Dylan Hunter

Another good little blip on free music file sharing vs. paid in Europe. The most important part of the article - “Among the 46% of European online 15-24 year olds who use the Internet to consume music….40% do not consider the CD to be a good value for money…”

The RIAA and IFPI can and will*1* continue their campaigns against their members’ most involved consumers, but so long as this situation remains, where consumers feel like they are receiving less value than they are giving up when consuming music, there will continue to be a strong, and well-motivated free file-sharing community.

As someone who’s had to work free-to-consumer business models for years now, there is _absolutely_ no question in my mind, there _is_ some level >0 where the majority of these folks would feel like they were receiving an even exchange for their money, and would indeed pay for it.

Now, I know full well there’s not a chance in hell that the established music industry will engage in the real hard work of trying to figure out how to make this thing work until someone else, (Apple, others) forces them down a path, so, suppose will have to look to keep helping be that force! *2*

More here
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*1* Since that’s effectively their sole purpose in being, and they’re now smelling blood with the horrible recent US Supreme Court Grokster decision

*2* And I know the companies that support the RIAA and IFPI would never in a million years consider this, but it definitely keeps occuring to me - maybe, as multimedia continues to become more and more prominent, music as a fully-independent media vehicle has largely had its run, and it’s time to do something different. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve thought to myself that when I buy a SharkTales or Robots DVD, I think I should be able to bring it with me in the car, load it into my CD player, and get the soundtrack as part of the package. If you want to goose the price of DVD up by, say, $1-2 / unit to pay for that, yeah, I’d go for that, and then you, Music Companies, would get, let’s say, $24 / yr, (presuming one kids’ DVD / mth @ $2 royalty) for someone that otherwise might spend $18, (presuming 2 soundtrack purchases / yr) or a net increase of 33% on Gross Rev, not including the fact that if my kids’ DVD included such soundtrack for that $2, I’d definitely be tempted to buy more of them, (gated, of course, by the quality of the content that the movie industry can come up with, but hey, wouldn’t that be something - two different media divisions of many of the same companies pooling time, effort and resources to actually help develop better content - I know, I know, whoa Boy, what are you thinking? ).

Silent media - long dead.

Black and White media - largely had its run.

Non-HD video media and Non-Interactive media - both have maybe another 10 yrs of life.

It’s time to start not just thinking about, but actually working toward, the kind of much better marriage of value generated vs. cost required that can do away with the horribly conflicted relationship between music companies and their most voracious consumers that exists now, (and then we can all stop wasting our money on the RIAA & IFPI, since it’s _our_ funds that are being used against us).