The New York Times Copyright Hurdles Confront Selling of Music on the Internet
[requires 'free' registration]

"When the world's major media companies gave in to the idea of selling music over the Internet, it seemed to herald a sonic paradise, where every song ever recorded would be available to listen to and perhaps download, legally, with a few clicks and a small monthly fee.

But for the online services trying to get there -- chief among them MusicNet, Pressplay and Listen.com -- the road to paradise is proving to be more like an intellectual property labyrinth paved with administrative quicksand."

redux [06.14.02]
Wired News Record Biz Has Burning Question

"Traditional music pirates, who burned and sold bootlegs long before the days of Napster, continue to cost the music industry billions of dollars every year.

But the same technologies that pirates use to steal -- -- file sharing, CD-burning and computers -- are driving legitimate sales by consumers, according to research from market research company Ipsos-Reid."

redux [05.06.02]
The New York Times Access to Free Online Music Is Seen as a Boost to Sales
[requires 'free' registration]

"Disputing the position held by the major record companies, a report issued on Friday found that people who use file-sharing networks to obtain music at no charge over the Internet are more likely to have increased their spending on music than are average online music fans."

""File-sharing is a net positive technology" in spurring sales, said Aram Sinnreich, author of the Jupiter report, explaining that people who download music online often are, in effect, sampling it. "It gets people enthusiastic about new and catalog music.""

redux [04.24.02]
Newsbytes Long-Time File-Swappers Buy More Music, Not Less - Jupiter

"Contrary to charges that Internet song-swapping is killing the music industry, new Jupiter Media Metrix research contends that experienced online song-swappers are more likely to buy new albums than average music fans, not less."

redux [04.17.02]
SFGate New musical acts get lift from Internet

""Our data show that the dominance of a few music superstars is decreasing, and their hold on music sales is slipping," said Sudip Bhattacharjee of the University of Connecticut's School of Business. "This is definitely good news for up-and-coming artists and groups, who now have a better chance at chart success because of (new) technologies" such as programs that allow users to download songs for free from the Internet."

""Superstars just don't have the sustaining power they used to," said Gopal, who headed the research team. "They get knocked off by new artists who get sampled over the Internet.""

The New York Times Music Services Aren't Napster, but the Industry Still Cries Foul
[requires 'free' registration]

"The record industry's legal victory over Napster last year has neither stopped the trading of free music online nor halted a slide in music sales."

"Underscoring the industry's woes, a survey released today by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, an international record industry trade group, found that revenue from global music sales fell 5 percent in 2001, to $33.7 billion."

redux [03.18.02]
Matt Haughey The future of music

"Everyone with a computer I know uses them, rips them from their CDs, and shares them with others. Napster (and later on, Kazaa) built massive worldwide networks based on the sharing of these files, spreading terabytes of files to millions of users. And yet, you can't walk into a store anywhere in America and buy a physical form of media embedded with mp3s."

"Given the ubiquity of mp3s among consumers, the continued rise in popularity of the format despite anything that's been put in place to stop them, and the millions of dollars being spent on mp3 encoding/decoding software and hardware, I no longer think the RIAA operates solely on fear. At this point, they're simply running on stupidity."

redux [12.18.01]
Salon Don't steal music, pretty please

"Indeed, the pointless attempt to control copyrighted data every step of the way from musician's voice to listener's ear is the biggest roadblock to success for online music. Just as HBO doesn't try to stop you from taping its movies, so music sellers need to let go and trust their customers. Remove the incentives for people to steal, rather than imposing more technology that treats customers as would-be shoplifters. Even former BMG head Strauss Zelnick, who says he has no problem throwing big-time bootleggers in jail, agrees the industry's challenge is to come up with an attractive alternative to Aimster and its ilk. "We need to give consumers a service they want, at a price they're willing to pay," he told me in an interview this summer. "People don't like to think of themselves as criminals." But ironically, the more anti-theft hurdles crammed into the legal products, the more attractive the pirate alternatives become."

redux [07.21.00]
News.Com Study: Napster users buy more music

"Jupiter said it surveyed more than 2,200 online music fans about whether the money they spent on music purchases had increased, decreased or remained the same since they began visiting music destinations on the Web. People between the ages of 18 to 24 who spend less than $20 on music within a three-month period indicated that they were likely to remain at a constant purchasing level despite online music use. All other groups said they had increased spending as a result of online music use, Jupiter reported."

redux [07.24.01]
Wired News What If Napster Was the Answer?

""In some respects, this brings the labels back to square one," Mooradian said.

One label executive agreed, saying, "I fear we're getting into a game of whack-a-mole, where we sue Napster, then we sue Aimster and so on and so on."

"If (the labels) killed Napster -- and that's 'if,'" said Johnny Deep, CEO of Aimster, "they killed their only chance of a viable online strategy. Napster was easy enough to use, and there was loyalty and confidence in the brand. That's something the labels can't recreate, even if they spend a hundred million.""

redux [05.02.00]
Infoworld Napster sends a message to music industry: 'Your customers aren't happy'

""The Recording Industry Association of America wants to educate consumers with the message, "Artists deserve to be compensated -- artists won't make music if they can't make money." I can only imagine the public service announcements with multimillionaire artists pleading for their right to a seventh Porsche in the driveway.

There's no rationalization for piracy; it is what it is. However, rampant music piracy online indicates that the music industry's distribution and pricing model is out of whack with what people want. The problem isn't the piracy; the problem is unhappy customers.

And the music industry had better do something about it. This is a dinosaur moment -- with the big rock looming overhead -- where the music industry needs to ask itself how it will adapt."