For last week's Arts in Review, I examined Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground's debut full length. I would not have heard about this band if not for the Internet and more specifically, web sites like MySpace and Purevolume (not to mention various message boards). This is of reasonable importance.

After an e-mail correspondence with the band's publicist, she mailed me a burned copy of the album, as there was no actual CD release (it was available only on vinyl and by digital download). The CD arrived quickly, but it didn't work properly, so the publicist uploaded the music and cover art to a third party download site, and then sent me a link. I downloaded the music, listened to it extensively, and then gave it an A-.

This was almost identical to the standard peer-to-peer music sharing that the RIAA constantly complains about, except for the fact it was perpetrated by someone within the industry itself.

The very fact that this seems appalling in any way is emblematic of how out of touch the RIAA is.

Ignoring the failed "snail mail" correspondence for a second, Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground spent basically $0 getting me their music. This is thanks to a new invention known as "the Internet."

Most of the music industry doesn't seem to have a very good handle on this whole "Internet" thing. As I've mentioned before, we get countless unsolicited records in the mail every week, and we're just a random college paper that reviews only a few albums a week, at most.

On an individual basis, it doesn't cost a record company a whole lot to mail us a CD. For postage and the cost of the physical product itself, it's only a couple bucks. The problem is, we rarely review any of these, and these companies obviously send these records to hundreds of other publications.

The point is: the record industry is always claiming the internet is costing them money, and yet they consistently ignore how much money it could save them. Before anyone takes the RIAA's gripes seriously, they really need to address their frivolous spending, and promotional records is only one of the problems.