RIAA feels the cold chill of efficiency

Let's face it, any organisation that requires money to keep running is having a tricky time of it right now. But if you're a failing organisation, lacking a strategy, having burned through enormous sums on legal fees with the only outcome making an industry despised, you're going to have to work a lot harder when it comes to getting the subscription renewals in.

Hypebot is reporting a deep-throat on the slashing of budgets at the RIAA:

RIAA "It is about 90-100+ people across the US and global offices - anti-piracy, coordinated IFPI/BPI etc - trust me it's a bloodbath...

(Major label heads) Hands, Morris are squeezing the ____ out of these guys after the ISP failure and a major budget cut. (The) RIAA as you know it is probably history by Tuesday of next week, a formal announcement is being drafted for drop next week.

The new group is a aggregate of IFPI + remaining pieces of BPI + RIAA - (a) new leaner, coordinated group...DC offices are getting closed except for one part of one floor on Conn. Ave., just for the address."

What's especially interesting about this is that it suggests a dropping of the fiction that the BPI is a group representing the British music industry and an admission that its real role is promoting the interests of multinational organisations even if it is at the expense of smaller, local companies.

And if that is the case, Andy Burnham and the DCMS is going to have put on a very good explanation of why the BPI should be allowed more than a secondary influence on UK government policy.

It sounds like we could be in for an interesting week.