RIAA complains that online music piracy should bear the brunt of the blame for the decrease in CD sales by 6% from FY 2000-2001. Upon examining the year end figures broken down by distribution format (e.g. CD, CD Single, Cassette, LP, etc.), I noticed that the real loser was the CD single, with sales down 41% over the previous year. Of course, this slide has been happening since 1992; however, the decline has been the most pronounced since the advent of music sharing on the Internet. The reasoning is obvious: why would a teenager go out and spend $6.00 to buy the latest single from Britney when they could easily log into Morpheus and get a “good-enough” copy for free? Perhaps the RIAA should cater to these people instead of treating them like criminals. Suppose the teenager could pay $1.00 to download a superior, high-bitrate, copy of Britney’s latest track from an online store? They might do it. Even though that $1.00 price tag is low, it should more than be profitable for the record company after paying for the bandwidth, server time, and the ridiculous excuse for a royalty that the artist receives.

The only way to make piracy diminish is to learn to make money off the technology, not destroy it. It was only twenty years ago when VCRs were considered to be hellspawn as far as the MPAA was concerned. Nowadays, VCRs and DVD players make even the crappiest excuse for a movie profitable thanks to rental fees. It doesn’t hurt that Blockbuster is owned by Viacom, which also owns Paramount Pictures.