Big Music’s BPI on, well, not much
p2pnet news | Music:- “When the Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen broke through mySpace, conventional wisdom had it that record labels no longer had a place in the digital age,” says BPI (British Phonographic Industry) mouthperson Geoff Taylor, going on:
“Yet both artists are signed to long-established, successful record labels and in reality only became household names thanks to traditional marketing.”
Who’s Lily Allen? But the Arctic Monkeys? Them we know.
“How galling … for the industry that the number-one spot in this week’s chart was taken by Arctic Monkeys, a band from Sheffield whose first professional single owes its existence not to the image-makers but to internet file-sharing.”
So said Britain’s The Economist about a band catapulted to fame and glory by online fans and which, having arrived, virtually, gave online supporters the online finger.
Record labels are changing, “but remain the most highly skilled at identifying, investing in, nurturing, marketing and promoting new musical talent,” says Taylor in a puffetorial in The Telegraph, going on:
“The BPI is at the forefront of the industry’s efforts to ensure that there is a fair financial return for artists and those who invest in creating new music. [ROTFL] We are confident that the prevalent culture of online copyright theft will be curbed through a combination of consumer education, stricter enforcement by industry and government, new business models and more robust action by ISPs against online copyright theft [ROTFL].”\
Note the bit about ISPs.
“Simply put, we have too much to lose as a society, economy and culture if we do not ensure that creators’ efforts are rewarded, and we believe that the internet will become an environment in which creativity can be effectively monetised,” says Taylor.
Because pulling in the bucks, pesos, pounds, and giving as little as possible in return, is what it’s all about. Everything else falls a looooong way behind.
Earlier, “Getting radio airplay or selling CDs in shops is no longer the only way for a recording artist to reach their fanbase,” Taylor observes wisely.
“Covermounts, free downloads, exclusive retail partnerships, CDs bundled with concert tickets and more, give artists and record companies more distribution models, but what these new distribution models have in common is that they generate revenue streams that are not vulnerable to piracy: concert tickets in the case of Madonna, or a share of newspaper income in the case of Prince.”
And who figured that out? Certainly not the BPI’s owners, Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG.
Instead of leading the technically ignorant leaders of the corporate music industry into the digital 21st-century, encouraging them to embrace P2P as the marketing and distribution vehicle of today, Taylor and others of his ilk are doing their best to grind it down into a shape that can be easily forced into their out-moded physical 1970s marketing models.
Is his waffle a rallying cry of some kind? A hymn of thanksgiving to the corporate music industry republic, perhaps?
Who knows? There’s so little genuine content, it’s really hard to tell ……
But there’s one thing it isn’t. And that’s a forward-looking, incisive OpEd on Big Music’s survival in the digital age.
Also See:
The Economist – Monkey Business, October 27, 2005
online finger – Arctic Monkeys ‘top award’?, April 24, 2007
The Telegraph – Record industry’s survival in the digital age, October 22, 2007
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!
Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for the download, and here for details. Click here or here to learn how to by-pass censorship in your area.
