The Inquisitr » Music Industry

Good news: Universals’ copyright suit against Veoh given the arse

Duncan Riley — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 06:46:36 +0000

Universal Music Group’s (UMG) copyright suit against online video provider Veoh has been dismissed, establishing a precedent that may help similar companies in the online video space.

According to a media release from Veoh, the Summary Judgment ruling “legitimizes online video sites as source for publication and consumption of video content” by “affirming Veoh`s Compliance with [the] DMCA.

“This is a great victory for Veoh that allows us to continue our focus on innovation in online video, unshackled by the distraction of this lawsuit,” said Veoh Networks Founder and Chief Executive Officer Dmitry Shapiro. “We can continue to support our many content partners, including Disney, CBS, Viacom, Sony and Time Warner, who understand the need to innovate and work together to create value in the emerging business of Internet distribution. From an industry
perspective, this decision is a big deal as well, as we now have a second clear victory showing that companies who work diligently to respect property owners and the DMCA will be able to run their businesses and be successful without the fear of those select content owners who may be uncomfortable with emerging technology.”

The decision that Veoh was DMCA compliant even when users had uploaded infringing material will offer relief to the likes of YouTube, Ustream and others who still face legal action on similar grounds.

Virgin’s solution to piracy not sitting well with all record companies

Steven Hodson — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 22:45:00 +0000

Well color me surprised but not all of the record companies are happy with UK ISP Virgin Media’s planned subscription service for downloading music.

The UK company believes that consumers want to be able to download as much music as they want and without it being loaded down with DRM restrictions. It’s newly announced subscription service is built around this idea that will allow their subscribers to download as much music as they want for an additional monthly fee and allow them to keep it permanently. The fee for the service hasn’t been announced but people in the know are suggesting it will be around the £15 mark.

At this point only Universal and some smaller indie labels have signed up with the ISP’s service. The other record companies, like Warner Bros, EMI, and Sony Music aren’t too happy with the service as they believe that it will cannibalize their existing digital sales. They also don’t believe that it will do anything to convert persistent file-sharers.

A Virgin Media spokeswoman said it’s committed to launching a “comprehensive” service this year. “We’re making good progress in developing the service and are on track to launch before Christmas,” she said. “We’re in talks with both major and independent labels and are committed to launching a comprehensive service.”

However, while record labels are keen to work with Virgin because of the reach it offers via its 3.7m broadband subscribers, they argue the music download service needs to make commercial sense.

A label executive involved in the negotiations said the labels support Virgin Media’s music plans in theory, but any service must deliver both feasibility and scale.

“We want to work with Virgin Media as a partner but any deal has to sit comfortably with how we value our assets against how it values its customers,” he said. “We have to evaluate each deal as it comes in and make sure we’re happy with the overall value of the proposition.”

Source: New Media Age – Record labels cast doubt on Virgin Media’s music model

Somehow I don’t hold out much hope that the Virgin Media subscription idea will end up seeing the light of day.

Play illegal music on cellphone and find it shut down

Steven Hodson — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 22:35:00 +0000

Word is beginning to trickle out of Japan that the country’s government and music companies are trying to get a pioneering system in place that is designed to stop unauthorized copying of music on mobile phones. As well repeat offenders could find their phone’s music playing capabilities disabled.

The system would be dependant on a centralized database containing information about music that is authorized to be downloaded as well as verifying that cellphone users weren’t downloading illegal copies of music files.

According to the folks over at FreakBits the system is planned to be in service by April 2010. I bet the RIAA is getting the biggest woodie possible at the thought of being able to do the same thing here.

The farce of musicians actually getting paid

Steven Hodson — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 20:24:26 +0000

Name any trade group that claims to represent songwriters and/or musicians and they well all tell you how they are all about making sure that the musicians are getting their fair share of money earned by their music. It’s a nice fallacy which I am sure helps record executives and trade group thugs sleep easy at night but the truth of the matter is that money collected on their behalf very rarely makes it to them.

Lately a lot of noise has been made of a music service called Spotify and how it will let people listen to music for free as long as they don’t mind advertising mixed it; or they could pay for the service and not have to put up with the ads. The publicity around the service was that this was a legitimate that would make sure that the artist got their fair share unlike the thieves running sites like Pirate Bay.

