Bill Matthies

Open Letter to the RIAA
October 15, 2007

Mr. Mitch Bainwol

Chairman and CEO

Recording Industry Association of America

Dear Mitch,

First of all congratulations on what I am certain will be the first of many legal victories in your association’s fight against piracy. Very cool! But more than that, I can’t tell you how impressed I am with the RIAA’s approach to marketing.

While my entire career has been spent in consumer electronics marketing, I now realize how narrow my thinking has been concerning how best to grow our industry. All this time I and as near as I can tell all my colleagues, have assumed it was first necessary, to create a great product followed by telling consumers what we have, leading to them hopefully buying it.

But the RIAA’s tactics has shown me how outdated that thinking is. I now see that we could have done what the recording industry has done which is:

1. spend the last 20 years putting out crap at prices acknowledged by most to be obscenely high followed by
2.  suing our customers when our revenues go down as a result.

Do you think it’s too late for us to change?

Of course we are missing one thing that has been center point in your successful strategy and that is the excuse for suing. You have an advantage with the piracy thing (although for the life of me I cannot understand why anyone would bother “stealing” what today passes for “hits”.) What might we on the equipment side of things use as a substitute? I have some thoughts and would like to know what you and your compatriots think?

How about suing because:

1.      Consumers should have replaced older equipment that, while not as well featured as the new stuff, still works? 

2.      Last year’s models were silver and we want them to buy this year’s shiny new black ones followed by them buying the year after that’s shiny new silver ones?

3.      Just because, I don’t know, we can?

But one other thing and gosh I hate to even bring this up. What if consumers just aren’t listening anymore? What if they don’t care that the music industry wants to preserve its business model? Are you sure you have the support necessary to insure this strategy will work? I’ve noticed some possible kinks in the armor lately; people with opinions that seem to be saying that resisting the consumer’s will is akin to keep the tide from coming in. For example the following comments from Ian Rogers, Yahoo’s Director Product Management

“I’m here to tell you today that I for one am no longer going to fall into this trap. If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I’m not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I’ll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. I won’t let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally don’t have any more time to give and can’t bear to see any more money spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life’s too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out.”

“Like whatever Ian”, right Mitch? Yeah, stay the course; sue the bums, that’s the ticket! 

And just to show you I’m learning, how about the following marketing program in the years ahead? If our sales do not increase each year, we lobby Congress for legislation as follows:

1.    One year revenue flat or decline, the imposition of a non use tax on all human beings between the ages of 1 and 100 of no less than 15 percent of last year’s incremental sales increase expected but not realized as outlined in the forecast related to the collective industry outlook contained within the recently completed five-year plan. In other words, pretty much whatever we want it to be just as the music industry has priced its product for the past 50 years.

2.    Second year flat or decline, mandatory five-year jail term without the possibility of parole for an arbitrary segment of the population deemed collectively by us to have been necessary for whatever normal growth we had forecasted.

3.    Third year flat or decline, the death penalty preferably with some form of public humiliation.

Well, enough shop talk for now. Again congratulations and as the kids say, Rock and Roll!

Respectfully,

Bill Matthies

Bill Matthies is the president of Coyote Insight (www.coyoteinsight.com) and can be reached at (714) 726-2901 or wmatthies@coyoteinsight.com   

Posted by Bill Matthies on October 15, 2007 | Comments (1)