Internet killed the radio star?

So the RIAA have found another way to shoot themselves in the foot. What with DRM that is constantly broken and now the increasing pressure put on radio both streaming and terrestrial, they are going to end up promoting piracy. I will fully admit that I have stolen music off the Internet. Who of us that knows how hasn't at some point? Have I stopped buying music legitimately? Not at all. I would, in fact, buy more if there was an option to buy digital music sans DRM. The main reason I don't buy music as much any more is the quality of the music itself. I know that there are good independent artists out there, but I have a constant battle to find new music. I've basically given up at this point. I've accepted that I'm old and have more or less locked in to the bands and music that I grew up with.

I was all over the service Pandora. I admit I didn't use it as much as I'd like because most of my sit in front of the computer time is either at work or while gaming at home and streaming wouldn't work either way. When I could use it I did discover new music. This is what promotes growth and sales. I don't, and haven't, listened to standard radio in years. If television is hard to suffer through commercials, radio is a thousand times worse. They talk over music, play annoying locally produced commercials and lastly the quality is less then ideal. Pandora allows you to start with something you like and listen to similarly themed music. A brilliant idea and very well executed. The quality was also superb for a streaming music system. This new legislation could put Pandora and similar services out of business.

The recording industry has made their fortune off of re-selling you music you've previously purchased for years. First you had it on LP, then 8-track, then cassette and finally CD. You may have even been conned in to the mostly failed mediums of SACD or DVD-Audio. Now we're looking at taking our music digital. CD was digital but it was still fallible. You could scratch a CD, lose it or any number of other problems. Assuming you make multiple copies of a digital file (MP3 or otherwise) that file will always play the same no matter how many times you play it. I think the RIAA is scared. This may the format that actually has a shelf life. You could (in theory) never need to buy your music ever again. So I believe that instead of accepting this they are inventing ways to destroy this medium. There will always be new music and people to consume it, but I think that they have become so used to selling the same albums so many times the thought of selling one copy to one person one time is terrifying them.

I think what's more scary is how powerful the RIAA actually is. They have so much money and influence that they have consistently put lobbyists in Washington and have pushed policies through. The DMCA was/is asinine in many ways and it looks like we're poised to further these corporate greed laws even more.