More naked emperors

[alaric]

Many of us have been saying for a long time that Hollywood and the music industry aren't so much barking up the wrong tree about piracy, as barking at a lamp-post under the myopic delusion that it's a tree.  Baen Books found years ago that when you give people freebies to pique their interest, you sell more books.  Now the UK Daily mail reports on a study by British think-tank Demos, which finds that people who admit to downloading music via file-sharing services spend 75% more per year buying music CDs than those who claim they don't.

The survey also revealed nearly two thirds of file sharers said new and cheaper music services would encourage them to stop accessing illegal services.  It found that by lowering the price of music available online to 45p per track - compared to between 59p and 99p on iTunes - providers could expect to double interest in legal sales.

Eight-three [sic] per cent of people downloading music illegally said they buy more music as a result, while 42 per cent said they did so to 'try before you buy'.

Naturally, the UK government doesn't get it.  Neither does the music industry, yet.  But reports elsewhere (sorry, I don't have the links right now) suggest that the Hollywood movie industry is starting to figure out that the market has changed, and they need to embrace that change and adapt to it instead of trying to resist it and deny that anything has changed, the way the music business is doing.  Like it or not, though, the music business cannot put the genie back in the bottle.  Small bands everywhere have learned that they don't need the record companies, and many of them have learned that the record companies will cheat them any way they can.  But the record companies haven't learned yet that if they continue to view both music makers and music buyers as captive resources with nowhere else to go, who can therefore be exploited indefinitely, they're doomed.