Al’s a friend of mine who works in the music biz. He tells me to make alternative suggestions when I imply that the mainstream music industry have a pretty screwed idea of how to market their product in the age of the internet. Fair enough. A guy called Mark Cuban has an articulate set of suggestions I might just send him a pointer to.

Can the music industry cry wolf any longer?

This is the only industry in the world that can see thousands of its retailers close, reduce the number of products it sells via cutbacks in artist rosters and albums released, cut back marketing and promotional dollars and then blame a reduction in sales on someone or something other than themselves.

That big bad boogieman of piracy is blowing down everyone’s house. The poor music industry. Except of course that there is nothing more than anecdotal proof that Peer to Peer networks hurt music sales, and to counter those, there are studies and anecdotal evidence that the sampling opportunity that P2P networks create actually help sales.

(Via Scripting News)