By Jo Best, 26 January 2004 14:15
NEWS Televisual stardom of a sort awaits for a few lucky teens collared by the RIAA for illegally downloading music from the internet 20 or so of the youngsters will be featuring in an advert for Pepsi, boasting about how they'll still be downloading tunes for free.
Is the fizzy-drink purveyor encouraging criminal activity among the young? No. The ad will be aired to promote the Pepsi-iTunes tie-up, which will see the partners giving away 100 million free downloads.
The RIAA, which has been waging a lawsuit-happy war on P2P network users, has said that it believes the ad is a sign of how the downloading environment has changed recently, to have an emphasis on legal downloading.
Apart from plugging paid downloading, the ad may benefit the RIAA in other ways. One of the young lawbreakers will be using the fee from the promotion to pay off her settlement with the RIAA.
While Pepsi is hoping that the ad will tap into the download-hungry mood of the yoof, its tactics have to be admired. The ad, to be shown during the Super Bowl this week, manages to have a foot in both camps of the downloading debate.
Britney's beverage of choice could well garner some reflected cool from the P2P outlaws. It is paying out what is, most probably, not an insubstantial amount of money to 'criminals', all the while making sure it's got its feet firmly placed on the right side of the law and the music fraternity.
It looks like Pepsi is onto a winner, according to findings from Forrester Research. The analyst group believes that downloading teens are costing the US music industry around $700m a year and as a result, the CD as a music format will be dead in five years.
Comments
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1. Paul Bradish
"The analyst group believes that downloading teens are costing the US music industry around $700m a year."
And how much do the adults who pirate mp3s from the web cost the music industry? I bet that it is most certainly more than $700m.
2. anonymous
The UK music industy's own analysis of their 2003 sales said they had sold more CDs (by volume)than ever before. So how exactly is the free downloading of music supposed to have affected them??
Maybe if the US companies stopped continually releasing old songs in ever-new compilations; found some bands who didnt come out of the marketing departments "band factory"; and cut the price of CDs to where it should be after all these years, they might have a future. As it is, if they continue to sue their customers as they are doing today, there is little future for them, let alone the CD format.
3. Anonymous
How about the 5 CD's worth of Country MP3s my grandparents downloaded? I would imagine they would be a tasty treat for the RIAA.
4. anonymous
Personally, I think that Pepsi was probably the originator of this promotion, because they know that it's going to be big. Hell, I'm switching drinks for free tunes!
5. anonymous
do you people live in a hole when it comes to things outside of windows. Apple has made a deal with Pepsi to give away free iTunes from the Music kinda like how you can win free Pepsi.
6. anonymous
"The RIAA has said that it believes the ad is a sign of how the downloading environment has changed recently, to have an emphasis on legal downloading."
Maybe so, but if so it's despite rather than because of any efforts of the RIAA. If the record companies it represents had gotten off their fat backsides and started legal downloading at a sensible price way back in the Napster days when it was first clear that internet music was here to stay, then illegal downloading probably wouldn't have the popularity it does now.
But noooo they have to hang on to a business model aimed at blatently ripping-off consumers, and p***ing and moaning about how much money they are loosing!
One thing I've always wondered: The total the RIAA claim to be loosing to piracy is, what? $4BN?
Where does this figure come from? Is it the money made by the pirates? In that case there must be more pirate copies of music than "real ones since pirate copies tend to cost rather less! (Like nothing often!)
Or is it, as I suspect, the number of pirate copies they reckon are out there multiplied by the cost of the "genuine article"?
What seems a huge hole in that evaluation is that a/ Since nothing physical has been stolen, it's not money they've "Lost", merely money they haven't made.
and b/ How many of the people with the pirate copies would have bought the thing for the full price if the pirate hadn't been available? To put it in a more legal context, there are many albums out there that you might spend a couple of quid on if you found it in the bargain bin of the record shop, but that you wouldn't look at twice at full price when it was released.
7. anonymous
I don't know---should we all be p*ssed off here that Pepsi (and iTunes) will be profiting of the misfortune of 20 kids that got caught? Instead of the 'illegal-downloading-is-bad' message, it's kind of sending an 'illegal-downloading-is-cool-and-you'll-end-up-on-tv" message. Who's addressing the bigger problems of the file-sharing networks and how easy it is to steal (yup, I said it) music? If you can;t share, you can't steal.
8. anonymous
Anybody notice that the RIAA was voted the weaseliest organization of 2003 at dilbert.com?
9. Dev
if anything file sharing networks has made it easier for people find out that there is allot of very very very bad music out there once you get by the one hit gimmick $ong.
so maybe the real problem is the qaulity of songwriting and music!