I was listening to The Connection on NPR this morning, and the solution to the file sharing problem occurred to me. It is ridiculously simple. The issue that the recording industry has is that its role as middleman is being threatened; they no longer control the distribution channel by moving pieces of plastic around, and thus they fear their grip on the market will slip away.
All they need to do is to change the model - instead of controlling the distribution of an artist's work, they need to become the exclusive content provider for the artist. They should have *subscription* for artists, which will basically amount to mass patronage. For example:
I am a fan of Tori Amos, I want all her music. I pay $25.00 a year for subscription rights to Tori Amos. I get a license number which indicates yes, I have the rights to Tori, because I am her patron (should I ever need to verify that). I get all her CDs shipped to me, and when a new one comes out - whenever it comes out, when the artist creates new work - I get it. They get $25 a year from me no matter what, whether Tori makes a new album or not, because I'm supporting her through subscription because I love her work. Patronage, as it should be!!
This would completely enervate the recording industry, the same way that licensing did for the software industry. You could sell group licenses for a bunch of artists under a label, you could have licenses expire sooner for more popular artists, you could even offer discounts for long standing subscribers on performance tickets.
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