Bash, Bash, Bash, But…

We regularly bash the major labels for their business practices, greed, dishonesty, resistance to change, sense of entitlement – I could go on until dark but you get the picture. However labels do one thing very well, as mentioned in a nice roundup of this week’s Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit in Wired News:

Others said the explosion of new music — partly driven by digital music production technology and the Internet — has made it easy for bad music to proliferate throughout cyberspace.

“There’s an incredible amount of mediocrity,” said musician/songwriter Eric Bazilian, formerly of the rock group The Hooters.

John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants said although record labels are fun to bash, they help filter music. Now consumers must do much of that work themselves.

“It’s ironic that we’ll miss the majors when they are gone,” Flansburgh said.

We all need filters and the labels have been the best filters – until now.

All agree that one way or another, prices for music are coming down, down, down:

Others, however, said sanctioned downloading and burning is on the rise, suggesting the Internet could more than make up the gap created by closed retail outlets.

Already, Listen.com offers song downloads for 99 cents each — the lowest price the labels will allow.

“It should be 50 cents, if not 25 cents, per burn,” said Tim Quirk, Listen.com’s director of editorial/music programming, noting that internal surveys suggest sales would increase 400 percent at those levels. “Within the next year, you’re going to see these prices come down.”