Wired reports today on publishers who are beginning to put whole books online. Finally. It’s taking a while, but these folks should get it eventually. What magazine or newspaper doesn’t put most if not all of its content online at the moment? Magazine sales are at an all time high. Newspaper ad revenues are rising. I have experience with this – a book I worked on was entirely published on the net before we compiled it, designed it, and put it on paper to sell in stores through St. Martin’s Press.

New Media don’t replace or even really threaten old media – they complement it. Maybe the RIAA and the big music companies will figure this out. Where they see a threat, they should see an opportunity.

But the RIAA is like OPEC just before the end of the oil shocks in the 70s. Eventually someone will defect like some giant game theory test case. They’ll figure out that McLuhan was right – the medium is the message… and the medium of a CD publisher isn’t little plastic disks, it’s the music itself, and the idea of the music. And that day they’ll license like crazy to value-added resellers and make money from the brand, not some bulky clear plastic thing in a jewel case.

They’ll be the only recognizable survivors.