Anecdote: I have been to musician forums where you will find plenty of threads bitching about The Evils Of Youtube Destroying the Industry. Without a hint of ir

Anecdote: I have been to musician forums where you will find plenty of threads bitching about The Evils Of Youtube Destroying the Industry. Without a hint of irony, they are often nearby to "What Are You Listening To Now?" threads full of Youtube videos of other musicians' favorite music. This is what the article reminds me of. The big music industry sometimes seems clueless to how people actually experience music. They instead want to blame the (visibly public) tool, and think that drastically tightening up the tool will be the solution to their problems. As seen above, music is a natural part of communication and identity etc. People naturally like to share music with others. Even in the "record industry" days, people traded tapes all the time (for instance, tape trading popularized many of the speed/thrash metal bands in their day. Such as Metallica, which is one of the big reasons why their anti-Napster attitude was so ironic). For this reason, I believe far more in content ID type solutions than strengthening the takedown weapon. If 2700 people upload One Direction songs, so what as long as One Direction is correctly identified and paid for all videos and views? Certainly there is work to be done on effective monetization models for streaming, and the mechanics of content ID, and other challenges. But actually calling Google and streaming services pirates (as this article did) is completely wrongheaded. I think Google and streaming services are legitimate businesses. If the industry tightens the noose too much on the legitimate businesses, consumers absolutely would go back to underground, the new Napsters.