Discretionary Cash - You Vote With Your Dollars

If you didn't spend your money on a Starbuck's or other specialty coffee every day, what would you be spending it on? In 2008, 10.4 Billion dollars was Starbuck's revenue and they're only one of the tens of thousands of such establishments.

How about the money you spend monthly on your cell phone? Discounting those of us for whom it is a business expense and necessity, what would that extra $25/month go toward if you didn't spend it this month?

What percentage of your spare cash goes to computer games? What did you spend this on before such games were invented?

These are questions that you as a consumer need to stop and ask yourself some times. But more than just you, the industries left in the dust need to ask that question too - but do they?

If the music and video industries asked themselves that question - and took into account the declining number of releases they've allowed in recent years, maybe that would be the reason their sales have declined, not "file sharing" that by all (other than industry) accounts actually have helped sales by exposing back catalogs and lesser-known artists. Of course the music publishers only want top-of-the-chart product to be sold and their whole compensation and sales system is geared toward that.

Maybe they should change instead of trying to force their customers - us - to change by getting governments to impose laws and regulations that are technology stifling.

You vote with YOUR dollars and they lobby with what you give them - so maybe we shouldn't give them any more, eh?

Support publishers who "get it" - like Nettwerk Productions and others who are working with the new technology instead of trying to bury it.