You’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid. There is no promise to pay artists more here. Remember the list of SoundExchange’s “unfindable” artists? How many of them have now been found? All the talk of how this helps the poor artists is completely bogus. This is a bail out for the industry plain and simple. Virtually none of this money will go to small artists or to indie labels regardless of the number of downloads they get just SoundExchange fails to distribute the money it collects from streaming and sat. radio companies to these same groups. These lies aren’t even new, they are just the same ones that have been used before!

As far as your point about Jim Griffin’s fairness, I call BS on that. You might or might not recall that I left the Pho list when Jim failed to enforce his own rules of conduct regarding personal attacks on the list.

It was no coincidence that the violater in question worked for one of his paying customers SoundExchange. If you pay you get to stay and say whatever you want even if its an offensive personal attack. The rest of you on the list are just there to make the place seem worthwhile to Jim’s paying customers that imagine they are gaining insight into the bleeding edge of the digital revolution. And you don’t get paid for the ideas you share on Pho, he does! Nice gig if you can get it…

If the music labels “pioneer” this new business model, why wouldn’t other industries do the same thing to prop up their failed business models?

People will value art regardless of the fat cat music executives and their lapdogs. Supporting the artists directly has become easier thanks to the internet, which is the new, wide open distribution channel.

I’ve been doing political activism in France for several years exactly for this kind of idea.

The tax is going to be handled by the government just like any other tax, the works of art will be available at online libraries managed by the government just like any other library, fair distribution of the money back to artists will be handled by the government just like any other state-controlled global licencing systems.

In the mean time, I don’t download music and I don’t buy it from the record companies. If I do want something, then I buy a used CD or I buy direct from the artist. I see no reason why I should pay a “tax” to support an industry I don’t like for music I don’t want.

The music industry as we know it is in the mid-stages of a terminal disease. They just now are starting to admit that they should get some treatment. But given that the industry is only slightly more likable than the Third Reich, I say let them die. Artists will still produce music and find ways to get paid.