Dear Recording Industry...

At Brainwash Tim Lee has written an open letter to the recording industry:

"Dear Recording Industry,

You're being had.

Online music sales have soared, from $220 million in the first half of last year, to $790 million in the first half of this year. Millions of consumers are discovering the convenience of buying music online. There's just one problem: if you don't change your strategy, you're going to give the store away to Apple CEO Steve Jobs. His iTunes Music Store is the industry leader, and thanks to digital rights management (DRM) technology, every customer who buys your products from the iTunes Music Store becomes locked into Apple products. If that's not changed, that will soon make Steve Jobs the most powerful man in your industry.

Fortunately, there's an easy solution: when you renew your contract, you should demand that Apple remove the digital rights management (DRM) technology from the iTunes Music Store.

Yes, you read that right: you need to stop letting Apple use DRM technology with your songs. I know that DRM was originally developed at your request, but I hope to persuade you that that was a strategic blunder. If you don't correct it, you run the risk of making Apple's shareholders very wealthy at your expense..."

Read on. He makes a lot of sense.