Illegal downloading 'costs UK £650m'
And if we turn off the internet tomorrow will the record companies make £650m more next year? No. Absolutely not. Are all the illegal downloaders saving the money they would have spent on CDs in offshore accounts? NO.
It is disposable income we are talking about and with consumer debt in the UK increasing year on year I think we can be pretty sure that this amount, and more, is being disposed of. People are just spending it on other things - DVDs, cinema tickets (cinema going is apparently on the rise), PC and console games, Bratz dolls, and everything else consumer Britain is told it "must" have.
CD sales have been falling for years and whilst P2P may be exacerbating the fact perhaps the BPIs members might want to think about changing their 50 year old business model to meet 21st century technology.
Do I download tracks via P2P? Occasionally. Do most of them end up in the recycle bin? Yes. Do I spend more on CDs than I might have done because of hearing those tracks? Probably not, but I am more likely to purchase music from artists who's tracks I've heard. So good news for artists, bad news for the BPI's business model.
Could I use the radio or an in-store listening post to do the same? Not for independent labels and artists that haven't had the vast resources of the big record companies to hype their music into the charts. So, even better for the small guys and worse news for the big 5 (4? 3?).
Now ponder with me, how much of that £650m was spent trying to garner chart success for manufactured acts last year?
It is disposable income we are talking about and with consumer debt in the UK increasing year on year I think we can be pretty sure that this amount, and more, is being disposed of. People are just spending it on other things - DVDs, cinema tickets (cinema going is apparently on the rise), PC and console games, Bratz dolls, and everything else consumer Britain is told it "must" have.
CD sales have been falling for years and whilst P2P may be exacerbating the fact perhaps the BPIs members might want to think about changing their 50 year old business model to meet 21st century technology.
Do I download tracks via P2P? Occasionally. Do most of them end up in the recycle bin? Yes. Do I spend more on CDs than I might have done because of hearing those tracks? Probably not, but I am more likely to purchase music from artists who's tracks I've heard. So good news for artists, bad news for the BPI's business model.
Could I use the radio or an in-store listening post to do the same? Not for independent labels and artists that haven't had the vast resources of the big record companies to hype their music into the charts. So, even better for the small guys and worse news for the big 5 (4? 3?).
Now ponder with me, how much of that £650m was spent trying to garner chart success for manufactured acts last year?
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