The number of legal digital music downloads has risen 1,000 per cent and the online music business is booming, according to a recent report from industry group IFPI. But don't get the bunting and the bubbly out just yet.
While no one can deny it's good for the industry to see music fans switching to legitimate sites instead of pirate ones, it seems a little cloying that music execs are proclaiming downloads 'A Good Thing'.
Not so long ago, they were telling us that online music was the equivalent of the sky falling in - a Wild West of untamed downloading. They wanted the pirates stamped on - which is fair - but they weren't much interested in exploring online as a distribution channel and they certainly didn't care about the music fans hooked on the idea of getting a new album without having to rip the cellophane off.
Now, with 'significant revenues' coming from online, the record labels are tearing each others' arms off to license their catalogues to the ever-increasing number of online song sellers - up from 50 in 2003 to 230 in 2004, says the IFPI.
And what of those sellers? Sure, there's a lot of them out there but how much do those 230 differ?
The IFPI report says around one million different songs are available online. One million songs can be found in iTunes' or Napster's catalogue - essentially, according to the IFPI, all of those 230 are offering a greater or lesser version of the same thing.
These dealers are going to have to differentiate themselves somehow - for now the two obvious options are brand and price.
The ultimate differentiator, however, will be musical selection. Compared with the pirates' catalogue, which doubtless makes iTunes et al look somewhat weedy, most of the legal sites have got a long way to go before they can cater to the world's music tastes in the same way the dodgy music dealers can.
Of course we're not praising the pirates. The illegality aside, the songs downloaded from illicit sites are often poor quality and users are just as likely to find themselves downloading some nasty malware instead of the Kaiser Chiefs latest.
But it is important to remember the legal online services owe quite a bit to the illegal services that went before. The pirates created online music and, simply put, they taught the legitimate services their trade.
Pirates understand there's a market for everything and content - not format - is key to music. The legal services shouldn't stop taking lessons just yet.
Comments
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1. Michael Bebel
While I agree that the legit services owe their existence to the pirates, I take exception with the notion that they don't understand the need to provide a broad and deep catalog of music to the consumer.
Let's not forget that the pirates don't do anything more than provide the means for a given individual to share their files with the entire network. Thus, the pirates are not in any way involved in making choices about what is distributed over their networks.
On the other hand, a legit service provider is held accountable for anything that is made available on their service. In a society where intellectual property is protected by law, so that creators can reap the rewards from their efforts, it is up to the rightsholder to determine what is distributed via legitimate channels. For example, I can guarantee that every legit service provider would love to make the Beatles catalog available to their users. Yet they cannot. Why? Because the reamining members of the band, and those that hold the rights of the members who have passed, have not yet decided to make their music available to the legit online services. This is clearly their right and we must respect their decision. Otherwise, we might as well abandon the concept of intellectual property altogether.
There are similar issues. For example, I could likely find a series bootleg tracks of U2's performance on Saturday Night Live on a pirate network. However, Bono might not have been happy with his voice that night and would rather not have those particular versions in circulation. Can you expect the legit service providers to make those tracks available? I don't think so.
In the end, the rights of the artists and copyright holders must be respected by the legit service providers. Still, the service providers, working with the record companies and publishers, are doing all that they can to legitimately bring the broadest assortment of music to their consumers. 1 million songs is more than what is available at all but the biggest physical record stores. Across the entire universe of terrestrial radio station playlists there are only 10 to 15 thousand songs being played at any point in time.
Thus, I believe that the legit services have come a long long way over the last couple of years and will continue to focus on providing the richest catalog of music possible.
2. anonymous
People are still using P2P rather than legal download sites because of the restrictions placed on what they can and can't do with the music once they've downloaded it (not to mention the bulky and insidious proprietary software that legal sites so often require you to install). I want to be able to use my own choice of player easily (Winamp), my own choice of format (MP3) and transfer songs simply between my various PCs and portable devices. I do not want songs in a proprietary format such as protected WMA (Napster) or M4P (iTunes) that makes true portability difficult or impossible. While I'll buy the CD and rip it myself if it's one I really like, if it's copy-protected you can't even do that. Until the industry realises that it's better to have an open model that lets users do what they want with their music, rather than continue on this paranoid track of 'digital rights protection' and proprietary formats, all attempts to persuade users to shift away from P2P are doomed to fail.
3. screener
There is no doubt that the p2p networks are totally responsible for the music companies opening up to digital.
Accordingly, the music companies have supported a licensing scheme that attempts to mimic the user experience of the p2p networks. As such, the online music experience offered by the music companies is doomed to inferiority compared to the p2p networks. How can it be otherwise? As long as the music companies simply learn from the pirates, they can never provide a better user experience.
It doesn't have to be this way.
p2p networks (including the original Napster) have a fatal flaw: they are a machine-centric implementation of music. This sucks compared to a networked implementation of music. For the music companies to finally crush piracy, they should simply embrace a networked music model, where the streamed song is at the heart of the experience. Napster as a networked client is a good start, but it would be easy to make it better if the music companies weren't just playing follow the leader.
4. anonymous
The mistake they - and the movie moguls - continually make is that they are forgetting the panacea of any business = the customer is king. If you don't provide what the customers want, they will simply go elsewhere. One of the most restrictive practices and abuses of human rights is the regionalisation of DVDs. On the one hand, they want global markets, and on they other they want to restrict where you can buy and play those DVDs.
I should be free to buy those DVDs from whereever is convenient, whether I'm at home, on holiday, or travelling on business - whatever. And if I have a multi-lingbual family, why should I have to have different machines to play the same DVD from different regions?
Why should they be able to dictate where I have to buy LEGITIMATE DVDs from If I buy a DVD, whether it's region 1, 3, 4 or 99 should be irrelevant - as long as they are legitimate products, bought legitimately.