In the ongoing fight for the music industry to try and maintain the control they *used* to have, Canada is proposing a new compulsory music tax in addition to the digital download taxes, levy on digital music players, and the levy on blank CD’s. I kid you not, we are talking about billions of dollars collected here, and do you think I will get compensated when my music is downloaded? Nope. But Celine Dion will!

You can read the propaganda that the music industry has sent the media here.

I say propaganda because much of the information in this article comes from the music industry and is very misleading, such as the statement “More than 80% of Canada’s musicians earn less than $15,000 annually.”
This is not because of illegal downloading, but because of things like the lousy music that is released that people won’t pay for, artists who don’t promote themselves, and the fact that most artists go bankrupt because the retail stores, label, and distributors take over 70% of the profits from CD sales. Remove those people from the food chain and you have the new music industry, where the artist is back on top. and THAT is a proven fact.
(I get into this more in this post about the massive changes in the industry)
I’m really getting tired of media being too lazy to research this stuff before publishing, aren’t you?.

The incredible thing is this new tax, much like the levies mentioned above would be charged to everyone who uses the internet in Canada, not just those who download music, creating in total billions in tax and levy revenue for the music industry. How things like this get passed as law in a supposed democracy is beyond me.
What’s interesting is if it does become law, it will essentially make downloading music legal, along with burning music, which is essentially also legal now because we are paying dearly for it.
And that means that everything will change forever in the consumption of music. I only wish it could be done fairly, you know the good old way, where the industry gives the consumer what they want and get compensated for doing so, rather than by force.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 9:25 am and is filed under Business, internet, music 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.