RIAA, Here's your New Business Model: Innovate

For years the Recording Industry Association of America has been cracking down on some really annoying people—their customers. The plan to stop this? Target more customers and make them pay outlandish amounts for distributing it.

Now it would stand to reason that if a large portion of your customers demanded to receive your services in a way that you weren't offering, that you would figure out a way to keep their business. But yet the RIAA has decided instead to lawyer-up instead of innovate.

iTunes was one of these innovations. For just 99¢ I have a great quality recording in seconds. It's legal, it's easy to access, it's a good service. It recommends new songs. Much like last.fm who is also innovative. I can listen to any song I want and discover new artists. Both good services. I spend more money on music now than I ever did in the CD age. Why? Because I can just buy the songs I want, instead of having to decide if the song was worth the price of an album.

But with videos it's a little different. You can go on to YouTube for some things, or to NBC.com for instance to watch shows. But being in England I'm restricted from watching American TV shows on my computer. (To me this makes no sense, because it's the WWW, it wasn't given that name for nothing.) Restricting customer access to your goods only asks for trouble. Making anything difficult for customers hurts business.

So what if RIAA made it easy for people to pay for what they have on their computer through an online amnesty program? They can get the content any way they want, and there is an option for people to make it 'right' afterward through an Amnesty program. Pirates...um unpaid customers can donate any amount, and the money goes directly to the company without having to pay for things like oh, distribution. And even better, people can donate for the good stuff, showing RIAA what people want to see/hear more of. A direct way to give customer feedback. Here's how it could work:

You've seen Arrested Development 15 times. You love it, you quote it all the time. To you, Arrested Development is worth more than $40, you give it $50. You want the writers of that show to make more of the same and you are willing to pay for it.

Now, the extra money you spent on Arrested Development made up for the time you wasted watching Evita. For that you don't donate. However there are plenty of other Evita fans out there, who would make up for you.

But the thing is, that not having to pay for distribution, media, packaging, shelf space, etc would reduce the cost of the film or song so you would be saving money vs going to the store. Good for the customer and the company right? They could upload their official copies to torrent sites, be more creative in their advertising or product placement, and have a link at the end of it for people to enroll in the Amnesty payment program. Heck you could even give them rewards for it. Like the ability to have a brief role in a film, jam with their favorite musician or be entered into the movie/song lottery. Where everyone that donates x amount of $ would be entered to win. See, innovation. Don't force the customer to change, change to your customer.

Or you could send lawyers after 80% of your customers, that would generate all sorts of positive brand image for you. I'm sure it would turn into a real money-maker.