open letter to the major music labels

I have a message for the record companies. Today corporate greed is at an all time high, yet still their actions have gone beyond my tolerances. They've been using the mainstream news media to deliver their propaganda for long enough, now I'll use this media to get my message out.

To the people responsible for the reprehensible actions of the RIAA, namely the record companies that support it:

It's time you know that I'm boycotting your products. You will no longer receive a single cent of my money until you change your behavior. You've been blaming piracy on your plummeting profits, well now you can thank your own heavy handed efforts at using scare tactics to intimidate the public into purchasing your highly overpriced product.
This is actually nothing new for me, I've been sick of the astronomical prices you've been demanding for years. But your increasing efforts to threaten the general public have made it clear that you have no idea that you're only hurting yourself further.
The obvious defensive reaction to this statement would be to suggest that I'm simply a pirate who doesn't pay for music anyway, that I'm only reacting to your scare tactics.
That is not the case. I can literally say that I have piles of CDs. I've never counted them, a rough count suggests I have over 150 in one spot, with potentially about that much or more scattered elsewhere. I never claimed organization was my strong suit.
The trip to purchase music used to be a part of my routine. Music is very much a part of my life, acquiring new music was almost a way to add new richness to my existence. Also, in my hobby of writing fiction, I use music as a source of inspiration. So every new disc I brought back was the potential to explore new worlds.
Even before my official boycott the simple fact is it was becoming harder and harder for me to find anything I was interested in. In retrospect my CD buying era came at just the right time, even as I was purchasing the contents of my collection it was becoming harder and harder to find those albums in stores.
So you'll understand if I'm less than sympathetic to your complaints that people don't purchase enough of your music anymore. You don't even make most of the music I'm interested in available in stores. Of course I won't purchase it if it's not there! Online CD sales are not an excuse, the whole point of retail music sales is to make the music available in stores.
Perhaps you'll try to deter me by trying to evoke my sympathies for the artists. That is a tricky subject. I have no idea how much an artist makes off of a single CD sale. General opinion is that it's less than a dollar, anyone I ask tends to guess that it's far less than a dollar, perhaps less than ten cents. Feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken.
So it seems to me that YOU are the ones that are hurt the most. I'm sorry that the artists don't get their ten cents, but most of the money was always going to you anyway. And I can not accept that situation any further. Your holding the artists up as a hostage does not make me more willing to deal with your unreasonable demands.
I in turn have my own list of demands, to let you know what you need to do to end my boycott.
1. Cease and desist all attempts to bully the public, including the manipulative lawsuits which you know the average citizen can't afford to fight, thus allowing you to win by default no matter what the facts are or who's right or wrong.
2. Drastically cut CD prices. I would consider five dollars a more realistic price. Let's face it, it costs less than a dollar to actually manufacture them. Perhaps the cost could be allowed to go up to six dollars or so, to allow the retailers to take their chunk. At the same time the amount of money going to the artists can not be reduced at all. If you drastically increased the artists chunk I could consider a further minor price increase acceptable.
3. Cease all support for the RIAA. The RIAA has shown itself to be nothing more than a puppet organization which does your dirty work for you. If you cease such activities you should have no need for it, and you could save money by ceasing the funding that it currently consumes.
4. Stop taking "royalties" from the purchase of writable optical media and mp3 players. Such profits also make your complaints of piracy ring rather hollow. You're taking money from people who purchase CD-R media, as far as I'm concerned you're stealing as well. I don't care what the law says, it's clearly something your lobbying forces paid for. If you want to have the right to complain about people taking your intellectual property without paying for it, stop taking money from people who are purchasing products that you have nothing to do with.
5. Apologize. I want a public apology, preferably covered by the same news media you've been using to disseminate your propoganda.

In the mean time, I want you to consider the fact that the Internet has made it easier than ever for independent artists to distribute their products. Whether it be for downloaded media or simply running their own online CD store, it is easier than ever for artists to produce their own music and distribute it without the help of a bloated organization which takes most of the profits for itself.