A Rant

Among others, there are three CDs I’ve been wanting to get for a long time: Everyone Loves the Pilot by John Astley, Bombs Away Dream Babies by John Stewart, and The Very Best of Jane Wiedlin. None of these are apparently in print and the prices for these as used CDs on Amazon.com are currently very high. This is a ridiculous situation. The music industry expends exorbitant resources making sure it recoups royalties for its artists and labels, and yet important vintage music is essentially unavailable. No one begrudges reasonable royalty rates (and thankfully reasonable and less greedy heads prevailed, at least temporarily, recently to save internet radio), but copyright holders have a responsibility to make their material available for purchase in current formats at reasonable prices. For most music made since the 80s, it costs virtually nothing to market it online (because it is already digitally mastered), on Itunes Music Store or similar sites. Abdicating this responsibility should result in losing the right to make royalties on the music. Music that has been out of print for five years (hell, I’ll be generous and say ten years) should automatically become public domain.