It looks like we've found the new evil bogeyman for the recording industry: people daring to listen to music for free online. We mentioned it earlier this month, when there was a report about how all the various online streaming services were taking away from sales. Apparently, the record labels are passing around statistics claiming that such streaming services hurt music, claiming (incorrectly) that "there's nothing left to promote."

This morning, at the Leadership Music Digital Summit, Russ Crupnick, a music industry analyst at the NPD Group, gave a "state of the industry" talk, where he pointed out (good) that p2p file sharing isn't as big a problem as the industry makes it out to be, but then dove into the "problem" that more and more consumers of music are "only listening to music," using these various online sites and services, rather than buying the music. It seems to be quite a strange world where the idea that lots of people are paying attention to your product and it's seen as a "problem." He even noted that folks who do buy (such as concert tickets) tend to spend a lot more on music-related goods (beyond just concert tickets) but seems to brush over that.

While it's good to see that folks are starting to get beyond just blaming P2P (though, Crupnick did repeatedly refer to it incorrectly as "stealing" music), this industry has a serious problem: it looks at every single opportunity as a "problem" or a "threat" and never as an opportunity. I would argue that's a much bigger problem than fans daring to listen to and share music.

The Lord Chief Justice in the UK has suggested that the internet generation aren't very good on juries because they're more used to reading information on a screen, rather than listening. That's a bit misleading. Just because people are used to reading lots of information or consuming it off of a screen, it doesn't preclude their ability to listen live. However, the suggestions to potentially upgrade the tools for jurors, such as by providing them screens with info, does make some sense. It could make it much easier to present a lot of information to a jury in a more manageable fashion, rather than requiring them to just listen. But, even so, it does seem a bit extreme to suggest that younger jurors are simply unable to listen in the jury box and follow the details of a trial.