also after their own bands. The recording industry has also moved against some of its stars, including the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy and Less Than Jake. They have all been forced by their labels to take down mp3 files posted without label permission. Tom Petty received 150,000 downloads in two days when he put a song from his forthcoming album on the Internet, and he did so without support from his label. Record companies have taken their own bands hostage by acting in this manner. It is true that most artists do not own their songs, but that technicality gets in the way when it comes to promotion and fan support. Labels argue that the artists do not want their songs pirated and copied, but their actions seem to contradict this.There are many advantages to artists with using mp3. One example deals with the artist Tom Petty. Jon Pareles of the New York Times writes “Tom Perry made a new song available free on the MP3.com site during the three days it was available, it was downloaded 157,699 times. In return, Mr. Petty and his recording company have a marketing tool: E-mail addresses for fans, who can be reached when his next album is released.” (Pareles, E1, E7) Tom Petty made good use of a format that the industry claims is running rampant and must be stopped.The RIAA has come together and put together what was called the ‘Madison Project’. The futuristic name was a collaboration of the five big labels and IBM. The task of the group is to try to create an audio format that will be equal or superior to mp3 and to embed some sort of copyright controls in order to stop piracy. There have been meetings that dealt with what to do next and artists were not present. It’s probably the only chance artists have had in 30 years to gain back some ground. But the RIAA is going to beat them to it if they don’t take some control. Artists need to keep stepping up and facing the big companies in order...
