MAKING ENDS MEET

The RIAA claims that it needs to sue dead people and preteens in order to ensure that its members can continue to support new talent. It's a plausible excuse, of course, but hardly stands up to any sort of scrutiny - the major labels barely keep any musician's larder full, as the experience of the Mooney Suzuki shows.

The zooks, as nobody ever calls them, aren't a bad bunch and have a pretty solid following, but the decision to merge Sony and BMG had left them without a label; they've finally been able to persuade V2 to take them on, but what kept them going wasn't all this fabled investment from RIAA members, but the cash from soundtracking adverts.

So, that's a band who are commercial enough to, well, be used in commercials, but who take months to find a label willing to take them on as a low-risk. What chance do the bands whose music might not sit quite so well on the top of a Levis model have of getting a decent living out of an RIAA company?

music mooney suzuki riaa