StandardsDT's Blogg

I've been having some trouble today with my blog. I lost my previous entries when trying to update to a custom look. So starting today is a fresh new blog that will be updated periodically with my thoughts, tech news, etc. I'll update more in a bit as soon as I get some things fine tuned.

::Update::

Everything should be set now. I'm going to be adding new things to the blog such as a flickr feed, youtube stream, RSS Support and who else knows what until I can afford a domain name and typepad.

This New Year has been off to a shaky start. My car had a flat for a total of 8 Days and I had just gotten the tire fixed yesterday. I wanted to get it fixed sooner but for whatever reason parents like to hold off till last minute. I'm guilty of this too I guess it's in the gene's or something. Oh well. On top of that I've found that I'm not getting along so much with my mom anymore. I don't know if it's because I feel that it might be time to move out or what. Grant it I can't do that at the moment as I have car payments to make. But still it would be nice if I could. So how's that for a start into 2008? I mean things can only get better right?

Anyways I want to take some time to look at the music industry. I'm an avid facebook user that signs on almost every day. I'm part of a group called "BUY YOUR MUSIC AND STOP KILLING THE RECORD INDUSTRY". Yes it is in all caps I guess the person who created it felt that typing in caps lock was necessary. There's been many discussions going on in that group about how the industry needs the money and what not. However I've come to notice that only a select few understand that the Artists are being ripped off and not being paid what they deserve.

I 100% completely agree on paying for music since it is copyrighted music and everyone deserves to get paid. But what it comes down to is that many people don't want to pay because the industry is taking advantage of the consumers by charging high prices on CD's and by taking advantage of the artists. I have no problem paying for music now but I refuse to pay for a CD that costs $20. If it costs $5 to $10 then fine so be it I don't care. But when the industry starts taking advantage of the market of course people are going to revolt. This brings me to the whole thing about Digital Rights Management (DRM). I refuse to pay for music that will only work on one device and that does not allow me to do what I want with it.

Yes the industry is trying to prevent Pirating of music but they're are better ways to do so. I'm glad that stores such as Amazon, iTunes, Zune Marketplace, etc are offer DRM Free MP3's for 99 cents and hopefully this will mean the end of DRM. At least some record companies are starting to understand that people MP3 music that they can listen to anywhere on any device. I hope more will follow in they're footsteps. I personally think it's going to take the industry dieing and the artists taking control of they're music again for things to make a turn around.

So in the end who's to blame here? Is it the artists, the industry, the consumers? I know I don't know much on the industry but these are just my personal views.