I’ve been in the music industry for 30 years and reading PC Pro for the last ten. I can’t recall ever reading an interview with anyone truly involved in the reality of day to day music business in all that time. I have read numerous articles and letters (like the one above) where unalloyed indignation takes the place of any insight whatsoever. Myths are perpetuated and truths misrepresented so that the ripping off mantra becomes a justification for people stealing. How about getting a balanced view? Don’t get the dogmatic proselytisers for either side but representatives who are prepared to admit previous mistakes and rationally consider how to move forward. The majors are not the largest sector of the music business no more than Dell represents the computer industry and they are not the ones which are being killed off. Stealing is destroying innovation and forcing real talent into giving up. So get input from the indies, from musicians and software programmers, from the majority, the people who are actually being damaged by the piracy and tackle the real issues instead of giving a platform to the grandstanders.

Unfortunately, humans are creatures of habbit and clan mentallity.

Once someone gets in to the habbit of P2P they’re unlikely to change that habbit. And once enough people are doing it, many will follow suit.

Maybe it wouldn’t be a problem if the music industry got in earlier? Headed off the trend at the start rather than the middle/end? It’s impossible to know.

But it seems to me that the principle reasons they didn’t were fear (risk) and ignorance of their customers and the internet. Now they seem to be trying to put the genie back in the bottle through use of fear and ignorance. A perpeptual cycle of negativity. Until they find a way of Enticing their customers back I can’t see how they will succeed. And if they don’t, there will be a new paradigm; one where their industry’s model is bown apart and maybe even their companies too. Even if that means less choice for us the consumer, I still have little sympathy for the Music Industry itself I’m afraid.

The internet changed the environment, the customer adapted and the industry has tried desperately to resist. Survival of the fittest. Only time will show how fit the industries’ strategies are now…

How these record labels have the cheek to complain about people downloading songs and the artists and creators lose money is beyond me! The record labels are currently being sued for millions for not paying royalties owed to artists, and the record labels call downloaders thieves haha.
Piracy would barely exist if they did not demand such high prices for music. Instead of £10 for an album, what’s wrong with £5? more people can afford it, more people would buy it, and in turn make the labels more profit. The simple fact is they over price it all, ripping the consumer off like they have done for years! If a product is good enough, it will sell itself, you don’t need to threaten people and try and get people to buy mainly rubbish albums that are being churned out all day long that nobody wants. And remember, these record labels are complaining about all the money they are losing………and they also just announced they have just made the most amount of sales ever this year!

“Sorry, but that is lame. If it is too expensive, just don’t buy it!”

Yeah but that’s just a lame response too. The issue is that there are artists that people want to listen to (regardless of the crap that’s churned out as well) but there isn’t one reason people will/won’t download over legally buying there are many. For starters you have actual cost compared to market driven worth, restrictions on what you can do with what you buy, the ease you can buy a product etc. Music has been overpriced for years and that’s the market voice and they’re the ones who should ultimately decide in a free competitive market otherwise you start getting into things like monopolies and price fixing.

Also restrictions are just going too far these days. In these times where companies are saying people should be more open about themselves and share all their valuable marketing information the companies themselves strive to lock their assets down. They want to control every aspect of a product and how it will be used so that they can charge you multiple times for the same information. You only have to look at the recent ebook controversy where the publishers say that just because they have paper rights to a book they also should have ebook rights however consumers are not entitled to the same rights and have to pay twice for each format. This is the same with the music industry and imposing DRM. It’s the double standards that are pissing people off. Who wants to buy a washing machine that can only wash jeans. (broad analogy I know) If a company want to sell a product they have to make a product worth selling not just expect people to buy whatever they decide is good value. The consumer public are not children but if you are being treated like a child the natural reaction is to behave like one and rebel.

Also I object to the phrase “There are now more than 35 legal digital music services in the UK, offering music fans a great choice of ways to get music legally”. Just because the BPI say it’s so doesn’t mean it it. Most of these services are hard to use, still way overpriced and don’t offer you the product you really want. Does the BPI ever wonder why there are so many illegal MP3 download sites making money. Why did allofmp3 for example rake in the money from people who knew that what they were buying was (arguably) just as illegal as downloading from free from P2P?? Could it be that they actually offered a product that people wanted to pay money for, at a rate they were so happy to pay and found the service so easy to use that they kept coming back. It’s already been proven and the BPI have said that there are now so many more of these sites so if it was all about people thieving for nothing these types of site would never survive let alone grow. But that’s not the case is it. Don’t get me wrong some legal services are quite good but we’re still a bit away yet from a legal sustainable business model/service. The models are out there so why is it taking so long for the business masters to learn.

Come on, consumers are already showing that they will pay for a legal quality service and product over a dodgy one. (well there’s always a few and that applies to all types of products and that never has and never will change) Stop trying to tell consumers what they should be wanting and doing with something they’ve legally purchased and listen to what they actually want because this is how you actually make money not by twisting the knife in your potential customers over and over until you’ve milked them dry. (e.g. complaining about high levels of piracy and the decline in singles sales and then announcing the highest singles sales) It goes both ways if you give a little you usually get it back and more because of the respect it earns you. Treat someone badly and just wait to see if they come back near you again. So BPI stop whining and do something about it. Consumers have told you for years now what they want and what they’ll pay. The business models are there and they’ve shown that there is a lot more money to be made by doing it right than trying to prosecute everyone. Come on let’s change things and make the music industry something great again!

““Sorry, but that is lame. If it is too expensive, just don’t buy it!”

Yeah but that’s just a lame response too. The issue is that there are artists that people want to listen to (regardless of the crap that’s churned out as well) but there isn’t one reason people will/won’t download over legally buying there are many.”

But there are still plenty of legal, and free, ways of doing that.

Saying that stealing the music is easier is no excuse. In most areas of life, doing things the right way is often harder than doing things the wrong way.

All of this misses the point for me. I have ripped all of my cd’s to a windows home server at cd quality. If I could download music at this quality I would buy it online, but I can’t easily do this. Why is this, broadband speeds are high enough now to make it viable. Until then I’ll buy second hand cd’s from amazon drm free and rip them to my server.

My major gripe is that some cd’s (now 74 at Play.com) was 10.99 for the double cd delivered and 11.99 for the download. If I buy the cd, I can rip at whatever bit rate I choose. As for the article, good choice of music with Tom McRae and Elbow, check out Ed Harcourt and Patrick Wolf

“P2P is an established (illegal) means of downloading music”
P2P is not illegal, neither is downloading music using it. It is (if not done for profit) copyright infringement which is a civil matter.

“You need to change the way people think” You need to do some research then change the way you think.

“Once you have them paying for music as the norm then you can realistically increase the price.” Who the f u c k is “them” and why increase the price, you sound like a music industry stooge.

I don’t see it working – file sharing is an incredible opportunity to promote and expose new artists – we just need to monetize the file sharing in a non-intrusive way.