's free to me. Why? Because of advertising.

So, here's what you do: Get Napster, Microsoft, Apple or anyone to create a sharing website. You put every song ever created on that website for people to download whatever/whenever they want. All for free. And everyone is happy. Oh wait, I forgot the most important part, money. Ok, easy enough. One word. Advertising. To download a song, you sit through a 30 second audio or video ad. When the ad is done playing, you give the person downloading 15 seconds to click the continue button to start the download. The download finishes and another page comes up that says "this download sponsored by" with a "return to search page" button.

Wait, it gets even better the advertising prices are based on number of downloads. For instance, if Garth Brooks comes out with a new album with a monster song and everyone wants to download it the cost to advertise at that spot is the highest. Do that for the top 10 downloaded songs. 11-20 would be a set rate. 21-50 would be another rate. So on and so forth. The more a song is downloaded, the higher the advertising rate.

You could even allow album downloads. Simply make the person downloading sit through a 2 or 3 minute block of "commercials" before the download starts. Track the album downloads the same way you do "singles" and assign a value to the 1 album download and go down from there.

What smart business wouldn't want in on that? I'm sure the advertising rates would be cheaper than on TV and you'd get a guaranteed number of people seeing your advertising. Remember if the user doesn't watch the ad and click the "continue" button, they get redirected back to their previous page. Nobody could skip out on watching the ads. But, because it would be free for the user (the fan) they would have no reason not to watch the ads.

How come nobody has thought of this? Maybe if the idiots trying to sue everyone (but only catching a very small portion of the people illegally downloading) would wake up and try to solve the problem instead of throwing lawsuits at it, everyone actually could be happy.

So, what do you say? Sound like a plan? Would you watch a 30 second ad to download whatever song you want... for free? Would you watch 6 commercials to download an entire album? I sure would. I'd have every song I'd ever wanted and I'd watch all the commercials I had to. I already watch ads on TV so this would be nothing.

I'm sure this is just a dream of mine. I can't imagine anyone in the music industry would actually do something like this. But, hey, at least I'm thinking about a solution instead being a bully and suing everyone.