For the past two weeks, John Heinzl, who does a column on advertising in the Globe and Mail, has written about the Canadian record industries attempts to drag themselves into the 21st century. This week he talks about a CRIA backed ad campaign The Value of Music.

Faced with a 20-per-cent drop in CD sales over the past three years, the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) has hired one of the country's hottest advertising agencies, Toronto-based Zig Inc.

Its mission: Persuade teens and twentysomethings to pay for all that rap, rock and metal they can get for nothing all over the Internet.

The "Value of Music" campaign, which Zig expects to launch in the first quarter of 2003, is expected to include TV, radio and Internet ads, as well as an educational video and teaching guide for classrooms.

...

The point CRIA wants to drive home with teens — who are the biggest downloaders — is that if they stop buying music, the number of artists will shrink and music lovers will lose in the long run.

"We're looking at the future of the music industry here. It's a common sense message that we hope will resonate," Mr. Robertson says.

Well, the common sense message I get in spam and popups from BMG and Columbia House is that a CD is worth about 1 cent, and my time and privacy is worth nothing.

Note they are targetting "the kids" to get them to stop downloading. It isn't to pursuade them to pay for music they download, because currently in Canada, you can't. And who is CRIA? According to their site "Our membership is comprised of the major record companies, leading independent labels, and all manufacturers of compact discs and tapes. In all, they represent in excess of 95% of the sound recordings that are manufactured and sold in Canada."

In other words, the distributors of shiny plastic discs which are shipped from one warehouse to another. CRIA's main function is to certify shipments as Gold, Platinum and Diamond. In Canada, that's combined units of 50,000 - 100,000 - 1 million. And that's shipments, not sales or returns. The result is a nice framed award record companies can give to performers instead of royalties.

CRIA president Brian Robertson is desperate to save his phoney-baloney job. Since Soundscan was introduced in the last decade, actual sales are measured, and if music buyers could buy what they want online directly from the record company, then there is less need for shiny discs to be shipped from warehouse to warehouse. So, you have somebody who I bet hasn't bought a record in 20 years, saying the problem is the public doesn't want to buy what they are selling.

In the article, it is said teens are cynical about the music business. They probably read this article several pages before in the same section. The Song Corps saga, where Allan Greig destroyed three stable music companies:

After a lengthy spree of extravagant spending, executive in-fighting, cancelled distribution contracts, and a lack of any hits from the record label, Song Corp. went bankrupt in May, 2001, owing $8.2-million to creditors after only 20 months in business.

So, yeah, blow some more money, concentrate on saving your jobs instead of changing the way you do business CRIA, I'm sure it'll work.

We would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those meddling kids!