Have you heard SR-71? I was perusing the electronic aisles of Target when their smirking, Ben Affleck-wannabe faces assaulted me from the huge display of TVs. I was quick to find they’re the latest in pre-teen-oriented, slickly produced, painstakingly contrived and over-promoted music products. SR-71 is what would happen if N’Sync learned to play instruments well enough to cover Blink 182 B-hinds. They really suck. This “band” represents the latest and greatest to hit the shelves of music stores everywhere, straight from America’s favorite music consortium (based on sales), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). If you’re unfamiliar with the RIAA’s work, they’re essentially the De Beers of the music industry. You may remember them as the ones who tried to sue Diamond Multimedia for making a portable MP3 player or the ones who stopped MP3.com from streaming copyrighted music to its listeners that they had physically proven they owned. The RIAA brings you 90 percent of the music you listen to. It’s a collection of every notable record label. It signs talentless but marketable hacks like SR-71 and price fixes your favorite CDs at 17 bucks at Musuckland (the artist typically gets a dollar or less per album). So what? Like any other God-fearing, red-blooded American corporate superpower, it’s in the business to make profits, right? Isn’t it just good old-fashioned capitalism? Well, no. It sells 10 cent plastic discs of contrived, focus-group pop music to gullible little girls. By forming its own trade group, it has price-fixed all CDs to eliminate competition. According to a recent RIAA press release, it has sold 420 million music “units” in the first half of this year. This is an all-time high and represents a 6 percent increase over last year. To quote, “market momentum continues to climb as the dollar value of CD product grew 9.9 percent from this time last year to nearly $5.7 billion.” You heard right; it sells compact disc products. Not albums by musicians, but CD products – aluminum film grafted onto circular plastic coasters – that netted them billions. The-artist-formerly-known-as-Prince-but-isn’t-anymore-because-Warner Bros.-owns-the-rights-to-his-name-as-well-as-much-of-the-music-he-wrote said it best: “record companies don’t really want the public to like good music. They want it to buy whatever `product’ they come up with, whether it’s musically good or bad. Record companies don’t really want young people to develop a sense of what good music is. “Because real music lovers don’t consume music, they don’t buy the latest chart topper just because it’s at the top of the charts; they don’t really participate in that `system;’ they don’t really generate significant revenue.” It’s been established that the RIAA quantitatively defines music as revenue-generating products it sells on clear plastic discs. Disturbingly, it’s becoming more obvious that the RIAA consider the musicians who generate the content on these commodities no more than common laborers. Today, signed musicians have no rights. Once an artist or musical group or boy band signs onto a major label, they are forced to relinquish the copyrights to their music to the record label and cannot reclaim their work for a minimum of 35 years. Incredibly, this wasn’t enough for the labels, and the RIAA successfully lobbied Congress last year to add a “technical correction” the 1976 Copyright Act to classify a musician’s album as work-for-hire. On Nov. 29, 1999, it became law that a record label owns all rights to sound recordings and denies the author the right to ever reclaim his or her work. The man who wrote the amendment has since quit his job and is now the chief lobbyist for the RIAA in Washington. It is a sad day when the only mainstream source of music distribution is delivered by a group who believes music is simply a product on a disc and the creators deserve no more credit to their work than a Subway sandwich artist deserves to a 6-inch chicken breast on white. I recognize the need for fat cats to feed their families, take cruises and buy Mercedes, but this is out of hand. I can accept a Big Mac or underarm deodorant as a product, but music is not a product that’s worth is estimated according to how well it sells. Megadeth’s “Rust and Peace” is not a CD product. James Joyce’s “Ulysses” is not a paper product. They transcend the limitations of their medium. Well, Megadeth does. I’ve never read “Ulysses.” The RIAA is making true musicians pay dearly for the opportunity to share their work with the world. It demands complete ownership of all recordings and the lion’s share of profits. To resist them is to surrender any notion of ever being popular. Record labels through the RIAA are continually and shamelessly silencing respectable artists in every genre. There is no perfect solution to combating this menace to society, but we can begin by not consuming music as a product and by discovering and listening to albums by sincere musicians on the intense, spiritual level they deserve. You can start by scoring some Megadeth.