alfa.org.uk

So, the RIAA have sued 493 more filesharers. They don’t seem to realise how completely futile this is, and how they’re only scratching the surface of the problem (”Oh, you’re only tracking down people who use Kazaa or LimeWire? What about those using other distribution methods? Bittorrent, WinMX, SoulSeek, even DCC on IRC ffs?”).

They hope that by making enough noise in the press they’ll scare people away from file-sharing. Well, sorry, it isn’t going to happen. Napster made people realise not only that the Internet could make everything available on their doorstep, but that sharing it could be fun. People much cleverer than me have been telling the industry for years that the Internet will become the new distribution method for media, and they’d better get used to the idea.

Apple caught on first (as usual). But in order to get the big four record labels interested there had to be DRM involved. Cue DVD Jon to crack it. Again.

The games industry has realised what’s happening. People want to play multi-player games over the internet, and they’re willing to pay for it. That’s because they’re not interested in the physical game itself, but the potential for social networking it can offer. Just look at EverQuest.

The music industry should take a leaf out of the games industry’s book. People are quite uninterested in physically owning the media and holding it in their hands. They’re quite happy with an iPod full of tunes, and nary a CD in sight. The industry should tap into the potential for huge cost-cutting this offers, and make real products that people would be interested in.

Micro-payments are the way forward. Why should I buy an album when I’m only interested in one song? More to the point, why should I pay a fixed price for one song, regardless of the number of times I play it? Why not charge 1p per play, for any song? Bandwidth is cheap and the internet is ubiquitous.

Supply and demand, man. Supply and demand.

Or maybe the industry is scared of the people having real commercial choice over where their money goes.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 26th, 2004 at 2:14 pm and is filed under music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.