Drapetomaniac

This week and article entitled, Don’t miss lessons Radiohead, Trent Reznor offer seemed to propose that since Trent Reznor is a bad business man, record labels are both moral and necessary.

“Reznor said he didn’t get involved with Williams to profit, but acknowledged that he spent too much making the album and said he hasn’t yet recouped his money.” This only says he spent too much money. How many times does a Hollywood movie do that? Or any entrepreneur? Even while pointing out EMI only has 5 profitable acts, this point is used to prove that somehow having huge coffers is necessary to produce music. The whole article reads like a damnation of of independent musicians and entrepreneurship in general. All of the arguments used here could be used against any small business in any arena.

• Corporations have the money to absorb risk, you don’t
• People with MBAs work at Corporations and you don’t have one

The whole article seemed desperate to make a point. There are a lot of successful independent and small labels and musicians. They fail and succeed just like any business, corporation or cartel. The inclusion of Radiohead in the article was just bizarre, especially since the article points out the album they release as ” pay what you want” became number 1 last week due to physical copies also sold (which also seems to dent the idea downloads inherently lop of record company profits).

Also on the horizon of Open Content and business – Lee Lessig released his fourth book under Creative Commons. Future of Ideas is now Free. And, as Lessig points out, this was partially a business choice as the book was release right after 9-11, which had much more attention than any book release announcement.