Don’t tell me you love the physical version.  You’re the same people who e-mailed me a decade ago telling me that nothing could be superior to the CD.  I would say you’re part of the problem, but you’re completely inconsequential.

What is the value of a book?

No, let’s change it to an equation you can understand…  What is the value of a RECORD!

My inbox is cluttered with mail from people railing against pirates, telling me that music is fairly priced at over ten dollars a CD.  Think of all the effort!  Think of all the mouths to be paid!  Think of all the enjoyment!

What I love to tell these assholes is to continue to stare into the screen…  What’s the value of their computer?  You can buy one for $400, but the CPU, the RAM, never mind the monitor…what’s the value?  Oh, don’t tell me about creativity, the artist toiling in isolation. Do you know how much research, how much effort goes into these technological revolutions?  Furthermore, unlike you and your lazy ass, these programmers, these researchers, work almost ’round the clock, not tweeting to the faithful saying how great they are, but focusing on breakthroughs.  The work ethic of the average person stinks…and you wonder why he’s broke and complaining.

We’re all gonna read books on electronic devices.  Don’t even bother to argue with me, you’re just displaying your ignorance, it’s just a matter of when.  Point is, when the future comes, where do you want to be?

The executives at major labels decided when the future came they wanted to be retired, the unknown was scary, unpredictable.  So, they dragged their feet and got left behind.

Amazon is doing just fine selling physical books.  They didn’t need an e-reader, the vaunted Kindle.  But they wanted to OWN the coming sphere.  Think about that, rather than railing against Apple’s dominance, how about a better mouse trap?  The labels argue with Apple about pricing, promotion, saying their hands are tied.  But they could innovate new solutions, yet they’ve been afraid to do so.  They’re too busy doing exactly what they’ve always done.  For all the talk of new media and 360 deals, the majors are slimmed down versions of what they’ve always been.  Machines that massage product for exhibition on radio.  But now, only Top Forty radio sells product in profitable amounts, at least by major label standards, and fewer people are paying attention…this is a business model?

Amazon decided to lose money.  To invest in the Kindle.  An imperfect version 1.0, a better 2.0, yet far from the definitive take.  Just like the first iPod was 5 gigs and $400.  They’re planning for the Kindle to get cheaper and better.  Meanwhile, the early adopters, the people trading on Napster when you couldn’t see the benefit of live takes of your favorite tracks, never mind the ability to check out everything you ever wanted to hear, bought Kindles and are raving about them.  This is the evangelism you wish you had for your lame-ass record.

But the big breakthrough is pricing.  Below wholesale.  Less than ten bucks for almost every book.  This incentivizes people to buy more!  Thirty bucks for a book that you might not read?  Ten dollars is the price of a movie!  If reading gets cheap enough, more people partake.  The major publishers don’t continue to raise prices to meet their targets, they make it up on volume.

But the major publishers are freaked.  They don’t want Amazon to become dominant, they don’t want Amazon to have pricing control.  Fighting the Kindle is like convincing people to give up their iPod.  People have switched, and they like cheaper prices.  After all, there’s no printing and shipping!

Meanwhile, Sony, a name revered only in the minds of oldsters, has a competing product that’s overpriced and under-featured.  But Sony just announced that they too will have wireless downloading.  With a one inch larger screen, which will be touch-sensitive, yet more expensive.  Howard Stringer needs to be waterboarded.  Doesn’t he get it, that the old Sony paradigm is dead?  Where you overpay for the name, believing you’re getting a premium product?  Sony’s TV sales have tanked, the PS3 is a disaster, yet he can’t compete on price with e-books?

But at least Sony is playing.

Sony and Amazon and Plastic Logic and a few other companies you’ve never heard of are jockeying for position.  They’re willing to lose money now for a chance at a big win in the future.  The beneficiaries of all their effort?  The public!  The public loves being able to tote around thousands of songs in its pocket, the public loves instant availability of tracks, what part of this does the music industry not get?  You don’t try to reeducate your customers in some bizarre Eastern European fashion, you get ahead of your customers, you deliver what they cannot yet dream of, you satiate them, you thrill them to the point where they sell your product for you.

MP3s will be history.  Why not sell them cheaply, in boatloads now, while there’s still desire?

Ooh…we’ve got contracts, there are publishers, our hands are tied.  Like people give a shit?

If Universal is so damn great, its executives such seers of the future, why did their EBITDA go down?  Apple reports record numbers in the midst of a recession…what kind of fucked up world do we live in where hardware triumphs over software?  Computers, iPods are worthless without content.  But rather than go into partnership with the hardware manufacturer/Website designer, the music industry says no, or extracts a pound of flesh, making the whole deal not work.

Everybody must have access to music.  Everybody must pay for it.  Start here instead of trying to restrict and corral.  It’s like teaching safe sex by preaching abstention.  Huh?  Like you can contain the raging hormones of teenagers?

Jeff Bezos is ahead of the market.  The Kindle is getting better and cheaper.  The price of books is absurdly low.  He’s losing money now to profit big time in the future.  What part of this paradigm does the music industry not get?