The thing is this isn’t the case, or at least as far as Swedish artist and composer Magnus Uggla it isn’t. When he first came across Spotify he thought is was great, a free service that offers just about everything and because of the involvement of all the music labels – including his own, Sony BMG, there was a feeling that finally artists would start seeing reasonable payments for their music.

Experience has proved otherwise as Magnus says that his first earnings statement from Spotify made it quite apparent that a Busker (street musician) could earn more in one day than what Spotify and his label wanted to pay him for six months.

… Uggla was as surprised as most people when he learned last week that the major labels, including Sony, all have a stake in Spotify. A mere 30,000 kroner ($4,000) investment bought the company 5.8% of the service now valued at around 1.8 billion kroner ($251m).

Referring to the valuation, Uggla questions how this company can do so well – and comes to the conclusion that it’s at the artist’s expense. He says that Sony Music, after “suing the shit out of The Pirate Bay” is acting just like them by not paying the artists.

“I would rather be raped by Pirate Bay than by Hasse Breitholtz and Sony Music and will remove all of my songs from Spotify pending an honest service,” he says.

Source: TorrentFreak :: I’d Rather Be Raped By Pirate Bay Than Go With Spotify

The Internet might be a hard place for musicians to earn a living but at some point it has to be better than signing everything over to record companies who do nothing more than pimp out musicians and then pocket most of the money.

Lawyer says it’s stupid to expect DRM’d goods to work forever

Steven Hodson — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 04:10:00 +0000

In some ways you have to admire the audacity and amount of hot air that lawyers for the entertainment industry can expel. Nowhere though is this type of verbal buffoonery more apparent than the defense they use to prop up the concept of DRM’ing our music and movies.

A good example of this attitude can bee seen in the submissions made to the Copyright Office during its triennial DMCA review by Steven Metalitz, a Washington lawyer who represents the MPAA, RIAA and other rights holders. This is his response to the Copyright Office over the possible exceptions that would allow users to legally strip DRM from content if a store closes and takes down the authentication servers.

"We reject the view," he writes in a letter to the top legal advisor at the Copyright Office, "that copyright owners and their licensees are required to provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works. No other product or service providers are held to such lofty standards. No one expects computers or other electronics devices to work properly in perpetuity, and there is no reason that any particular mode of distributing copyrighted works should be required to do so."

Source: Ars Technica :: Big Content: ludicrous to expect DRMed music to work forever

Talk about priceless but it doesn’t stop there. He continues on with this

"To recognize the proposed exemption would surely discourage any content provider from entering the marketplace for online distribution… unless it was committed to do so… forever. This would not be good for consumers, who would find a marketplace with less innovation and fewer choices and options."

Even as Amazon and iTunes make music available without any form of DRM we still get this lawyer blow hot air up everyone’s butt. It’s no wonder that people are getting fed up with the whole entertainment industry.

No related posts.

Yet another band says thank you for pirating our song

Steven Hodson — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 22:39:30 +0000

Just last week I posted about the second largest aquarium in the world and how cool it was. Well it turns out that the song by Barcelona used in the video had been pirated. Now in this day and age of YouTube takedowns at the slightest finger wagging by record companies the guys in Barcelona are saying a great big thank you to the person who made the video. The band claims that the video has actually boosted their album sales and concert ticket sales.

So bucking the takedown trend the guys in the band posted a video response to the "Kuroshio Sea" video in which they thanked the uploader of the video and all their new-found friends that came as a result of the posting.

Now that’s the way to handle the times when a fan creates something really cool and actually adds value to your music. Good on ya Barcelona!

Is there finally light at the end of the dark music industry tunnel?

Steven Hodson — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 19:47:21 +0000

The music industry in general likes to paint all young music listeners as nothing more than downloading pirates out to destroy the music business as we know it. They have been labeled as the killers of the album (CD) format instead being more inclined to cherry pick their favorite songs to download. This opinion though could actually be far from the truth if there is any truth in some research conducted by The Leading Question, a media agency, and Music Ally, a digital music consultancy.

