Opinion: Are The Majors Killing The Goose That Has Been Laying It's Golden Eggs...???

As Tuesday's Net Silence Iniative nears, I hope the music business is paying attention to these folks:

Dick Shuey: The Major Record companies continue to go after Radio for more money as their Sales dip and their artists bail out and go independent in order to gain control of their own professional lives.The Record Companies have yet to realize with their sewer of greed that they aren't killing Radio....they are killing themselves. Radio will just change formats and not play their music...then what will the Record Companies do...???

Mark Ramsey and Seth Godin: (click to listen to mp3) "How Screwed is the Music Business?"

A major group Director of Programming put it this way on Friday in an email to his stations: "I feel like we need to take a stand on this issue. It’s better to go dark one day and hope we make a point as opposed to shutting it off completely because we can’t afford to stream anymore. If the July 15th decision isn’t reversed, there is real potential that a good chunk of our promotions budgets could go to paying reassessed fees for the past two years at the same time we shut down the stream."

I wish we didn't have to punish the 1-2% of our total audience which is now using us online by taking away the service they are just beginning to depend on in hopes of getting their attention, but these folks make very convincing arguments. I'd say, "it's not a matter of life and death," except that it indeed may be.