A Music Industry First And A Good One

I am sure that as most of you that know me, also know that I have some pretty strong views about the music industry, come to think it I have pretty strong views about almost everything except politics.

I do not advocate the piracy of music or video's, to me that is robbing the artist of the few cents on the dollar that he is due for his hard work. Although The RIAA claim the cost per year is in the $billions, I suspect that they are aiming a little high, but certainly there is a $ cost. And certainly the artist, and creator is the one who hurts most. He may only be getting a few cents per CD, but those few cents are what he lives on.

For the longest time I have felt that the Artist is the one getting the short end of the stick.

My opinion about the music world changed yesterday. A couple of days ago I received a copy of Al Stewart's new album Sparks Of Ancient Light. I am a huge Al Stewart fan and couldn't wait to rip the plastic off it and get it on the player.

I had my review written in no time flat. While reading it prior to publishing I realized that it would be so much better if I could embed a track sample, you know, a 30 or 45 second sound byte. So it was off to the world of the internet to see if such a beast existed on Al's web site or the labels web site, alas none was available.

Well I don't give up easy, I am a known entity to Al, his PR folks, and the label, having reviewed most of his now 19 albums at one time or another. So I fired off an email to the record company asking if they has a streaming audio that I could access.

Within minutes, I had my answer, 'no streams available'. But all was not lost. Appleseed went on to say that they had included an MP3 of an entire track, and as long as I promised not to make it available for download I was free to use it in the review. In other words stream it.

In this day and age of RIAA breathing fire over piracy and shared music, I find Appleseed's approach to be a real breath of fresh air.

Oh, and you can read my review here.