The research is the results of questioning 2,000 music fans about their listening and buying habits. Interestingly enough it found that among teenagers – 66% – there is a stronger preference for downloading CDs rather than just singles. Most striking though was the finding that the percentage of people getting their music via file-sharing – aka piracy – has fallen from 22% to 17%. Even more astonishing according to the research is that among the 14 – 18 year old demographic the fall has been even greater decline going from 42% to just 26%.

The conclusion drawn by the researchers is that habits amongst those digitally aware consumers who don’t buy CDs are changing – they’re moving from downloading illegally to streaming legally.

They’re still not paying for online music then, but at least they’re using legitimate services. And here in the UK, it’s one business, Spotify, which is getting a lot of the credit for that change.

Source: BBC News – Green shoots in the music industry?

As the post pointed out – the industry bosses think they’ve finally started coming up with services that just might convert pirates into legal consumers – the problem is finding ways to pay for those new ways and services.

Study finds CD’s still popular. In related news, they still make CD’s

Duncan Riley — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 07:35:54 +0000

A British study by a music industry consulting firm has claimed that CD’s are still the most popular way to consume music.

According to the Music Ally Speakerbox survey 73% of people were still happy purchasing CDs rather than downloading and 66% of 14 to 18 year olds prefer CDs. If that’s not already sounding a little strange, wait for the next figure: the survey claims that 59% of all music fans still listen to CDs every day.

But wait, we haven’t finished yet. The survey also claims that burning music onto CD’s is still the most popular way people share music (23%), then bluetooth (18%) and then eventually online (17%.) The survey of 1000 people concluded by saying that there “is little evidence to show that digital music consumption is simply replacing physical consumption.”

Now although I have a natural skepticism when it comes to surveys, there’s only two possible conclusions you can make about these results: 1: the English are retarded or 2: the results are complete and utter bollocks. I’m going with two because you only have to take a look at the sales figures for iPods in the United Kingdom to know that 66% of 14-18 year olds prefer CD’s in epically wrong. You also have to factor in lying as well: people who illegally download files are hardly going to confess on the phone that they do to a company that works with the music industry…no, they’re going to say that they never download anything and love CDs. The only thing missing though is the agenda in coming up with these results, and I don’t know enough about the company to guess what it might be…but nine times out of ten there is an agenda behind the results.

Piracy down, streaming up in the UK

Kim LaCapria — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:23:34 +0000

Where are your lawsuits now, music industry?

Piracy was down by roughly a third in the UK in 2008, but streaming was way up in the same period. Savvy UK teenagers are using sites like Pandora, YouTube, Grooveshark and Spotify to stream content and music to their computers in lieu of filesharing. One former pirate and current streamer told the Guardian:

“I didn’t even realise it was illegal for a long time, until I heard that the government were trying to stop it. That did put me off, but one of the big reasons I stopped doing it was because I would get viruses, more pop ups on my computer. While I was at uni I started listening to streamed music using MySpace. Bands would be friends with other bands and it was a great way of discovering new music. I don’t really feel the need to own all that music, I know it’s always there.”

The shift seems largely inspired not by some moral obligation to maintain music industry profits, but rather, sheer convenience. As has been shouted at the music industry time and again, the business models that will flourish alongside technology are those that offer convenience and aren’t ripping consumers off left, right and center.

It seems that the music industry can accept that the entire revenue generating model has changed and change with it, using tangible merchandise like tour tickets, memorabilia and the like to boost profits alongside ad-supported streaming. Or they can continue to behave like litigious buggy-whip factories and keep trying to circumvent technologies that bring fans to music most efficiently. Which do you think it will be?

Musicians could teach the music industry a lesson or two

Steven Hodson — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:15:00 +0000

While there is a lot of discussion going on in the music industry and their related trade groups on how best to keep screwing the consumer there are musicians that seem to have no problem making money in this new world of distribution. Trent Reznor while among the first to really publicize the different ways that musicians can utilize the web and the idea of free to earn a living he isn’t alone.

One other artist, one of my favorites, has found that even giving away a hit single for free has helped with the sale of that same single. The musician is Moby and as he pointed out in an email to Bob Lefsetz, a well known name in the music industry, the fact that he was giving the song away for free had turned into a chart topper.

