onetonnemusic

"Success in the Kazaa case is also likely to be huge boost for the global music industry, which has been hanging on by its fingernails, blaming music piracy for a huge drop in CD sales.

According to the International Federation of Phonographic Industries, peer-to-peer was partly to blame for a 25 per cent drop in record sales since 1999. In Australia, the value of record sales fell 6 per cent in 2004 to $607 million.

What would be a massive boost for the global music industry is to stop regurgitating the same filth onto the airwaves and television and get behind interesting and new music.

I think that even mainstream radio stations like Triple M (part of the Ausstereo network) here in Australia are feeling the pinch from a consumer who increasingly doesn't have to put up with not only a poor selection and variety of music, but a density of advertising that would make any hardened popular culture consumer turn off.

Music lovers (or at least musical epicurans), by and large don't listen to commercial radio, they purchase singles, and these days, can choose how they get their music. I think however, it's not that portion of the music purchasing audience that is stealing music online, i'm fairly convinced (and a quick search for any moderately popular pop act versus a moderately popular alternative act on Limewire will confirm this) its the younger people who formerly purchased singles and a top 40 compilation CDs that are especially getting into this market. If their total CD purchases for a year would be maybe 10 CDs for example and they download all those albums online that would hurt big music business much more than your avid music fan who not only downloads music online, but continues to purchase music instore, online, and attends live music.

I think that's why there is so much bitterness towards big music. The people who pour a disproportionate amount of money per capita into the industry are overlooked for the quick buck, short term money potential of artists like the Australian/Armenian/American Idol winners. If you take care of your core business - that is, your actual music lovers, then you can continue to dish saccharine slops to the teenage market, but I feel perhaps as consumers they'd also be more likely to become avid music purchasers if music had for them the same signifigance it does to a music affionado.

I got a bit worked up and confused there, but the crux of what i'm trying to get at is, music afficionados aren't hurting the music industry, they continue to be an advocate and avid purchaser of music products, but the top 40 music consumer is getting wiser I think. Why pay for the music when they can download it online - they certainly don't seem to get anything special from purchasing the CD and seem to have much less of an emotional attachement to any of these issues because music is like any other consumer product for them. The music industry treats it's biggest consumers like cattle and now the cattle has greener pastures to dine apon.

If p2p had a blow struck yesterday, it was only the aspect as it applies to commercial entities trying to operate legally and make a profit (and Sharman made quite a bit of money from Kazaa) from piracy. What's logical - and happening right now is piracy is facilitated by bittorrent and increasingly as time goes on, you will see anonymous torrent software allowing sharers to swap files in relative safety. Bandwidth available to consumers is ramping up, and what consumers can do with that facility is the big question. How quick can the record industry nail down each new method of piracy and how quickly can the users circumvent it again?