As a wanna-be rock star, and an e-commerce industry “expert,” I spend a lot of free time thinking about the record business’s downfall.  The record industry has a unique crisis going on, and plenty of critics/supporters. Read Bob Lesfetz for a lot of opinion about what’s wrong with them. Fans will take what isn’t given to them cheaply, but it is important to realize that fans still love their artists. Theft, in this case is often flattery. The movement to digital formats has done wonders for availability — when I think about the wealth of musical opportunities my son has that I never had, much less compared to the dearth of options my parents had (really, music was great in the 50’s, but there was almost no opportunitiy to hear Son House, or Baba Maal, or the Tibetan Throat singers for anyone but the nichesst of cogniscenti), well, when I consider how rich the listening options are, I’m blown away. In the very same time though, most of that music is unpaid for, or if purchased, purchased for a minimal fee. Crazy. You could say kids these days can’t appreciate what they don’t have to work hard to find, and that may be, but I digress.

Anyway — the thing I’ve been thinking about, and trying to find the angle for, is a return to hard goods. Hard goods can’t be digitally copied. Plastic albums, shirts, hats, cast-iron trinkets, framed works of art with real paint on them. Granted, reproduction is a bitch, therefore unit prices have to MUCH higher, but hard goods make theft a lot harder. And honestly, I’m partially on the side of the RIAA here — P2P sites are stealing Intellectual Propoerty from people. We may not feel much sympathy for the victims (sort of how we’d feel if told that the CEO of <insert Broken Bank here> had his prized art stolen from the walls), but still there’s a principle, and it’s getting violated. There are times I feel like the entire internet “economy” is like a bunch of kids tearing down the walls of the homes around us, with no ability to create replacement shelter. It’s scary, really, when you look at what’s happening to the entertainment and media industries.

Hard goods — the future’s in hard goods. Plus, they’re so much fun to hold.