How’s it going?
The album just came out and it would be #1 euro charts if not for michael jackson re-releases.
So that’s good.
But here’s something funny: the best selling itunes track is ’shot in the back of the head’.
Why is that funny?
Because its the track we’ve been giving away for free for the last 2 months and that we’re still givng away for free.
Odd.
How are you?
Moby

Way to go Moby.

hat tip to Techdirt and TorrentFreak

Surprise, the RIAA has a blog and yes it’s boring and biased

Steven Hodson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:47:49 +0000

When one things of the Recording Industry Association of America, otherwise known among other names as the RIAA, is well known for questionable legal actions and suing old women and single mothers. The last thing that most of us would think when it comes to the organization is that they would take up blogging.

Well they have and you can find their blog called Music Notes here.

This appears to be a fairly new blog as there are only eight posts but you can already see that this is just going to be another avenue for them to spin their crap. Here’s samples of the content that you will expect to find on the blog.

Here We Are

Jammie Thomas-Rasset Part Deux, Day 1. An encouraging first day. After a morning of jury selection, the jury was seated by lunch (five men, seven women) and opening arguments kicked off the afternoon. We’re very pleased with the jury. My favorite highlight of the day was the juror who, during jury selection process, noted that he used LimeWire once to get music illegally – but stopped immediately because he “didn’t want to get caught and be here.” How’s THAT for deterrence value of our lawsuit program?? Doesn’t get much better than that folks…

Posted: June 15, 2009

1700 songs later: The Thomas-Rasset II Verdict

By now everyone knows what the verdict was. It’s fair to say that the damages were unexpected given the size of the award in the previous trial. But when it comes down to it, the jury heard a case about Ms. Thomas-Rasset distributing more than 1700 songs to potentially millions of people – not merely downloading 24 songs. We will settle this case if she allows it. We’ve always wanted to settle this case. But she has consistently refused, which has led us to today’s verdict.

Posted: June 18, 2009

Sample Sizes (and Minnesota Juries)

Last week we got a chance to listen to one of these groups outside the usual circumstances. It wasn’t a research project, and it wasn’t by sitting behind a two-way mirror. This group of 12 industry outsiders likely hadn’t engaged in debates about long-tail sales theories, the effectiveness of DRM schemes, or consumption patterns of digital media when marginal costs approach zero. Which isn’t to say they were disengaged – most of them had mp3 players, and at least some knew what peer-to-peer software was. But overall, they were probably a good cross section of ‘real world’ music listeners.

Posted: June 23, 2009

Anyone surprised?

Music industry now wants to be paid public performance royalties for ringtones

Duncan Riley — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 04:00:32 +0000

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) is pushing to receive royalties for ringtones played in public.

ASCAP claims that ringtones that sounds in public constitutes a public performance, a categorization that is beyond the purchased rights of those who have legitimately purchased a ringtone. If ASCAP wins, you, or your telco would have to pay a royalty every time your phone rang using a musical ringtone outside your own home. Did I mention we’re not making this up.

The EFF is dutifully on the case, and is arguing that if the incidental mobile phone playback of a short snippet in a public place were viewed as a “public performance” the Copyright Act has a specific exception, 17 U.S.C. 110(4), that covers performances made “without any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage.” The EFF also notes (and again, we’re not making this up) that if ASCAP were to win, playing your car radio with the window down could also constitute a public performance as well.

The greed of the music industry continues to have no bounds. The EFF has more details here, and a copy of ASCAP’s brief as follows:

Court case could force one strike and you’re out on downloaders in Australia

Duncan Riley — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 09:46:07 +0000

The copyright case against Australia’s second largest ISP iiNet went to court today with an interesting twist: the entertainment industry wants iiNet to disconnect customers accused of illegal downloading as soon as they are notified.

The action against iiNet was filed in the Australian Federal Court by Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Disney and the Seven Network. The studios claim iiNet in effect “authorized” customers’ copyright infringement by failing to disconnect them when notified of the infringements by the movie studios.

iiNet told the court that they were was not required to act on a “mere allegation of copyright infringement” and that the case was “like suing the electricity company for things people do with their electricity”.

Asher Moses in the Sydney Morning Herald notes “if iiNet loses, all ISPs could be forced to disconnect customers identified by the movie studios as illegal downloaders.” Not three strikes and you’re out as is the case in France, or as recently proposed in New Zealand, but one accusation and you’re gone. Australia is starting to look more and more like China and Iran every day.

