p2pnet - rss feed: European music fans love p2p
p2p news / p2pnet: Here’s a surprise.
A research company suggests, “European consumers who download music from illegal file-sharing websites outnumber those using legal services,” says the BBC.
“It says illegal networks are used three times as much as legal ones. It also warns that file-sharers, particularly young people, have little concept of music as a paid commodity.”
The Organized Music cartel sue ‘em all marketing campaign and over-pricing continue to drive music fans in their hundreds of millions away from the corporate music services it supplies into the arms of sites such as allofmp3.com and the p2p networks.
Jupiter Research produced the report and the Beeb has the company’s Mark Mulligan saying, “The digital youth of today are being brought up on a near limitless diet of free and disposable music from file-sharing networks.
“When these consumers age and increase spending power they should become key music buying consumers.”
And they would if only Sony BMG, Vivendi Universal, Warner Music and EMI and the growing list of phony corporate ‘p2p’ companies stopped trying to rip people off by demanding a dollar and more for highly condensed, and therefore lossy, digital music tracks.
“Unless the music industry can transition these consumers whilst they are young away from free consumption to paid music formats, be they digital or CDs, they may never develop music purchasing behaviour and the recording industry could suffer long-term harm,” says Mulligan.
Also read:-
BBC - Young ‘prefer illegal song swaps’, November 28, 2005
November 28th, 2005 at 9:00 pm
The cartels have long had their eye on this phenomon of p2p. Wringing their hands and saying, “Oh what are we gonna do? Their stealing our music and we aren’t getting paid for our carefully laid plans to rip everyone from one end of the business to the other.”
They’ve gone on a diet of laying folks off, of eliminating the middleman so the profits mostly come to them, but the head knockers are still there and the lawyers are some of the most used and contracted companies they employ. After deciding that sueing everyone in sight and pushing to change laws in every country to support their stance, still no one is coming to buy in the masses they were. Cookie cutter tunes and artists that are no longer truely musicans have done nothing to increase sales. Nor has DRM done anything to increase customer satisfaction.
In the face of all other business models, the cartels still believe that limiting access to data in the form of song, on a media where unlimited data is the rule, have yet to figure out that limiting the data isn’t bringing home the bacon like it used to. Sueing people isn’t bringing them in either. Nor are the likes of Sony’s rootkit encouraging those potential customers to return and buy again. Treating their customers as criminal by locking down the product and raising prices on those products does nothing to increase customer base. Simply the buying and owning experience has be negated by unsatisfied customer expectations for the products. One that the cartels themselves set into place early in the business years and now want to change to meet their views of what a money returning product would be if they had their druthers.
What the cartels haven’t put together is that unsatisfied customers equals customers going elsewhere. No amount of demanding is going to equal more sales on a product that doesn’t meet customer expectations. A cd that won’t play in my cd player in my car isn’t a product I want to buy. Jumping through hoops to get it that way isn’t what I expect if I buy and there is no reason to spend money on a product that doesn’t meet my life style requirements. Nor is anticopy meeting the simple invisible passthrough that customers expect if it is going to be included in music to be bought. It is the exact opposite in function of what is required by people that buy music. If the cartels can’t understand that then the result is continually shrinking sales as those customers get the satisfaction elsewhere without the cartels.
The dinosaurs are slowly getting the message. The people don’t need them; it’s the other way around. When they realise this, get off their high horse, and meet those demands then maybe whatever is left of the music industry will survive. So far it looks like the dinosaur has a deathly fever and isn’t getting better.
November 29th, 2005 at 2:12 am
I’m suprised more people don’t do this, who knows, it could have some effect. Go here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/make_complaint.shtml
and you can make a complaint about the news they report. I just have, saying that it is skewed towards the BPI, and that they fail to report how unfair the BPI-endorsed ‘legal’ stores are, and that the file-sharing networks aren’t actually illegal at all. Maybe if more people do this sort of thing it will make some small difference.
November 29th, 2005 at 12:32 pm
I actually got a reply from them:
Many thanks for your email.
A couple of points that I hope will answer your e-mail.
File-sharing networks such as Kazaa and Grokster are “illegal”. Courts in many countries have ruled that they breach copyright by facilitating the exchange of copyrighted material.
See these stories for more detail:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4214810.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4416484.stm
With regards to individuals while semantically it may be the case that “file-sharing” of copyrighted files is not illegal per se, uploading (i.e. making available copyrighted tracks for file-sharing) most certainly is.
The BPI has not taken anyone to court yet as many people have settled out of court and the legal process for those who have not is ongoing.
Also thank you for your views on the reasons why legal services have not taken off to the extent of illegal services. As you can see from the stories below we have done a number of pieces on DRM and pricing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4474143.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4309633.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4194047.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3939263.stm
Finally, our investigative reporter is in the process of writing a feature responding to the many emails we have had regarding frustrations over DRM.
I hope that helps.
Many thanks
Darren Waters
Senior Broadcast Journalist
BBC News website
0208 225 8153
http://news.bbc.co.uk/entertainment
November 29th, 2005 at 2:23 pm
You have got to hand it to the BBC for actually replying with an opinionated response, hence they they read your email. Try that with any American corporation and all you’ll get is an auto-reply or some empty “corporate safe” garbage a team of lawyers had to approve.
December 25th, 2005 at 11:13 pm
“The Organized Music cartel sue ‘em all marketing campaign and over-pricing continue to drive music fans in their hundreds of millions away from the corporate music services it supplies into the arms of sites such as allofmp3.com and the p2p networks.”
AllofMP3 isn’t actually illegal. p2p on the other hand is.
http://www.museekster.com/allofmp3faq.htm (See for yourself)