Finished the hallway lighting. Cross off another to-do item. Next... Oh yeah, there's still a month or six of yard work.

It struck me tuning in to the music licensing debate before Congress right now that the RIAA is on real shaky ground. What do the major labels provide? Exposure, studio facilities, CD manufacturing, distribution, royalty collection, and concert scheduling. The artist gets a nickel or dime per $19 CD for all of this. Now look at MP3.COM. It provides three of these - exposure and distribution and royalty collection; and gives the artist a significantly bigger piece of the pie. There are a thousand mom and pop shops that can crank out CD's for a buck or less, and it costs perhaps a tenth of that to distribute MP3's on the internet. Anybody can build a recording studio with a PC and not much else (though it can always get fancier). So the only edge left for the major labels is concert bookings. If an indie puts this piece together, the labels will crumble under their own dead weight. But that may not even be necessary. Only a minor percentage of music fans attend concerts. I think the labels are doomed no matter what they do. It doesn't escape my attention that my employer controls a major record label. Hopefully there are enough people on the internet side of the company to notice what's happening and get the message across. Bertelsmann AG bought a stake in Napster. Friggin' dumb move. Napster is toast. The smart move would be to buy all of MP3.COM and a stake in Bill Graham Presents.