Late night ramblings.
I've been thinking recently, as always, about file sharing.
What I've been pondering is what the next step should be for the record industry. What, in my opinion, should happen so that they will make money and keep the consumers happy at the same time, neither of which seems to be happening recently.
Obviously one of the main factors in this debate is the money. Recording artists require inflated coke addict inducing salaries, and bands are wondering why their albums aren't selling. Some of them are even choosing to independently distribute their albums. Record sales are going down, and they can't support themselves, so they blame it on the pirates and start a crusade. This is the largest mistake they could have made.
The people who used OiNK were the people who had such an extreme addiction to music that they could never get enough of it. We're the people who hear songs we like and spin them on a dance floor for hundreds of people to hear, and possibly go home and buy from iTunes. More importantly, quite a few of us are the people who also buy music in addition to pirating it. Every month I spend large amounts of money on used CDs. I love collecting them, having the linear notes and the pretty artwork. To me that is worth the money - I may have pirated the album before, but having that CD makes it feel more real to me. Having lots of them on a shelf just looks GREAT.
Since this is the case for many other music addicts that I know, they are doing the wrong thing by pissing us off. We're the people with the 200+ CD collections, not the ones who listen to the same 100 $.99 iTunes songs over and over (Grace Carosio). Because we're angry at our peers and fellow file-sharers being sued and tired of DRM, we're all off buying only used CDs and directly supporting the artist, and then pirating the new releases so they see none of our money.
Here's what I think a solution could be that logically follows from all these things. I know I'm living in a dream world, but this could really work.
Firstly, they need to accept that piracy is never going to stop. They need to compete with the pirates by doing one thing: meeting their price, creating a free online database containing large quantities of music. A place where all of the music you'd ever want is available in a bare bones form: as a V2 VBR mp3 download. Ads would be fine, p2p would be fine. They could still make money on this. A monthly fee could be charged for a subscription which removed the ads and allowed you to download in better qualities. The site would be highly used, and advertising could provide large amounts of money.
In addition to that, they need to boost album sales in the physical realm by emphasizing what makes it different from the digital version."Alive 2007" was packaged as a book, and contained a 50 pages of photos from the concert it was recorded at, as well as a bonus disc with music videos. This kind of stuff can easily happen more with some effort. Innovative packaging, and sweet incentives to buy physical copies. Vinyl is coming back in a big way, another thing that can be capitalized on because vinyl offers a completely different experience. Mass producing it means that prices could go down and audiophiles like myself would squeal with joy. People pirate because there isn't much of a unique experience when an album contains 3 pages of linear notes and 40% filler songs. Ringtone rappers record a whole album based off of one 30 second ringtone. Why do they expect it to sell?
“The main problem is that the artists are not getting as much help developing as before file-sharing. They are now learning to peddle ringtones, not records. They don’t understand the value of a perfect piece of art.” - 50 Cent.
When the internet came and people could get their news for free, traditional newspapers didn't attack the new technology, they embraced it. They understood that people would still buy their product even if it was available for free online. Today, up to 20% of the profit of a paper usually comes from its website, and they still have just as many, if not more subscribers than before the internet. The digital age is here, and it's not going away. The only solution is to embrace it.
What I've been pondering is what the next step should be for the record industry. What, in my opinion, should happen so that they will make money and keep the consumers happy at the same time, neither of which seems to be happening recently.
Obviously one of the main factors in this debate is the money. Recording artists require inflated coke addict inducing salaries, and bands are wondering why their albums aren't selling. Some of them are even choosing to independently distribute their albums. Record sales are going down, and they can't support themselves, so they blame it on the pirates and start a crusade. This is the largest mistake they could have made.
The people who used OiNK were the people who had such an extreme addiction to music that they could never get enough of it. We're the people who hear songs we like and spin them on a dance floor for hundreds of people to hear, and possibly go home and buy from iTunes. More importantly, quite a few of us are the people who also buy music in addition to pirating it. Every month I spend large amounts of money on used CDs. I love collecting them, having the linear notes and the pretty artwork. To me that is worth the money - I may have pirated the album before, but having that CD makes it feel more real to me. Having lots of them on a shelf just looks GREAT.
Since this is the case for many other music addicts that I know, they are doing the wrong thing by pissing us off. We're the people with the 200+ CD collections, not the ones who listen to the same 100 $.99 iTunes songs over and over (Grace Carosio). Because we're angry at our peers and fellow file-sharers being sued and tired of DRM, we're all off buying only used CDs and directly supporting the artist, and then pirating the new releases so they see none of our money.
Here's what I think a solution could be that logically follows from all these things. I know I'm living in a dream world, but this could really work.
Firstly, they need to accept that piracy is never going to stop. They need to compete with the pirates by doing one thing: meeting their price, creating a free online database containing large quantities of music. A place where all of the music you'd ever want is available in a bare bones form: as a V2 VBR mp3 download. Ads would be fine, p2p would be fine. They could still make money on this. A monthly fee could be charged for a subscription which removed the ads and allowed you to download in better qualities. The site would be highly used, and advertising could provide large amounts of money.
In addition to that, they need to boost album sales in the physical realm by emphasizing what makes it different from the digital version."Alive 2007" was packaged as a book, and contained a 50 pages of photos from the concert it was recorded at, as well as a bonus disc with music videos. This kind of stuff can easily happen more with some effort. Innovative packaging, and sweet incentives to buy physical copies. Vinyl is coming back in a big way, another thing that can be capitalized on because vinyl offers a completely different experience. Mass producing it means that prices could go down and audiophiles like myself would squeal with joy. People pirate because there isn't much of a unique experience when an album contains 3 pages of linear notes and 40% filler songs. Ringtone rappers record a whole album based off of one 30 second ringtone. Why do they expect it to sell?
“The main problem is that the artists are not getting as much help developing as before file-sharing. They are now learning to peddle ringtones, not records. They don’t understand the value of a perfect piece of art.” - 50 Cent.
When the internet came and people could get their news for free, traditional newspapers didn't attack the new technology, they embraced it. They understood that people would still buy their product even if it was available for free online. Today, up to 20% of the profit of a paper usually comes from its website, and they still have just as many, if not more subscribers than before the internet. The digital age is here, and it's not going away. The only solution is to embrace it.