BBC News reports that sales of music downloads are exceeding sales of CD singles. So my question is, Who didn’t see this coming?

For a long time, the record industry has decried online downloading as a harbinger of doom. “We can’t compete with free,” they cry, “and so we need to chase these evil music pirates with all we’ve got.” It’s obvious none of these record execs has ever really used Kazaa, because otherwise they’d know the truth: piracy sucks.

Downloading music online is an exercise in patience: the files are never named properly, can contain defects or missing sections, and are a pain in the ass to manage. Having seen countless MP3 collections on friends’ computers at college, I can attest that they are a jumbled mess of misnamed files and bad-quality rips.

The RIAA sometimes reminds me of the companies that made fortunes selling multigraph machines, enormous contraptions used for printing, only to be steamrolled by Xerox — and all because these firms dismissed and ignored digital copiers. They couldn’t see the next evolution in their own business.

The average consumer used to only have two choices when it came to purchasing music:

1. Spend gas money, parking fare, and lots of money on an overpriced (but perfect quality) CD.
2. Take your chances (and waste your time) downloading music illegally.

Now iTunes, Napster, and a plethora of other services are offering consumers a third option:

3. Pay a reduced rate to download good-quality music legally.

Fast. Cheap. Immediate. What’s not to like? Even MTV is getting into the game. For a while the record labels believed they could all run their own services, exclude other firms from using their music, while at the same time strictly limiting how consumers could use their downloads. The result was dismal failure.

Welcome to reality, chums. Consumers are more than willing to pay for content, but they really want two things: selection and flexibility. The reason iTunes was, and continues to be, such a success is that it addressed both issues. The selection of music is non-exclusive, meaning they did not turn themselves into just another outlet for Bertelsmann or Sony. The flexibility is unprecedented; you can transfer songs to multiple computers, burn them to as many CDs as you like, and it’s all bundled as part of what is hands-down the best music player available.

It’s time for record companies to stop scaring themselves over online piracy and realize that consumers want to download music. The more music is available online, the less consumers will flock to piracy. It’s time to stop serving subpoenas and start serving entire music libraries — from Britney to Radiohead to those thousands of bands you’ve never heard of.

I hate piracy. It’s slow, dirty, unreliable, and illegal. I, the consumer, am more than willing to pay a reasonable price to download music, but you have to play by my rules. Most importantly, you have to stop threatening to sue my little sister every time she downloads something off Kazaa that she can’t buy on iTunes. Stop treating your customers like potential criminals, give us what we want, and we’ll keep supporting your business.

So is the recording industry ready adapt to a shifting marketplace, or will they let themselves be swept aside by those who understand the new rules of the game? It’s time to find out. Play ball.