p2pnet.net News:- “Sales at Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music recording company, collapsed by more than a fifth last year as online piracy sent the highly profitable operation into reverse …”

“The dire performance tarnished otherwise solid progress towards recovery by its parent Vivendi Universal, the reshaped French media conglomerate that almost collapsed under the weight of its debts 18 months ago,” continues a story in Britain’s Evening Standard here.

Vivendi’s progress can hardly be described as solid. But ‘dire’ and ‘tarnished’ fit.

UMG is one of the Big Five labels all of whom are in really bad shape because of pitiful performance, bad product, terrible PR decisions, antiquated business models and the fact they’re being advised by ‘experts’ who still haven’t realised this is 2004, not 1974.

In the meanwhile, however, the sun is shining for indies who’re picking up the slack left by the Big Five music labels as they stumble about blindly, suing customers and whining about poor sales.

But some indie music stores are finding file sharing “can help create a buzz online that can lead to more sales,” said independent music store owners who spoke at the South by Southwest Music Conference & Festival inAustin, Texas, last Friday.

Take Hoodlums Music, located on the Arizona State University campus, which opened during the heyday of Napster,” says Wired’s Katie Dean in a report here. “One might think Net-savvy students would ignore the shop in favor of free downloads” but “It’s a myth,” she quotes Steve Wiley, co-owner of the store, as saying. “We see them wanting to buy music.”

How’s that?

High prices, rather than file sharing, are what usually stop a kid from buying a CD, Wiley said, going on that typically, the music industry wants stores to sell CDs for $18 when they should be going for $15.

“That $3 can make the difference in terms of whether or not a CD is going to sell” and “The file sharing, the Internet – just makes them music junkies,” Wiley said.

Nor is Wiley alone in his views.

Paul Epstein, owner of Twist & Shout, a store in Denver, also thinks ‘piracy’ has helped his bottom line, likening it to radio – “another form of promotion that spurs sales”.

But not everyone is happy, Dean continues.

Don VanCleave, president of the Coalition of Independent Music Stores, said high-school students in his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, complain to him about not being able to buy what they want locally.

So – they go online.

“It’s the end of the record store in those markets,” she has Carl Singmaster, owner of Manifest Disc & Tapes of South Carolina, saying.

But although Singmasterm who once owned seven stores closed down in December, downloads weren’t the reason.

It “stopped being fun anymore, (becoming) 90 percent business, 10 percent fun,” he said. “This wasn’t a future I wanted to invest in.”

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