Dear Mr.Griffin,

In December, I learned about the efforts of your company, Choruss, to offer blanket licenses to colleges and universities as part of an experimental program involving a surcharge on users who share files. This surcharge would be monitored and paid by the users’ internet service provider (ISP). After reviewing your company’s strategy and reading about how you plan to launch this file sharing program, I concluded that your scheme is more an attempt to pick the pockets of America’s college students than a viable solution to the inherent compensation problem that it seeks to alleviate (see Record Labels Hungry for Students’ Tutition Dollars).

Press coverage of your company’s license program cooled down for a while, that is until you recently addressed the Digital Music Forum East to answer some of the questions that had been raised about your ISP experiment. You started your address by describing the grim reality of the current music industry. I noticed you referred to the current industry as “a tip jar,” a cliche at this point, but you needed to get your point across. You needed to demonstrate how low the music industry has gone. You needed to get people worried.

I can definitely relate to your message and have recently written a series of articles that are intended to stir public interest in the problems facing the music industry. The difference between you and me, however, lies in our motivations. I want the public to encourage the record labels to embrace technology and change their business models. You, on the other hand, want to create panic that will stress a sense of urgency to your proposed partners. You want these partners to stress this same sense of urgency to those who will take part in your experiment. To that end, you have found in the administrators of colleges and universities partners who are apparently just as morally bankrupt and predatory as the record industry you represent.

During your address you responded directly to a criticism from Billboard that read: “To understand what’s wrong with this model, use your imagination”, your response was:

Let’s be clear at the outset: Choruss is a learning experiment, a test. The universities with whom we are working have two motivations: They want to do the right thing, and they are interested in research in this area. Research into incentives, behavior, network analysis, music marketing and more. We are working with professors and chancellors and provosts, university attorneys, IT departments and their public policy advocates.

We are learning about network music fee approaches, and so we will seek to implement different approaches at different campus networks. We do not pretend to know the answers, but we are certain that now is the time for experimentation and learning cannot come fast enough. The colleges have been asking to do this for years, and some, like Penn State, have been doing something similar for years, so it’s time we met them halfway.

Now allow me to quote from my original criticism of the Chrouss plan:

It should not be the responsibility of students to keep record labels afloat while they tinker with different ideas to make them profitable again.

Mr.Griffin, it seems apparent that you are not in a position to make the claim that by implementing this experimental program on any college campus it would do anything more than steal money from America’s college students, who are in no position to fund such a poor experiment. Furthermore, a system that establishes colleges and universities as collection agencies for record labels is not only a flawed business model for the music industry, but also raises serious questions about the priorities of the people running our institutions of higher learning.

Rather than continue to attack your business plan, I’m drawing a line in the sand. If you and your associates continue to push the Choruss service on campus, I will use the power of my blog to organize students to oppose your service at each and every school that you are able to bamboozle. I will educate student groups about why your plan will fail and will help them organize efforts to openly oppose Choruss on their campuses.

I’m not far removed from college myself and if there’s one thing I know has not changed it is this: college students love to fight for a cause. I think the idea of Choruss pillaging their tuition dollars will be a cause many would love to fight. Students will boycott all major labels that stand to profit from Chrouss, starting with your employer, Warner Music Group (lucky break for Universal for not supporting Chorrus). Your “experiment” will potentially suck more money out of the record industry than it will ever gain, particularly if litigation arises.

Somebody has to take a stand on the predatory nature of your plan to stick college students with the bill for a failed industry. Since I have a stake in the future of the music business, I am willing to take this on. This may seem like a David and Goliath fight, but this is the age of the internet where one voice properly directed can have an enormous reach. And while your intention, Mr. Griffin, is to diminish the role of the internet, I, on the other hand, understand there are no limits to the how the internet can be used. My best work is in online marketing campaigns and I will run one of my best to stop your pillaging of students.

I would like to invite you to review some of my writings on the music industry or even contact me directly if you truly intend to help correct the industry problems that you have outlined. My writings look at other potential business models for fixing a broken music industry, models that actually might work. I can assist you or I can oppose you, but I can’t allow you to use college students as lab rats in your senseless experiment.

Sincerely,

DJ Xplosive