Music industry 'should embrace illegal websites'

[flashl]

Financial Times
By Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson in New York
Aug 3 2008

The music industry should embrace illegal file-sharing websites, according to a study of Radiohead's last album release that found huge numbers of people downloaded it illegally even though the band allowed fans to pay little or nothing for it.

"Rights-holders should be aware that these non-traditional venues are stubbornly entrenched, incredibly popular and will never go away," said Eric Garland, co-author of the study, which concluded there was strong brand loyalty to controversial "torrent" and peer-to-peer services.

Radiohead's release of In Rainbows on a pay-what-you-want basis last October generated enormous traffic to the band's own website and intense speculation about how much fans had paid.

...

The study by the MCPS-PRS Alliance, which represents music rights holders, and Big Champagne, an online media measurement company, found that legal downloads of In Rainbows were far exceeded by illegal torrent downloads of the album.

...

Record companies should ask themselves: "What are the costs and benefits of control versus the costs and benefits of scale?" said Mr Page.

He also challenged the assumption that no other band could achieve the same benefits, saying Radiohead's experiment had reduced the marginal cost and risk for those following their lead.

[AndyTiedye]

1. The Grateful Dead Did Rather Well by Allowing Free Distribution of Their Music

[bdf]

6. John Perry Barlow

Was a lyricist for the Grateful Dead and is a co-founder of The Electronic Frontier Foundation which promotes freedom of expression in digital media and fights for our privacy rights on the Internet.

It's no coincidence that Barlow believes that the way the Dead operated is a good model for the Internet. And no coincidence that the record companies are totally against that idea. The Dead made their money from concerts and their publicity was the tapes made at the concerts—the record companies got little money out of that, but the Dead and their fans benefited greatly (or gratefully). Most artists signed up to the big record companies see very little of the profits those companies make by selling something that costs less than 50c to produce for around $20.

The Dead proved that there is an alternative economical model that works better for the artists and better for the fans than the ones the record companies wish to impose upon us. The EFF provides compelling arguments that we should all be using strong encryption to prevent fascist bastards like Bush and Cheney stealing our freedoms. No wonder the record companies hate the Dead, and no wonder Dubya 'n' Dick hate the EFF.

[DaveJ]

2. I remember when we passed around cassette tapes

Nobody seemed to complain much then. If anything it's was a way to make bands more popular.

As long as the music's good, more folks will want to buy their CDs, T-shirts, etc, and go to their concerts after listening to their music that they get from 'peers'. How's anyone supposed to know if a CD is worth buying without listening to it first anyway???

[Mojambo]

3. Many of the artists I listen to DO embrace these sites

Quite a few actually leak their own stuff onto these sites.

But then none of them are tied to corporate music labels.

[samdogmom]

4. Maybe "Record Labels" are becoming an anachronism!

Wouldn't it be great if artists could reach their fans directly via the internet?

The latest issue of "Rolling Stone" showed the dismal sales of actual Cds--they also reported that downloads are down...but the graphic they chose to illustrate the article showed both album and single downloads up 30+%--so I'm confused.

Me? I'm a music maniac. I buy anything good that comes out. My present iTunes library has over 40,000 songs. At first I was worried about quality and the ability to replace a lost digital file so I bought all of my music on CDs and ripped them to my computer. (After two disasters with my hard drive and losing my ripped library and spending hours and hours and hours and hours re-ripping this music, I started to investigate the download option. Finally, after I ran out of places to store 3,000+ albums in a coherent way that you can still find the album when you need it, I cried "Uncle".) I bought a huge backup drive and....

Now, I try to only buy digital music--I opt for the best quality download I can find...so I use multiple download sources...but I don't want to deal with another physical CD ever again. I'm opposed to the amount of energy, petroleum, space, and waste these physical CDs require. I'd prefer very high quality downloads and accompanying digital booklets to buying an actual CD. (With my backup drive--I keep two copies of everything...so when the harddrive failure occurs...I'm trusting I'm still in business!)

And, I have NO PROBLEM buying directly from the artist and cutting the middle man--"Record Label" out!

It's possible that we're witnessing a huge change in the way the recording industry gets music out to customers! I'm all for this!

[davidnc76]

5. Most

bands make their money touring. The up and coming indie artists are the ones who will lose out on this in the long run.

People like U2's manager Paul McGuinness are trying to convince ISPs to warn suspected P2P downloaders from their services. He has been an outspoken advocate over the last few months. In England he has struck a nerve and most ISPs will be following this protocol over the next year or so. Eventually it will come down to the service providers, but right now the Old West of illegal downloading is full tilt!

I totally agree that artists like The Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan have been doing this for years and still they make profits on their merchandise. All bands need to follow this model that they have followed.