The Music Industry's New Extortion Scheme
Musicians themselves may just be crazy, but the music labels are dangerously stupid, and need to be stopped before they can do any further damage to the music industry. Case in point: Warner Music, fully aware that the days of charging …
Context & Ripple Effects
The debate had already moved beyond selling individual downloads: a January piece cast a music tax as the labels’ last-resort model, while coverage of legal digital music that still punished buyers questioned whether authorized channels offered a fair bargain. Warner Music’s earlier admission that the industry’s war with consumers helped fuel P2P makes an access-fee approach a consequential reversal of strategy.
The same story was picked up across outlets framing it as a fee on Internet access and a route to legal P2P, indicating that the proposed billing model—not merely Warner’s rhetoric—was the focal point of the debate.
First-order effects
- Warner Music and other labels seek to shift recorded-music revenue collection toward ISPs and their subscribers, rather than relying solely on individual music purchases.
- ISPs become the immediate intermediary between labels and listeners, facing pressure to collect or carry the cost of a music-related access fee.
Second-order effects
- ISPs would have to choose between absorbing label charges, passing them through in broadband bills, or negotiating terms that limit their exposure.
- Licensed P2P offerings gain a potential funding rationale, but consumers who do not use them could still be charged under an access-based model.
Third-order effects
- If access levies become the preferred label response to declining transaction revenue, music monetization shifts from selling copies to taxing the network connection that enables distribution.
- The proposal points to a broader fight over whether copyright holders can turn general-purpose Internet infrastructure into a compulsory collection channel.
The trend: Recorded music is moving from ownership-priced products toward access-based revenue models, with ISPs becoming a contested point of collection.