Music Industry News May-27

So it’s time again to look at the industry and find out what happened in the last days.

Let’s start with the boring stuff first. EMI is still not sold! Somehow I begin to understand why there are that few blogs and news sites covering the music industry. The problem is, that there is in fact not much going on. If you would go back half a year from today, you would find almost the same stories all over the blogs. Dropping CD sales, Warner trying to buy EMI (ok, today it’s not only Warner but some others as well) and of cause the old jump and run games between allofmp3.com and the music industry.

Also the allofmp3.com story gets more and more amusing. Since credit card companies stopped working with allofmp3.com individuals began selling vouchers for the site on ebay. And the good old IFPI is on the hunt again and got the UK police to raid one of the sellers. If you see all the file sharing going on, how PirateBay and other sites are able to operate legally in their countries, this all has some kind of humorous tragedy. People, who are still willing to pay money for music, getting raided, while others are free to operate under the law of their state.

Another thing, worth thinking about is, that allofmp3 did drive it’s popularity actively through some solid PR work. But in the end, their popularity is coming back to them and hurting their business model through becoming a poster boy for the bad music stealing Russian communists.

My standpoint is this: The entertainment industry NEEDS sites like allofmp3 or piratebay. It is the only way forcing it to realize that their current systems are more than outdated. Ideas, like putting area codes on DVDs to protect them of getting viewed in some territories, are more than yesterday and have nothing to do with todays global business approach. It’s the same with digital music and it’s territorial release dates or the expectation to implement US law in foreign territories. This conflict of globalism and the expectation of having the rest of the world behave like the neighbor next door does lead to not only technology and cultural but also real war.

Sad but true…

Stumble it!