iTunes’ 50 million downloads?
p2pnet.net Opinion:- Apple proudly boasts it’s sold more than 50 million songs through its iTunes Music Store, “not including songs redeemed from the currently-running Pepsi iTunes promotion” (you know – the one where teenaged RIAA victims are portrayed as criminals).
iTunes Music Store – which Steve Jobs freely admits is a loss leader – offers Windows and Mac users “industry-leading personal use rights and uniform 99 cents-per-song pricing” from 500,000 tracks from “all five major music companies and over 300 independent music labels,” it says in a puff piece.
But 50 million songs isn’t even a drop in the p2p ocean.
At any given moment, four million simultaneous users are logged on to p2p networks and as many as a BILLION (1,000,000,000) files are shared every month, says Eric Garland, ceo of Big Champagne. Unique users? More than 20 million each and every month.
And p2p file sharers have millions of music files from cultures and artists all around the world to choose from, not just the same old, lame old 250,000 – 500,000 tracks offered by the Big Music-backed online stores at a dollar a download.
‘Hey!’ – rage the labels, with their various enforcement organs such as the RIAA suing people as fast as they can identify them. ‘P2p file sharers are stealing from our very pockets! Thousands of our artists and support workers are going without and/or losing their jobs and/or suffering in other ways because those evil music swappers are taking our copyrighted music without paying for it!’
What a lot of old cobblers.
Just about every one of the 60 million people in the US alone who’s uploading, downloading or sharing unauthorised files would happily pay for the music – if only they could.
But the labels adamantly refuse to talk to any of the major commercial p2p operators such as Morpheus, Grokster, BearShare, Blubster and eDonkey. Any or all of them could be effective mechanisms through which the corporate music industry could offer their ‘product’ – and to established client bases with a clearly demonstrated interest in downloading music.
The labels could stop worrying about buying or developing expensive DRM (digital rights management) packages, none of which work anyway. The money saved there, and on legal and PR expenses (and on keeping all those congresspeople content) could be used to promote the labels’ shiny, new images as innovative Citizens of the Digital Age.
If the labels would work with the p2p community instead of trying to crush it, they could be sellng individual tracks at maybe 15-25 cents a pop.
What!? Against the existing dollar a throw? Multiply 15-25 cents by a fraction of the number of files being shared at any given moment as per Garland’s stats, and you have a virtually bottomless well of money. The p2p operators, with existing client bases and networking software, would probably be more than happy to get involved.
Or there’s the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) model, or something like it.
“The concept is simple: the music industry forms a collecting society, which then offers file-sharing music fans the opportunity to ‘get legit’ in exchange for a reasonable regular payment, say $5 per month. So long as they pay, the fans are free to keep doing what they are going to do anyway – share the music they love using whatever software they like on whatever computer platform they prefer – without fear of lawsuits. The money collected gets divided among rights-holders based on the popularity of their music. In exchange, file-sharing music fans will be free to download whatever they like, using whatever software works best for them. The more people share, the more money goes to rights-holders. The more competition in applications, the more rapid the innovation and improvement. The more freedom to fans to publish what they care about, the deeper the catalog.”
Or of course, they could even develop their own applications because the online stores and the university sales points they’re insinuating into the US educational system via Penn State and Rochester, certainly aren’t going to do it. And they know it.
But it isn’t all bad and ultimately, people who like good music will be the winners.
Music industry efforts to sue the public into submission have opened the way to the independents who, until the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and the rest of them started putting the boot in, didn’t stand a chance.
Now the indies are contenders and through them, there’s a steadily increasing supply of excellent, affordable easy-to-download music coming from new musicians on new labels.
More and more big name artists such as George Michael will realise p2p means freedom for them as well as their fans and you’ll see increasing numbers of performers deciding not to renew contracts with Big Music. Instead, they’ll do it themselves on their own sites.
And p2p means a lot more than shuffling music and movies around. For example, Lindows’ Mike Robertson is using the BitTorrent p2p app to sell his operating system and while he may be among the first to actually tap p2p, he certainly won’t be the last.
Sooner or later Big Music’s shareholders will realise they could, and should, be making money instead of spending it on increasingly unpopular court cases and ‘Badmouth our Customers’ PR campaigns.
Because p2p is here to stay. And that’s the bottom line.
Jon Newton
