In early January, the
Pew Center for Internet and Society released a data memo that indicated
that online downloading off of peer-to-peer networks had fallen from
29% to 14% since a similar survey in May 2003.
Pew was careful to qualify these results, noting that the RIAA’s
recent lawsuits have not only targeted actual filesharers, they’ve
also elevated the public’s awareness about copyright infringement
to a point that many telephone survey respondents may not want to admit
to an “illegal” action during a telephone survey. To account
for this likelihood, Pew compared their phone survey results against
P2P traffic data collected by comScore, which seemed to corroborate
the results.
Lawsuits Slow Music Downloads
A new study shows the RIAA’s slew of lawsuits seems to be effectively
scaring Americans out of their music downloading ways.
Wired,
January 6, 2004
Online Music Piracy Plummeted in 2003
Drop Coincided With Recording Industry Lawsuits, Survey Finds
By David McGuire
Washington
Post, January 4, 2004
However, a number of recent articles and web postings have challenged
these results. Some suggest that filesharing is as popular as ever.
Others note that filesharing traffic is merely migrating away from the
name-brand sites like KaZaa towards less virus-ridden networks like
eDonkey or Bittorrent that may not be measured by traffic-watchers.
Did Big Music Really Sink the Pirates?
By Brian Hindo
Businessweek,
January 16, 2004
Is the war on file sharing over?
The music biz is declaring success, citing lawsuits and Apple’s iTunes.
But to music fans who recall the glory days of Napster, the fight goes
on.
By Farhad Manjoo
Salon.com
(premium), January 15, 2004
Either way, the fight over P2P still goes on. Earlier this week the
RIAA announced another round of lawsuits against individual infringers,
while on the other side legitimate download sites rush in to build catalogs
and attract customers. A really interesting story ran in the Washington
Post a few days ago that talked about superstar artists that have resisted
putting their music in any online stores – artists like Madonna,
The Beatles, and Radiohead – and the resulting “holes”
in the catalogs of the online stores.
Music Fans Find Online Jukebox Half-Empty
By Frank Ahrens
Washington
Post, January 18, 2004
True, the legal models do not yet offer the same unlimited buffet available
through P2P sites, but it was only eight months ago that Apple launched
the first iTunes Music Store. While subscription models like Rhapsody
have been operating for a while, Apple was the first entity to succeed
at getting all five of the major labels to agree to fairly liberal DRM
terms and pay-per-song downloads. Apple launched the store with an impressive
200,000 titles. Their catalog grows by the day and now includes major
and independent artists. Thanks to this precedent there are now other
new stores that offer other catalogs and slightly different business models.
The fact that some powerful artists are holding out on their catalogs
is frustrating for the consumers and stores, but there are legitimate
reasons why they’re making that choice. Artists like Madonna and
the Beatles have something rare, the opportunity to negotiate with major
labels from a position of power. For these artists it’s not the
fear of the piracy that stops them from offering their songs online,
it’s a desire to get a better (more equitable) rate for digital
royalties. If they can challenge the existing contracted royalty rates
and set new precedents for better contracts they give other artists
a new template to build on. These types of breakthrough examples are
a necessary step in overall contract reform.
That being said, the majority of musicians never sign a major label
contract, and for this vast pool of talent the access to digital stores
is an entirely different story. We’re glad that sites like Rhapsody
and Itunes are willing to accept indie label material in their stores,
and we’re also glad that services like IODA, Digital Rights Agency
and CD Baby are available to help indies and unsigned artists sell digital
tracks. In many cases, independent artists will make a much higher percentage
of these digital sales; in CD Baby’s case they keep an unprecedented
91 percent of the wholesale cost! Now that’s a model worth watching.