p2pnet.net News:- Here’s an interesting turn of events. “In 2007, the majors will get the message, and the DRM will will begin to crumble,” says a Reuters/Billboard article.

Has to be because the members of the Big 4 Organized Music cartel will finally accept that, thanks to p2p communications, consumers will be quite correctly elevated from their lowly status as dumb-as-shit cash-cow ‘consumers’ who exist only to be milked, to that of ‘customers,’ intelligent people with free choice whose wants and desires must be taken seriously.

Wrong.

Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG will cave in only because, “they’ll no longer be able to point to a growing digital marketplace as justification that DRM works,” says the story. “Revenue from digital downloads and mobile content is expected to be flat or, in some cases, decline next year. If the digital market does in fact stall, alternatives to DRM will look much more attractive.”

That can’t be, surely? Just ask Mitch Bainwol, the man who runs the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) on their behalf. His outfit has so far subpoenaed around 20,000 American men, women and children, claiming their file sharing activities have put a huge dent in corporate sales. And he says the lawsuits are driving significant numbers into the waiting arms of the likes of iTunes, the clever application which allows Apple to charge users (through the nose) for something to listen to on their very expensive iPod music players.

“We believe digital downloads have emerged into a growing, thriving business, and file-trading is flat,” he stated last summer.

But as we posted at the time:

This May, globally, the number of p2p users simultaneously logged on at any given moment was close to 10 million, p2p research firm Big Champagne told p2pnet. In May, 2005, the number was 8,665,319 and in 2004, 7,286,377.

In the US in May, 2005, the number was 6,290,327 and in 2004, it was 4,589,255.

Meanwhile, it’s estimated that some 60 million Americans have shared with each other. Against that, the RIAA has issued subpoenas to around 19,000 people, including young children, using the mainstream media to imply that the subpoenas are lawsuits and that the 19,000 have been successfully prosecuted for the non-existent crime of file sharing.

In fact, not one of the RIAA victims has ever appeared before a judge in a civil trial.

What’s 19,000 as a percentage of 60 million? And “stall”? The corporate digital market never even got started.

The labels are suing their own customers in their failed efforts to get it moving and if that wasn’t enough, they’re also relentlessly killing off the competition such as LimeWire, Russia’s AllofMP3.com, BearShare, iMesh, eDonkey, and so on, with the outgoing Bush administration backing them up.

Actually, AllofMP3.com is still around. But it’s not for want of trying on the Big 4’s part. Warner, et al, are suing the site for $1.65 trillion. And No, that’s not a typo.

The Big 4 claim the online corporate digital market is booming. They wish. And they’ve been saying their digital downloads are helping to balance out declines in CD sales. But, like so many other Big Music statements, that’s not true either. Not even nearly.

“Revenue from digital music has yet to offset losses from still-declining CD sales, and digital track sales remain a cause for concern,” says the Reuters/Billboard item.. “Month-over-month download figures were largely flat through 2006, even in the face of year-over-year gains. If the expected post-holiday spike in download numbers that has occurred in the past two years is weak, look for the glass on the panic button to break.”

Meanwhile, the story suggests we watch five places for this year’s DRM developments:

Amazon, “itching to get into digital downloads but is holding out for a DRM-free service”.

LimeWire. LimeWire? Yup. “Still in the process of settling with the music industry, the P2P file-sharing service wants to start charging its 40 million users $1 per download and share the revenue and user-behavior information with the music industry. But it wants to stay DRM-free.” Oh.

Then there’s Rupert Murdoch’s MySpace which is, “working with SnoCap” on mp3 downloads, “that would let musicians sell music directly from their profiles and that of their fans”.head by focusing on independent and unsigned artists willing to release unprotected music, and a successful showing would make the majors take notice.

eMusic, “just surpassed 100 million downloads; it’s the second-largest digital music retailer after iTunes, all sans DRM”.

And last, and least, Yahoo which has, “convinced Sony BMG and EMI Music Group to test the DRM-free waters with limited, promotional ‘experiments’.”

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If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.

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Also See:
Reuters/Billboard – Ailing music biz set to relax digital restrictions, January 2, 2007
growing, thriving business – P2p file sharing contained: RIAA, June 13, 2006

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007 at 1:03 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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