A continuination of my thoughts on the negative affects of keeping industry trade articles behind password- protected and subscription-required doors. This is from Slate's slide show that looks back at its ten years. In 1998 it tried to go to a subscription model. It failed.

"Charging for Slate was a noble experiment but a doomed one. Even in the pre-blog, pre-Google era, it quickly became clear that if other sites couldn't link to our stories, Slate would be left out of the national debate. We watched our traffic, and our influence, fall."

Slate's influence is greater because it's not closed off. People can email links. Bloggers link to articles.

Now, there aren't an incredible number of music industry bloggers right now, but there will be more in the future. Beyond that small group of information filters, others interested in the thoughts of labels, executives and journalists -- such as the technologists who blog daily for a painful death to the RIAA -- would be able to get a different viewpoint.

If the music industry wants its viewpoints to be part of the national debate, it needs an open model online. No registation. No subscriptions. Open it up.