The Times: Op-ed on music downloads
By David Rowan
AS BUSINESS strategies go, it is certainly creative. Spend years overcharging your customers, restrict their use of your products, collude to keep prices high and then, when your business model finally collapses, sue them for discovering alternative suppliers. Big it up, you record industry lawyers! Prosecuting individual music fans has to be your most audacious ruse yet.
That it will fail, further alienating your customer base, will probably not concern you. But if the British Phonographic Industry needs a theme song for its new campaign of litigation, it might consider Eamon's charming hit, F*** It (I Don't Want You Back). By dragging music file-traders to court, the major studios are confirming their refusal to evolve. The rules have changed, guys -rather than fight them, you should turn them to your advantage.
Had you not charged £15 for CD albums, or used restrictive copy restriction software to prevent them from being played on PCs, then we might have had more sympathy. But going after 12-year-old Americans for using peer-to-peer websites - well, that looks like bullying. Sure, illegal downloads hit your profits. Yet the generation that has grown up with them will not suddenly change its behaviour.
The answer is to embrace the online world for what it is: a wonderful global marketing opportunity. For all the industry's scare stories, there is evidence that illegal downloads boost CD sales by bringing new audiences to previously unsampled music, which in turn sells the artist's concert tickets. Enlightened performers such as Moby accept that file-sharing is a reality. Why, he asks, won't the labels to incorporate it into innovative business models?
Should they refuse, and persist in suing potential customers, history offers a warning. A century ago, an upstart named Henry Ford sought to build a market for low-cost production-line motor cars. The automotive establishment, however, had a legal weapon with which to beat him: the Selden patent, under which they denied Ford a licence to build his cars. When he did so anyway, they sued his customers.
It took Ford eight years to win his court battle, during which time he became a popular hero. As for the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers well, the BPI might inquire where they are now.
(The Times op-ed page, October 8, 2004)
AS BUSINESS strategies go, it is certainly creative. Spend years overcharging your customers, restrict their use of your products, collude to keep prices high and then, when your business model finally collapses, sue them for discovering alternative suppliers. Big it up, you record industry lawyers! Prosecuting individual music fans has to be your most audacious ruse yet.
That it will fail, further alienating your customer base, will probably not concern you. But if the British Phonographic Industry needs a theme song for its new campaign of litigation, it might consider Eamon's charming hit, F*** It (I Don't Want You Back). By dragging music file-traders to court, the major studios are confirming their refusal to evolve. The rules have changed, guys -rather than fight them, you should turn them to your advantage.
Had you not charged £15 for CD albums, or used restrictive copy restriction software to prevent them from being played on PCs, then we might have had more sympathy. But going after 12-year-old Americans for using peer-to-peer websites - well, that looks like bullying. Sure, illegal downloads hit your profits. Yet the generation that has grown up with them will not suddenly change its behaviour.
The answer is to embrace the online world for what it is: a wonderful global marketing opportunity. For all the industry's scare stories, there is evidence that illegal downloads boost CD sales by bringing new audiences to previously unsampled music, which in turn sells the artist's concert tickets. Enlightened performers such as Moby accept that file-sharing is a reality. Why, he asks, won't the labels to incorporate it into innovative business models?
Should they refuse, and persist in suing potential customers, history offers a warning. A century ago, an upstart named Henry Ford sought to build a market for low-cost production-line motor cars. The automotive establishment, however, had a legal weapon with which to beat him: the Selden patent, under which they denied Ford a licence to build his cars. When he did so anyway, they sued his customers.
It took Ford eight years to win his court battle, during which time he became a popular hero. As for the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers well, the BPI might inquire where they are now.
(The Times op-ed page, October 8, 2004)
<< Home