If I were a record company exec...

Q: If you were an owner or senior executive at a major record company, and in a position to make some changes to make the whole system work better, what would you do?

A: With the reality of the amount of illegal downloading going on in mind, I would have to make some changes in the way that my company's artists' music is being distributed online. It seems obvious to me that selling songs for 99 cents a pop on the web is way too much. In order to compete with foreign websites like allofmp3.com, my record company would have to offer rates similar to their $.01 per megabyte. I would also offer music files in a variety of formats so that fans could have more options.

Which still leaves the problem of making a decent profit. I would have to find a way to increase sales of concert tickets and merchandise. My hope would be that making legal music downloading cheaper would increase a band's fan base and therefore boost concert ticket sales. Merchandise sales, however, would be a bit more tricky. My first thought was to make merchandise "cooler" and just make more of it. I would hire a trendy graphic artist to create a variety of merchandise (clothing, mugs, posters, buttons, jewelry, that would appeal to a band's fan base. Then, I would sell said merchandise in a variety of venues, including internet stores like eBay. Hopefully the combination of a larger fan base and people's overwhelming desire for "stuff" would mean profits that would balance out losses from record sales.