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Felix Oberholzer-Gee, one of the professors who wrote the study showing that file sharing doesn't hurt sales, has some more thoughts on what the music business should do next:
Suing potential customers is not exactly a standard entry in the book of good CRM. More importantly, the RIAA's legal strategy is hopeless and smacks of short-sighted panic.
Our research shows that only 45 percent of music files downloaded in the United States come from computers in the U.S. More than 100 countries supply files to the U.S. file-sharing community, and many of these countries do not have strong records of protecting copyrighted materials. The RIAA does not stand a chance to implement an effective legal strategy in all these countries.
Those who dream of legal solutions do not recognize the truly global nature of the peer-to-peer (P2P) phenomenon. Even worse, the RIAA's legal strategy does not even seem to work here in the United States. Despite the lawsuits - the RIAA has sued about 2,000 individuals to date - file sharing is more popular than ever. ...
Our research shows that people do not download entire CDs. They download a few songs, typically the hits that one would also hear on a Top 40 station. This suggests that P2P is much like the radio, a great tool to promote new music. The music industry has of course long recognized that giving away samples of music for free over the airwaves can stimulate sales. The same seems to hold for P2P.
The problem with radio as a promotional tool is that it can be quite expensive for labels to get radio stations to play their music. P2P networks are promising because they make the market for music promotion more competitive. From the perspective of the music industry, the more competition among P2P services, the less costly it will be to promote music.
I think the latter part of this is just spot on. I know that I use some of the sound clips on which I have played as a means by which to get additional work, and I'm just a bass player.
Thanks to Eric for the tip.
Posted by Casper at June 24, 2004 01:57 PM