NEWS
The music industry is calling for governments and internet services providers (ISPs) to do more in the fight against digital music piracy.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) is proposing that ISPs should be obliged to disconnect users who are found to be infringing music copyright.
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According to the IFPI's latest report into digital music, the ratio of unlicensed downloads to legal ones stands at 20 to one, with tens of billions of illegal file transfers taking place in 2007.
And although digital music accounts for 15 per cent of all music sales and rose by around 40 per cent during the past twelve months - hitting $2.9bn - the sharp fall in CD sales means there has been an overall decline in the market.
The IFPI suggests record-company revenue and therefore investment in bands is being limited because of this.
But the IFPI feels governments are beginning to realise ISPs need to take a more active role in protecting digital music and cites France as leading this change.
Last November French President Sarkozy unveiled plans for ISPs to co-operate to fight piracy. The IFPI claims there is similar momentum in Belgium, Sweden and the UK.
IFPI chairman, John Kennedy, said ISPs must take responsibility now and the French approach shows an urgency "badly needed in every market where music is today being massively devalued by piracy".
The IFPI report also outlines issues the industry faces around digital music and suggests alternative revenue streams and marketing approaches will be required - such as partnerships with social networks.
Comments
There are 3 comments. Join the discussion
1. MusicFan
What about the music industries costs?
15% of all sales online?
thats 15% of goods that do no require printed artwork, cd cases etc
15% of sales, but pure profit.
The figures that they tout for illegal downloads, does this just encompass "chart" downloads, or anything that has a file extension of .mp3 etc?
There is a lot of music produced worldwide that does not and never will reach the charts and is not produced by the big industry labels.
Do their figures account for this? I think not.
Perhaps the "free" trade of music online is turning people to listening to quality music instead of the pop churn that is spoon fed to us through the media.
Its still illegal, dont get me wrong, but it allows people to listen to music they possibly would not have known existed, so also breeds a new market.
They cant stop the exchange of mp3's online anyway, how would they do this?
whats to stop people changing the file names to something else, placing in zip files etc, transfering over instant message?
Futile efforts, nothing more.
2. Anthony Hunt
Different year, same excuses.
the music industry is STILL blaming anybody else for their mistakes in clinging to a dead business model.
I don't buy very much music because there is so little good music to buy.
Siobhan Donaghy's new album was great, but nothing from it was allowed into the charts (they control CD sales and what gets onto iTunes) .
I bought her older album on Amazon because I enjoyed "ghosts" so much, but when the CD arrived it would't play in my DVD player or my PC because it was "copy protected". So despite paying for the music, I couldn't listen to it. In the end, I downloaded the album. THAT is why the music industry is dying. They poisoned their own well!
3. Chris Goodman
ISPs are funded by their users for the specific purpose of internet connection and it is not the remit of ISPs to incur expenditure to prevent their users exchanging copyrighted material. Any procedures put in place to filter out copyright infringements must be fully funded by the entertainments industry, they being both the requiring body and the eventual beneficiaries.
ISPs must stick to their reason for existing - to provide internet communications facilities.