Barack Obama and the RIAA

p2pnet news view | RIAA News:- Presidential candidate Barack Obama has a whole slew of new and revolutionary ideas, one of which should be taken seriously by the major record companies.

It’s this >>>

In a good business, the customer is king.

But as far as the Big 4 labels, Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG, are concerned customers are “criminals” and “thieves” to be disrespected and treated with contempt.

And actually, Obama’s observation, which comes in the June 16 print edition of Time, isn’t new.

The phrase the customer is always right was mooted by Harry Gordon Selfridge, founder of Selfridge’s department store in London, England, in 1909.

But, say music cartel policies, the axiom doesn’t apply in the digital 21st century, if it ever did apply.

These days, according to them, the customer is always shite.

If the customer is ever wrong, re-read rule #1

“Stew Leonard’s … is a small chain of supermarkets in Connecticut and New York that Ripley’s Believe It or Not! has deemed ‘The World’s Largest Dairy’ and that Fortune Magazine has deemed one of the top ‘100 Best Companies to Work For’!” - says the Wikipedia, going on:

“In 2004, Tom Leonard, son of the founder, also opened a spinoff store, Tom Leonard’s Farmer’s Market, in the Short Pump section of Henrico County, Virginia (suburban Richmond).

The store is also known for its customer-service policy, which greets shoppers at each store’s entrance etched into a three-ton rock:

1. The customer is always right.

2. If the customer is ever wrong, re-read rule #1.

The cartels have created for themselves huge mountains of customer it ill will.

They might have gotten away with it before the Net came along. But these days people can, and do, use blogs, IM, cell phones, web pages and all the other communications technologies of this digital era to bypass, if not completely ignore, the traditional corporate news and information media.

Customers with free will

A primary reason Obama is so successful is: he’s come to understand the importance of the Net as the way to reach people not only in the US, but around the world.

In the 21st century, consumers are steadily being replaced by customers with free will who know what they want and who are no longer willing to be treated like mushrooms —- kept in the dark and fed on bullshit.

And it’s still possible for the corporate music and movie industries to turn things around.

All they have to do is start treating their customers as reasonable people who deserve the best, not the worst.

But the chances of that happening grow slimmer by the day and in the meanwhile, customers are not only right, they know it.

Three years ago, in a Q&A with Slyck, “One way or another, p2p technologies will be the primary backbone for communications in this century,” I said, going on >>>

Thousands of new people are going online every day meaning for the first time in history, ‘we’ have a voice ‘they’ have to listen to.

Look at what’s happening in the entertainment industry, for example. They’re going blue trying to avoid the issues, but they’ll eventually be forced to acknowledge their customers as active participants rather than mindless cash-cows.

Moreover, the companies and governments forget the people they’re threatening in various ways are also the ones who are conceiving, developing, servicing and administering the very systems which keep the wheels turning and the money coming in.>>