MP3's and The Music Piracy Problem

Update at the bottom about the RIAA suing users sharing files

Update at the bottom about my recent visit to BuyMusic.Com

Update at the bottom linking to an article from Courtney Love of the band "Hole".

I'm always amused at the irony that the music publishing biz is all about putting into print things that (hopefully) people want to listen to. Isn't it sad that the same people/companies publishing music can't hear that the cry from the consumer is not "free music" but for "choice". Something that technology has now given us, but they still refuse to acknowledge. When it became clear that one song was available for near free vs. gambling $15-$20 away for a CD that contained that song and possibly a dozen bad others, the cost of that song just became the whole price of that CD. While one may argue that it's the present economy or technology, the end result is the same. Paying the price music publishers are requesting for CD's in too high. It has now become unacceptable buying practice in the eyes of most consumers.

One of the concepts behind pirating music is that it's all about the "cost" of obtaining the material. Make the cost of obtaining something through one channel cheaper than the cost of obtaining it through another channel and the cheaper channel wins - almost every time. Technology has given us that cheaper path. And, for obvious reasons, it's winning.

Adding fuel to the fire, the fact that the music publishers got caught red-handed fixing prices of CD's in recent years and that printing/manufacturing CD's has fallen to rock-bottom costs only strengthens the consumers argument that CD pricing has become simply a matter of gouging the users rather than delivering a product at a fair market value.

I say "almost" because there are examples where this may not be the case. I personally haven't purchased a refridgerator or car over the internet. I would prefer to go to a physical place ("brick and mortar" store front) to make such a transaction. I say "near" free, because it's not. People pay for internet access in one form or another. People pay for blank CD's. People must pay for the hard drive space it takes up in the cost of a newer, bigger hard drive. So the concept that the music is free is not necessarily true. It's just a heck of a lot cheaper per song than $20.

But in the case of music, I think most users when given the option of pirating vs. cheaply available music would GLADLY choose the cheaply available.

Where are the online music web-stores where we can pick up our MP3's for .50 or $1 each (of course on a sliding scale according to demand possibly - wouldn't that be clever?). *I* haven't seen one yet.

Why are the music companies force feeding $15-$20 CD's with lots of music we DON'T want on them that we can't return to the store once we've left the building with it versus putting up websites where we can download WHAT we want (and possibly sample other songs) for a price that's acceptable within the prices that electronic distribution brings to bear? With technology as is stands, a music publisher would be foolish not to offer content to technology savvy users a delivery method that makes the users happy. In the case of MP3's, this would be the form of a web site that allows us to create personalized logins that maintain a list of the songs we've purchased (in case our hard drive or OS crashes) for a price that's reasonable. My suggestion would be < $1 based on popularity/release date. I would stand to reason that most share my thoughts that $15 - $20 is too much to pay for something we may regret purchasing.

I think once a site like that was made well known and had appropriate effort put into it - AND WAS NOT another attempt at forcefeeding the user, it would be a huge success. If it was not, THEN the publishers would have reason to cry piracy. They need to step into the 21st century first and get hip with what technology has to offer which they haven't done yet. All they've done so far is whine.

Solutions to the problem? Again, I've already mentioned some idea of what the music publishers should do. Put up that website! Let's put this in easy to understand concepts.

My guess would be that the someone who finally comes up with a web site that fully caters to what the users want vs. what the music publishers want will win big. That may be a tricky balance to achieve as it seems the big wigs at the music industry seem to think we all have their income levels to spend on questionable/poor music. Not so.

One might recommend they need an Economy 101 refresher in the area of "Supply and Demand".

Lastly, something to consider: In past times when a merchant has tried to charge too much for a product, we've taken that product proverbialy dumped that tea into the harbor. P2P music sharing is such a predicament where the merchant needs to get with the times rather than using the government to make up for the merchants lack of business vision.

UPDATE 2013-03-19: Music Piracy should not be a "concern for copyright holders"!!

Hmmmmmm! Check it out!

UPDATE: RIAA Sues Campus File Sharing Users

What will happen now is music swapping will be pushed into the deep even further with caches being shared amongst known and verified users. Also possible is music sharing being pushed into the method of passing amongst users whole artists libraries on MP3 format DATA CD's.

Problem solved? no.

Here's some other excellent reading from the Recording Artist's point of view on Janis Ian's website.

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Courtney Love Speaks up about the Hypocrisy of the Music Pubs Crying Foul

My email to congressman Timothy Johnson

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