Another Report Suggests That The Recording Industry Should Embrace File Sharing
from the plenty-of-evidence dept
Just last week we pointed to a an article in the UK that seemed practically written by the recording industry claiming that all studies have shown that file sharing hurts music sales. At the time, we pointed out that even the RIAA’s own figures didn’t support that claim and an awful lot of academic studies had shown no serious link between file sharing and a decline in sales. In fact, the only studies that do seem to show that are ones sponsored by the recording industry itself. So, here’s yet another report suggesting that file sharing could be beneficial to the industry. Of course, the recording industry immediately responded by saying that was impossible. Here’s what’s odd… If you’re really in business and there are an awful lot of studies saying that what you’re doing is a mistake, shouldn’t you at least listen before absolutely condemning each study? It’s as if the recording industry has made up its mind that file sharing must be bad, and any study to the contrary has to be wrong — even the ones that tell the industry there’s a huge opportunity in embracing file sharing. The only way this really makes sense is to fully understand that the recording industry and the music industry are two very different things — and the recording industry makes its money solely by exploiting the existing system fully, and they know that file sharing doesn’t threaten the music business — but it does threaten their ability to scam money.
Comments on “Another Report Suggests That The Recording Industry Should Embrace File Sharing”
On the money
Mike, you’re absolutely right. The RIAA is about protecting the institutional players that have grow up aroudn the artists in this industry. To hold up the artist as the guy or gal getting hurt by file sharing is just a joke. The only artists that have the kind of revenue sharing arrangement with lables that would cause file sharing to dent their earnings (if it does so at all) would be those same artists for whom a few percentage points off of their royalty check isn’t exactly going to result in the starvation of their kids. This is about protecting the status quo, not the artists.