According to this report out of Yahoo news, pulled directly from the AP wire, the music industry may just start giving music away soon. In case you haven’t been paying attention lately, the music industry has basically been dying for years, ever since the Backstreet Boys and N Sync were killing it. Of course, rather than accepting the fact that because they’ve been flooding the market with pure crap that no one over the age of 12 would ever want to listen to, no one is buying their records, the industry decided to blame internet piracy.

The industry has taken many tactics to deter internet piracy. They’ve filed lawsuits against the people downloading the content - a horribly ill-fated idea that saw the RIAA suing old ladies and high school kids. They’ve taken the fight to the p2p providers, much like the War on Drugs finally targeting drug dealers rather than drug users. And this tactic worked, inasmuch as it could have. The industry would take out one provider, only to see three more just like it pop up within a week. And now, in a touch of bitter irony, the industry may end up pairing with the creator of one of those very providers - Janus Friis, co-founder of Kazaa - to help them give their music away for free.

While details are still murky, and this particular innovation known as Qtrax may not actually ever take off, but this is still a very interesting article, and worth reading, if for no other reason than to see the industry grasping at straws as it tries to save itself from certain death in the 21st century.