Something to understand here. The big labels are not involved in direct retail sales. In fact they have a huge channel conflict problem which prevents them from doing due to the risk of upsetting their existing customers which are the big retail outlets.

So the only way for anything to change is for somebody (like Apple, say) to come to them with a new business model. But when that happens, the lawyers, middle managers, and all sorts of other interests tie the negotiations up in endless powerpoint and chocolate biscuit meetings while they debate how the business model can’t possibly work for them without this that and the other restriction, the most obvious of which is DRM.

So it’s not really that the big labels aren’t doing anything. It’s because they can’t do anything due to their history.

Which is what makes the death of AllOfMp3 all the more galling. Here was a positive new approach to selling music that is being killed by short sightedness as they’ve successfully cut off it’s income. What the labels ought to do is to buy (or encourage someone to buy) the assets of AllOfMp3 and transplant it into the west.

Bad product = bad sales. If your product doesn’t make the customer happy sales will be bad, even if the product is a physical good that CAN’T be downloaded. People will find something else to spend their money on. There are very few exceptions to this.