Save the RIAA kids!

Another article on the increasingly insane actions of the RIAA to protect ever-dwindling CD sales.
The Register believes that the RIAA will continue it's fight for a long time yet and that applications like Pandora will come and go, and consumers will be sued for misusing products that they purchased in good faith.
It has to stop. I can't believe that the public or the artists will allow the RIAA to continue this folly.
The seeds of the revolution must be sown by the artists themselves. The big labels are middlemen who control the mainstream play of artists that they have decided will appeal to the mass market (hands up who's sick of that James Blunt song blaring out every 5 minutes!). The rise of the Podcasts provides the vehicle that the artists need to bypass the labels. Shows such as the Tartan Podcast play independent Scottish music (I haven't heard a single bagpipe), and is available on iTunes too.
I suspect that the groups sending their music to be played on independent podcasts would like nothing better than to be signed up by a major label, but that could all change very quickly. After all, the record companies don't always give bands the creative freedom they crave.
Mariah Carey recently said the following in an interview in the Financial Times:

Her colleagues say Carey chafed at her early marketing as a white, ballad-singing diva, and was one of the first mainstream artists to record hip-hop versions of her singles for the club scene. Carey does not blame Mottola alone for her early pop positioning but argues that most music company executives are out of touch. “When I first got my record deal I was so surprised. I was, like, why are all these older people trying to tell me what’s going to sell to people my age?”

If some of the big name artists went solo, so to speak, then it might well be the crack that breaks the dam.

The problem is, being with a big label means you don't have to work so hard to maintain or create your superstar status. Their marketing and airtime blitzes on your new release will virtually guarantee success, regardless of how mediocre the content. So the big names have an incentive to stay where they are.

We are not at the tipping point yet, and it remains to be seen if podcasts will be available free in the long term at iTunes. However, if podcasts are promoting independent music, outside RIAA control, and kids with iPods start listening to them with greater frequency and then buying the songs through iTunes from the independent artists....you get the idea!

The RIAA is going to have to learn the hard way that they don't have the market battened down, and no amount of lawsuits and prosecution of customers is going to raise their business(duh)! How desperate do they think we are to listen to James Blunt???
Factory Joe wants war, and I think it may have already begun.

Spare a thought for the children of the RIAA policy makers, they are obviously genetically challenged, and need all of our help to avoid becoming the bumbling fools that their parents are. Someone in the file sharing business should start a trust to help them, after all, the sins of the fathers should not be visited on the children.