A DBD member in Seattle sent me story about record labels abandoning the RIAA from her blog earlier this morning.
In a major break from the litigious and often alienating strategy pursued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) against everyone from preteens to college students and grandmothers, the four major record labels have decided to drop all pending lawsuits and instead join with Apple and Microsoft to eliminate Digital Rights Management (DRM) from music sales. The companies are joining other personal electronics manufacturers and independent labels in a new organization, Respect the Artist, Respect the Audience (RARA).
ArtistAudience.org, the website for this new group features a press release:
With the announcement of the new trade group, RARA spokesperson, Jeff Mutton said, “The major labels will no longer fight technology but embrace it. The creation of RARA demonstrates that the industry has listened, that it believes it has identified a new way of engaging the audience to increase revenues for the labels and the artists. We realize selling high quality audio without DRM, and in formats unencumbered by software patents, we will give audiences the music they want in the formats they want. Music fans will also know that through RARA, a higher portion of royalties from any online music sale will reach the artist, because, lets face it, selling digital files over the net have a higher margin than CDs sold in a store."