The moguls of the music industry are trembling... "The Internet  will be the death of popular music as we know it!" ... they scream.

I'm old enough to remember when they said the same thing about cassettes.  Yet the availability of a popular recording medium did not lead to a great loss of profits for the record industry.  What in fact happened was that the record buying public bought the L.P.s they thought it was essential to own and recorded albums friends lent them which they liked, but would never have otherwise bought.  If the cassette grew on you enough, then the next step was usually to go out and buy the real thing - the L.P.

When I first used the Internet the thing that impressed me most about it was the idea of being able to have experiences with people you might never have met in "real life", but with whom you shared interests and passions.  In my case this was particularly true of one site: OLGA - The "On-Line Guitar Archive" -  Here you could find the chords, tablature and lyrics to loads of great songs and all free.  Unfortunately the music industry decided this was infringement of their copyright and hounded OLGA unmercifully for "publishing" their material.  But was what OLGA was doing "publishing"???

Imagine the scene...  I really like the latest Bruce Springsteen acoustic masterpiece, so I sit down at my guitar and after hours of patient trial and error work out the chord sequence, the way he played it and what he sung.  I then play this for friends and one says: "Hey, Berni... Can you show me how to play that?"
"Sure..." I reply... "Grab yourself a pen!"  Was I breaking copyright when I learned to play the piece?  Or in teaching a friend what I know?  Of course not!  It would be a different matter if I played the song in public and was paid for doing so, or if I charged my friend for my services.  So, in what way was OLGA doing anything different?  They were just fellow musicians - friends I've never met - sharing their knowledge with others in their - now wider - community.

Was OLGA robbing anyone?  How many musicians went to OLGA rather than buy the sheet music?  How many people buy published music anyway?  How many musicians pay nearly double the cost of the C.D. to learn how to play the songs on it?  None of the musicians I've ever played with do!  Had OLGA charged for the privilege we might be talking "infringements" - but as they didn't...........

For me this whole argument showed a basic inability of the industry giants to understand the truly democratic nature of the Internet.

Now the great corporations are worried about the implications of the Internet and the MP3 format... "The loss of revenue will lead to lack of funds for fostering new talent!" they claim.  Try telling that to any hard working, talented, but completely unknown band who have been knocking on record company doors for years.  If the industry were really into nurturing new talent would they waste their "dwindling" resources on such talent-less hypes as the various "Boys Bands" and "Spice Girl Clones" they have recently been ramming down the throats of the adolescent public???

Let us get real... Can record company resources really be dwindling?  How is it possible?  Actual costs to the industry must be at an all time low.  I mean twenty years ago when a big name band went into the studio they might spend a whole year on their latest opus - costing mega bucks in studio hire, producers fees, technicians salaries, etc.   But since the late Eighties the industry has been deliberately pushing a type of music that is often got together on a home computer.  This boom, (boom, boom...) known as "maquina" (machine music) here in Spain, has virtually seen off many other types of music... and it is so cheap to produce!

Then there is "Compact Disk Re-Issues".  With the arrival of the C.D. it should have been us record buyers that trembled.  How many people did what I did and virtually re-bought their entire record collection.  What a marketing dream... the public buying the same product twice!  What have they been doing with all the money they must have made on selling a product whose costs were covered twenty-five years, or more, ago?

So, if anyone wants to weep for the record industry let them do so... I shall not lose any sleep if the Internet leads to a whole new way of connecting musicians with people without blood sucking intermediaries getting their cut and controlling the direction trends take.