By Gina Daugherty
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Shake It Records owner Darren Blase says that some of the Northside store's most loyal customers are dedicated music burners. (Steven M. Herppich photo) | ZOOM |

Of the 1,000 songs that Rob Slater has in his iTunes music library, about half were downloaded online using LimeWire. The rest were ripped from CDs he owns.

Slater, 36, of Oakley, along with an estimated 57 million other Americans who use file sharing - where users swap music files between each other for free - are about to be individually targeted by the Recording Industry Association of America.

Within the next few months, RIAA plans to file lawsuits against file swappers seeking damages in RIAA's attack on consumers, blaming them for dismal sales. RIAA reasons that if they can sue a few fans and make examples of them, everyone will stop downloading.

RIAA says file sharing is stealing. Music fans say music is overpriced.

The music fans have evidence. Last fall, the top five major distributors agreed (after a class-action lawsuit) to pay consumers $44 million for inflating the cost of CDs between 1995 and 2000. Participants in the suit are still awaiting their $12 payback checks.

The only light in this battle between music fans and the recording industry thus far is that cast by the online storefront of iTunes, the a la carte 99-cent music service from Apple. Apple surprised even itself with 5 million songs sold since its launch in April.

You mean people will actually pay for music?

Absolutely, says Pez Whitson, a music addict and sales associate at the Apple store at Kenwood Towne Centre, who says people will pay to avoid the hassle of file sharing. Corrupted files, long download times and dropped files are just a few drawbacks you can avoid.

SHARE YOUR MIX

Do you have a favorite summer mix? We're not talking rum and Coke, we mean a CD or tape that screams summer - that makes you want to pull on your swimsuit and hop on a lounge chair. Tell us what's on your mix by July 30, and we might share it with our readers. Send e-mail to gdaugherty@enquirer.com or write Mix, The Cincinnati Enquirer, 312 Elm St., Cincinnati, OH 45202.

"It's not worth the hassle," he says of file sharing. "I want a sure thing. Now that I can pay a buck a song, that's the way to go. What people want is high-quality music, and it has to be easy and we don't want to pay out of the nose, which is what we had been doing."

Shake It Records owner Darren Blase isn't complaining about how loathsome corporate stores and corporate radio and corporate radio play have become to consumers. Sales at his Northside store get bigger each month. Blase says his most loyal customers are the biggest burners out there.

How can this be?

"The industry seems to be flushing itself down the toilet each day, and our sales get bigger each month," he says. "My biggest customers are the biggest CD burners. They're nonstop. They use burned CDs as their radio."

Blase's wife, a teacher, says she sees students in her classes who have never played anything but burned CDs. Some have never bought a CD in their lives.

"By the time the kids came of age to buy music and identify with it, you just downloaded it and it was free," Blase says. "They buy the T-shirt at the mall. It's sad. On the other hand, some customers will live on ramen noodles for six months before they will sell back a record. It's just a big shake-down. You can't take an art and treat it like a business, and that's the lesson these companies have to learn."

Why pay more - or at all?

At Everybody's Records in Pleasant Ridge, Jason Arbenz says now that everyone has figured out how cheap blank CDs are, it's hard to convince them to pay $15 for a new one.

Most consumers are unaware of the costs to produce a record, Arbenz says. But given the fact that Busta Rhymes asks fans not to download his music as he shows off his fleet of vehicles on MTV's Cribs, including a Lamborghini, it's difficult for some to accept the "poor starving artist" argument.

"People are mistrustful of the music industry, with good reason," says Arbenz. "My general feeling is that people who burn CDs buy plenty of music. The people who want to make mix tapes, those people are not the enemy of the music business. I think it's a situation caused by the record industry. They put out too many records with only one song that people will care about. The quality of the product is not great in a lot of cases."

It's all in the mix

Slater burns CDs to listen to at work, in his car and for friends. He burns a lot. To keep his mixes interesting, he likes to burn unique cover songs and rarely heard acoustic versions.

"I can make a whole album out of songs just from TV commercials," Slater says. "The Mitsubishi commercials have been a treasure trove of cool songs recently."

You're not going to find everything you're looking for on iTunes. (Pink Panther theme song fans will be disappointed.) But Apple continues to try to fill in the gaps of available music.

Now that it has proved consumers will buy music online if it is cheap and easy, they just might get their wish of a larger catalog.

And music fans might get their wish of more diverse, affordable music.

E-mail gdaugherty@enquirer.com