In interviews with both Pharell Williams of N.E.R.D (click on the tab for videos from the 23rd of Jan) and Neptunes fame (named best producer of the 00’s) Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien on the Midem blog, they both talk about how the music industry is going to have to accept the way people are consuming music on the web and adapt to it, essentially that there is no sense in victimising people for file-sharing and exchanging music on the internet. Williams describes file sharing as ‘taste-testing’ for music, increasing listener base and giving musicians greater audience reach.
O’Brien likens P2P file sharing to the ‘home-taping’ of the 80’s – suggesting, like Pharell, that it is a way of introducing new listeners to your music, who will then go on to buy concert tickets, merchandise or other music products, if they really like the music. He also cites services like Spotify as the more attractive answer to the ‘deeply unsexy, utilitarian’ file sharing websites – criticising the recording industry for not moving fast enough to create services that cater to consumers taste for easy access to digital music. He also stresses the importance of connecting with your fans, ‘building your tribe’, even for huge acts like Radiohead.
Qtrax has released a press release this morning stating that they have finally signed Sony BMG to their catalogue.
Qtrax is a legal P2P downloading service. In January 2008, Qtrax was overeager to announce it’s launch during the Midem conference and misrepresented ongoing negotiations and expired deals with major recording labels as being signed deals.
Qtrax is a very interesting service that has never really lived up to expectations. I’m keen to see how the service grows and if they can actually deliver decent royalty rates for the content providers. Here at RouteNote we are always looking for the next site to take off and Qtrax is definitely in the mix.
In the current climate P2P and Bittorrent file sharing isnt seen as illegal in all countries, but overall it has to be the biggest threat on the music industry because of its nature.
Songbeat has launched a new version of their service which seems to be taking piracy to a new level.
It’s a desktop app that lets users search for music on Seeqpod, Project Playlist, Last.fm and other sites, and then download the files and import them into iTunes or Windows Media Player, or burn them as a CD. It’s free in its basic edition, which only allows 25 downloads, but users have to pay €19.99 for the premium version to download as much as they want.
This has to be illegal! They are now a company that is profiting directly from piracy. Not according to Songbeat: “The downloading of music is not fundamentally illegal. However, it lies in the hands of the user to discern whether or not they have the right to download the particular music file at hand.” Even Musically thinks this’ll end up in court.
(via TechCrunch)
In 2007 P2P music downloads were worth a staggering $69 billion, and all other forms of movie/television piracy are on the rise.
Techcrunch has been talking a lot about using music online as a free promotion tool, because eventually music will be free online. If record labels do use music online as a free promotional tool then they need to have other revenue stream. Warner Music is signing their new artists to 360 deals, in which allows them to have all revenues streams.
Somebody over there needs to put their thinking cap on, quit screwing around and just give the damn music away for free with no lawsuit strings attached.
While Prince is famous for his eccentricities as much as for his music (I never knew how to pronounce that ♂ thing) his latest foray into the news has been more than usually self damaging. He recently launched legal attacks against some of the biggest names on the web, accusing YouTube, eBay, The Pirate Bay and some of his own ‘unofficial’ fansites, of breaching his copyright. These attempts to limit the unlicensed transfer of his material hardly seems compatible with the decision to give his latest album away ‘free’ with the Mail On Sunday back in July. If he is concerned about the level of sales he’s attaining surely giving his new album away to the entire nation for the price of a newspaper wasn’t the smartest move, and attacking your own fans is unlikely to be constructive under any circumstances. I will be watching with interest to see the effect of this giveaway was on physical and digital sales nationally and globally in comparison to Radiohead’s pay-what-you-want excercise with ‘In Rainbows’.
The prospect of success in this aim are debatable; YouTube has previously taken shelter in a ’safe harbour’ clause of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act protecting service providers from acts committed by their users (inserted presumably to prevent the possibility of me suing BT for allowing that heavy breather to keep calling me), who must be responsible for their own actions. YouTube also apportions an amount of it’s earnings to combating copyright theft, and has a policy of removing any offending material from its site once contacted by it’s owner. The Pirate Bay takes a more impish attitude to these attacks, of which it has parried many, and it’s founders suggest that even if the site is outlawed in their native Sweden they will merely relocate and continue operating.
Whether his or any other lawsuits against sites that host user submitted content are successful or not, I think Prince et al are missing the point. Napster got taken down as the first head of the p2p Hydra back in 2000, and many other sites sprang up to take its place. While I don’t condone copyright theft or piracy in any form, the undeniable truth is that until someone designs and implements a legitimate channel covering the same breadth of catalogue and ease of access as the p2p networks there is no hope of slaying the file sharing dragon.
This said, the Spanish courts illegalised personal peer-to-peer sharing more than a year ago, introducing a small tax on media like CD-R’s and flash memory drives as a means of generating funds to compensate copyright theft victims with. and pay for policing. While I can’t imagine they’ll be able to catch many pirates, or easily calculate the value of damage done to copyright holders it is a piece of lateral thinking that I admire. Like the TV license fee levied by the UK government on behalf of the BBC it generates an income at grass roots level, enabling the enjoyment of a facility by all without specifically victimising individuals (unless they cheat the tax).
The ultimate truth that the internet has freed consumers to get their content however they choose, means that the solution to copyright theft must be to make the legitimate channels so much easier, better and more convenient to use than the illegal ones that everyone shifts over out of preference rather than the remote fear of prosecution. The people that are making efforts in this direction are the ones succeeding in the market and reaping the rewards – of which more in my next post.
Update: Warner Music Chairman echoes this sentiment.
13 Nov ‘07 – Edgar Bronfman, Chairman and CEO of Warner Music Group speaks to the GSMA Mobile Asia congress: “We used to fool ourselves… we used to think our business would remain blissfully unaffected as the world of file sharing was exploding. We were wrong… By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find… and as a result of course, consumers won. “
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