Purely for selfish reasons I like artists earning a living. If they don’t earn they might go and get crappy jobs that don’t allow them to make the books and music and films I like.

But I’m lazy. Like water I will follow the easiest route to that art. Stick a film on when I can see where I can see it and I’ll go and see it. Same with books, I do digital; stick it in on Amazon or your own site and I’ll download and read it. And music, give me a no brainer option to pay (Emusic, Spotify  subscription, Amazon mp3 download) and I’m there.

And now the genie is out of the bottle. I don’t want to go back to getting myself into town to search for an album that may or maybe not be in the shop at a price I may or may not want to pay.

So it pisses me off when I read…

“[A] growing number of big acts (from Adele to the Black Keys) have withheld their new albums from the service, while artists such as Mercury nominee Jon Hopkins are bemoaning low royalty payments, something which has also prompted many smaller independent labels to withdraw their catalogues.” guardian.co.uk

…following closely on the tails of…

“[T]he stark reality that every digital-music subscription service such as Spotify, Rhapsody, MOG, Rdio, and others must confront … are being made public. The specifics are even more onerous than the hot dog example cited above. Together they doom online audio companies to a life of subjugation to the labels …

With most other businesses, if a supplier makes unreasonable demands, a retailer can turn to other providers. Since copyright law gives record labels and publishers a government-granted monopoly, no such option is possible with music. Digital vendors have only two options: Accept the terms or not include those songs in their offering.” gigaom.com

Which leaves me feeling (‘cos I’m to lazy to do real research, but not lazy enough to not read those articles) that artists get shafted by the labels, and music services like Spotify get shafted by the labels, and artists blame the music services and withdraw their music, and then lazy people go and download their music illegally and the labels say “See how bad the internet is? We’re struggling, sorry we can only give you shit royalties, blame music services and piracy”.

And yet if you skip the labels and make good stuff, people too lazy to shop in the old real world will happily pay…

Related: Louis CK Makes $200,000 Profit in Four Days With Online Video