Further addressing its new mission, the RIAA also answered allegations that the decline in CD purchases may not be due entirely to the popularity of online file-sharing networks. Many have postulated that what may in fact be a significant cause of falling sales is the fact that such a large portion of today’s music is squalid, hellish, wretched trash, devoid of any merit and totally lacking in any talent to create it.
A portion of the press conference with RIAA President Cary Sherman in which these claims are answered follows:
Reporter: Mr. Sherman, has the RIAA fully considered the complex nature of this problem, looking not just at the effects of file-sharing networks such as Kazaa, Gnutella, and the now-dead Morpheus and Napster?
RIAA President Cary Sherman: Sure. We’ve also considered the fact that used music stores have existed for decades, where people can cheaply buy music they enjoy without having to pay anything directly to record companies or recording artists. We’re also vaguely aware that people have been able to hear songs for free on the radio since Hoover was president and have been able to record and own their own copies of these songs for free since tapes were invented. There’s no way these things could have anything to do with falling CD prices.
Reporter: Is it possible that CD sales could actually be dropping due to the fact that 90% of today’s most popular music is awful, screeching noise, the piercing tones of which probably would have served as a perfect substitute for exploding the heads of alien invaders in the movie Mars Attacks?
Sherman: No.
Reporter: How about the fact that today’s popular recording artists, such as Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys, N’SYNC, Aaron Carter, Uncle Kracker, The Baha Men, Christina Aguilera, Puff Daddy, and others, are in general a warbling, whiney group of singers who lack talent, intelligence, or charm, and whose music strains the definition of art?
Sherman: No. I don’t really think that’s a factor.
Reporter: Could falling CD sales maybe be due to the fact that teenagers feel little remorse about depriving money to these artists, who are a new breed of whining celebrities that rely on media attention to their insignificant problems and trite affairs, which ring hollow with a generation of people who are increasingly aware of the blatant consumerism being forced upon them?
Sherman: No.
Reporter: Could it possibly be the fact that people aren’t willing to pay more than the cost of flushing a toilet to listen to today’s most popular songs, which are not written by the artists who perform them, and rely on horrid “catch techniques” to grab the attention of listeners? Furthermore, is it possible that most listeners are seeking answers deeper than the boxed, mass-appeal style of the problems voiced in boy band and diva songs, whose messages have no real connection to the lives of listeners, and whose lyrics sound as if they were stolen from the poems of second-graders?
Sherman: No. I really doubt that has anything to do with it.
Mr. Sherman concluded with a speech that affirmed that crappy music is blameless for falling CD sales, and that the RIAA will aggressively and relentlessly continue its quest to end the downloading of music which without a doubt would have been purchased by consumers if it could not have been attained for free.
The following are just a few of the internet "pirates" already under RIAA watch...
