It’s already been a sad morning with the death of Alexander McQueen, but now Google lands a blow which is surely only the opening salvo in a failing Music Industry’s last ditch effort to find a place in modern society. Google has gone and shut down a bunch of sites that were hosted on their blogspot and blogger arms with out any warning or back-up with the below letter to the host sites.

We’d like to inform you that we’ve received another complaint regarding your blog,” begins the cheerful letter received by each of the owners of Pop Tarts, Masala, I Rock Cleveland, To Die By Your Side, It’s a Rap and Living Ears. All of these are music-blogs – sites that write about music and post MP3s of what they are discussing. “Upon review of your account, we’ve noted that your blog has repeatedly violated Blogger’s Terms of Service … [and] we’ve been forced to remove your blog. Thank you for your understanding.

This will I’m sure shape up to be one of the most over-arching stories in the music world for 2010.

I know I’m an avid visitor (and I imagine you are as well) to Mp3 blogs that post albums. And while I understand this is a very grey area in copyright infringement, I’ve never once felt guilty about visiting any of these sites. Why? Because for one I tend to visit many sites that post ridiculously hard to find, obscure and out of print music. But I also know bands make jack shit from their records. They always have and always will.

Albums should be free for download because they’re all really nothing more than promotion these days for bands. Bands (well those who aren’t Metallica, Madonna and Coldplay) make their money off of tours, merch, vinyl and licensing. Getting their music to as many people as possible only increases their visibility and ability to sustain their livelihoods as bands.

Think about it? How many bands have you discovered in the past 5 or so years because you got a free download of their album that you otherwise never would have bothered to check out or buy? …Bands you probably (hopefully) then caught playing live in your area and maybe bought a t-shirt and record off of? …Bands who because they suddenly had a way larger audience than normal caught the attention of a savvy ad or movie exec who then put a song of theirs into a commercial or film. Good God, just think of the sheer amount of bands who have been made household names because of the buzz these sorts of blogs created for them! These bands benefited greatly from this, but oh those poor record companies did not. This is truly a sad day and I feel it may only get worse.

If record companies (I”m talking to you) are worried about their profits than you know what you should do? Put your goddamn heads together and create a subscription based program for some amount a month where people can have access to entire libraries of music anytime, anywhere AND allowing users and artists to add to it, dividing the royalties from subscription fees on what gets played most. Unfortunately, that of course makes too much sense and not enough profit for so many of these aging dinosaurs to sustain their lifestyle off the backs of hardworking bands. I hope more bands take up the call to arms Trent Reznor has been preaching for a while now and rise up and take back their music and how they want to get it out there to their fans. But somehow I doubt we’ll see that.

- My Pal the Crook