Score 2-0 For the Little Guy

This story is a significant victory for the ‘little guy’ in the David vs. Goliath saga the music industry is enduring, when earlier this week Judge Lee R. West sharply spanked Capitol Records for falsely suing Oklahoma resident Deborah Foster for alleged copyright violation via unauthorized downloading.. This case is extremely monumental in the fact that it’s the first time ever an RIAA member has been forced to pay attorney’s fees!

Net Radio "compromise" Hinged on DRM Adoption

• Here's a link to SoundExchange's press release:

...'The music industry is very worried about users recording Internet radio for the purposes of "disaggregating" music, and the message seems to be that if webcasters will scratch the industry's back, then a better deal is possible. Too bad it's a deal that could kill another potential avenue of fair use (recording radio), and limit users' ability to enjoy radio by limiting playback to clients that support DRM."

Same old story....gain an inch, lose a mile.....

Myth #1 - Airplay Leads to More Record Sales

Professor Stan Liebowitz from the University of Texas in Dallas has released a new research paper entitled “Don’t Play it Again Sam: Radio Play,

Record Sales, and Property Rights.”  The 40 page document “undertakes an econometric investigation of the impact of radio play on sales of sound

recordings using a sample of American cities. The results indicate that radio play does not have the positive impact on record sales normally attributed to it and instead appears to have an economically important negative impact, implying that overall radio listening is more of a substitute for the purchase of sound recordings than it is a complement. This finding indicates that creating a set of property rights to allow this market to function properly is different than has been suggested by prior research. New technologies affecting radio broadcasts are likely to make this topic increasingly important in the coming years. This research also exposes a fallacy of composition in applying to an entire market a generally accepted positive relationship that holds for individual units.”

 

 

Tuesday Links

• TiVo hooks up with Amazon to sell movies direct to homes
• Patrón Tequila Adds Viral Marketing With Online Social Community
• RIAA to feds: Make XM-Sirius pay more, restrict listeners' recording
• Web Rankings to Focus on Time Spent at Sites
• Video-Sharing Sites Jockey for Position In U.S.

IFPI: Recording Industry in Numbers

Favorite Koolaid quotes from IFPI’s latest Recording Industry in Numbers report released yesterday…

 

• “More owners of portable players buy music from legal sites (14 percent) than get songs via P2P or free sites (13 percent), and portable owners are more likely to buy music legally than Internet users in general.”
  
  
• “We should be in no doubt that it is in the ISPs’ hands that responsibility for tackling online piracy now lies.”

 

The Fall of the Record Business: What Next?

Here’s the synopsis of a recent Rolling Stone article.

I especially like Theory #6, which is the elephant in the room that no one really speaks of….

Theory 1: Ad-Supported Music
Theory 2: Peer-to-Peer Goes Legit
Theory 3: Endless Access Points for Music
Theory 4: Labels Change Their Stripes

Theory 5: Consumers Become Retailers

Hypothetical Theory 6: Music industry dies?

"The music industry as we know it ceases to exist due to mass piracy, which
effectively prevents the tracking of listening, as well as the collection of
royalties.  The labels in this world have no reliable way to generate
revenue, while simultaneously their ability to influence listeners is
diminished as users move toward algorithmic recommendation engines.
Instead, musicians abandon centralized labels and establish direct business
relationships with their fans through tickets, merchandise, and donations."
(David Barrett)