AH Conversation: New Ways Of Controlling The Channel

As a follow up post to my proselytizing about how the future of the music industry lies with distribution methodology like the Pirate Bay (see China: Our Digital Future? below), I thought I would lay out some purely personal hypotheses for how such a system might work, ask some questions, and solicit your thoughts on the matter via Twitter, Facebook, and your Blog Comments. 

Based on the information contained in my post yesterday, a reader could logically draw the following conclusions:

1. The recording industry is still far too concerned about protecting the monetization of the final transaction between the consumer and the distributor in a traditional fashion instead of exploring and embracing alternatives
2. The distribution channel for music has been expanded to a width approximately equivalent to the amount of bandwidth that now exists globally
3. The Pirate Bay, though notorious, is one of hundreds of thousands of destinations that end consumers of music regularly frequent in very high numbers

In my opinion, it’s all about controlling the channel, not necessarily about maintaining the industry standard for monetizing it. For example, if labels like Warner were to operate its own, official torrent listing, one that was loaded with advertising but gave away the music for free, then they would be beating pirates to the punch and maintaining control over their pipeline. The only issue is page views, and making sure that people are indeed visiting the site once the files are out there. As a solution to this problem, I believe our old friend DRM could be employed rather effectively. After all, the problem with that system that the end consumer wasn’t allowed to reasonably use something they had paid for. If you are getting it for free, and can at any time you have access to the web, then no harm no foul.  The majority of people have accepted free as a baseline monetary price point, but I believe they would be amenable to paying for their music by other means, such as with their eyeballs. 

As a final aside, I believe the other benefit of such a system could be that it would pay record labels and content producers directly instead of having many hands reaching into the honey jar along the way.

My questions for you folks are as follows:

1. Can we fundamentally alter/reverse the current trend in consumer behavior?
2. Do you think such a scheme could work? 
3. If not, what is your vision for an alternative?
4. How do we move forward?