p2pnet.net News:- A critical mass is being reached.

Momentum is rapidly building against the music industry in its wasted efforts to stamp out p2p file sharing by sheer brute force and brutal intimidation. Its claims that its sue ‘em all campaign is turning people away from the p2p nets are proving to be as false as its professed concern for its customers’ enjoyment of music.

Increasingly, important elements of the mainstrea media are espousing the idea that not only may p2p have something to offer, but that it’s not the terrible evil the entertainment industry claims it to be.

The internet will eventually be wonderful for music buyers, but it is still a threat to today’s dominant record labels

That’s the sub-head to Music’s brighter future, a feature article in Britain’s The Economist.

” ‘Dirty pop with wonky beats and sleazy melodies’ is how the Sweet Chap, aka Mike Comber, a British musician from Brighton, describes his music,” says the intro.

“The Sweet Chap has no record deal yet, but he has been taken on by IE Music, a London music-management group that also represents megastar Robbie Williams. To get the Sweet Chap known, last year IE Music did a deal to put his songs on KaZaA, an internet file-sharing program. As a result, 70,000 people sampled the tracks and more than 500 paid for some of his music. IE Music’s Ari Millar says that virally spreading music like this is the future.”

IE Music isn’t a member of the Big Four record label cartel, but it’s obviously better able than them to tell which way is up.

“So far they [the cartel members] have been slow to embrace the internet, which has seemed to them not an opportunity but their nemesis,” says The Economist in a massive understatement.

“Rather than putting their product on file-sharing applications, they are prosecuting free-download users for theft,” it says.

“The industry claims that file-sharing has stabilised thanks to its lawsuits,” it has the IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industries) saying. However, the IFPI was, as usual, talking through its hat. Recent statistics show file sharing is increasing, not diminishing.

In the meanwhile, “The big companies are trying to work out how they can harness the internet,” says the article. “Consequently, they are having to rethink their traditional business models.”

According to an internal study done by one of the majors, the report continues, between two-thirds and three-quarters of the drop in sales in America had nothing to do with internet piracy:

“No-one knows how much weight to assign to each of the other explanations: rising physical CD piracy, shrinking retail space, competition from other media, and the quality of the music itself. But creativity doubtless plays an important part.”

But, “Music bosses agree that the majors have a creative problem. Alain Levy, chairman and chief executive of EMI Music, told Billboard magazine this year that too many recent acts have been one-hit wonders and that the industry is not developing durable artists.”

Music executives, “may not have the confidence yet to make a deal with their arch-enemies,” The Economist concludes. “But eventually they have to get bolder. It seems clear that the only way for the majors to stay on top of the music industry into the next decade is to take more risks – both technological and creative – than they have done for a long time.”

Read the full article.

===================

See:-
recently – Music’s brighter future, The Economist, October 28, 2004
increasing – P2p file sharing is thriving, p2pnet, October 27, 2004

This entry was posted on Friday, October 29th, 2004 at 8:59 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.

HOME

Viewed 2754 times