Fail: Last.fm to charge for access outside US, UK and Germany

Duncan Riley — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:34:47 +0000

Popular CBS owned online music service Last.fm has announced that it will cease providing free access to users outside of the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. Instead, users outside these countries will have to pay €3.00 (US$4.05) per month to have access to music on the site, as we reported earlier.

Last.fm did not specify the reason behind the decision, and instead rattled on about what a wonderful job they do. Speculation (and reason) suggests that the decision may be related to royalty payments and/ or the need to increase revenue at a time that the online advertising market is being hit hard by the great recession.

The fail in the decision is demand: why would users pay Last.fm to listen to music when they can obtain it online via a variety of other sites, both legal and illegal, for free. Add to this that Last.fm doesn’t have access to Warner Bros music, so even if you did pay, you don’t get access to 15% of the market and some of the biggest names in music (a full list here.) Alternatives services like Grooveshark will be rubbing their hands with glee.

Virgin Megastores Closing All U.S. Locations

JR — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:26:49 +0000

Virgin Megastores will close all of its U.S. locations this summer. The music chain will remain in business in other parts of the world as well as online.

Virgin Megastores Closing

There are currently six Virgin Megastores locations still open across America, including the store in New York City’s Times Square. That store, according to published reports, was set to make $56 million last year — but when the nationwide economic trouble began, the trends suddenly dropped and the store did not meet its projection. Overall, the stores are said to ring in $170 million a year, compared to $230 million a year back in 2002 (at which point Virgin had 23 U.S. locations).

The 52,000-square-foot Times Square Virgin store will close first, with a final day scheduled for April. The other five stores will shut down in June. About a thousand jobs will be lost in all.

Virgin Megastores first opened in 1992 with a store on Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard. The U.S. branch of the company was bought by Related and Vornado Realty Trust in 2007.

About 150 Virgin Megastores will remain open in parts of Asia, the Middle East, and France. Those locations, unlike the closing U.S. ones, are all still owned by the Virgin Group.

Heroes: British music stars come out in support of fans over music downloads

Duncan Riley — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 06:07:57 +0000

The days of the music industry being able to justify their actions as being in defense of artists may be coming to an end.

140 of Britain’s biggest rock and pop stars have joined to form the Featured Artists Coalition, a group that aims to speak collectively on behalf of musicians, instead of the music industry. Members include the cream of the British music industry, including Robbie Williams, Annie Lennox, Billy Bragg, Blur’s David Rowntree, Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien, Peter Gabriel, David Gray, Fran Healy from Travis, Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason, Mick Jones from The Clash and many more.

There first decision: voting against the prosecution of ordinary members of the public for illegally downloaded music.

Billy Bragg told The Indpendent: “What I said at the meeting was that the record industry in Britain is still going down the road of criminalizing our audience for downloading illegal MP3s. If we follow the music industry down that road, we will be doing nothing more than being part of a protectionist effort. It’s like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube.”

Bragg said that the group wants to tell the UK Government “that we want to side with the audience, the consumer”.

The group is primarily focused on pushing a fairer deal for musicians. Bragg again: “Artists should own their own rights and they should decide when their music should be used for free, or when they should have payment.”

YouTube blocking music videos in the UK after royalty negotiations break down

Duncan Riley — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 23:58:11 +0000

YouTube is blocking most music videos on the site from UK viewers after royalty negotiations broke down.

YouTube said in a blog post that it would block premium music videos in the UK until it can agree to a new contract with The Performing Rights Society (PRS) that is “economically sustainable.”

“But PRS is now asking us to pay many, many times more for our license than before,” YouTube’s Patrick Walker wrote. “The costs are simply prohibitive for us – under PRS’s proposed terms we would lose significant amounts of money with every playback.”

Walker also claimed that the PRS is unwilling to tell YouTube what songs are included in the licensing renewal being negotiated.

Naturally, PRS blamed YouTube for the mess, saying that the site wants to pay “significantly less than at present to the writers of the music on which their service relies, despite the massive increase in YouTube viewing.”

YouTube said it would continue to try a negotiate a reasonable outcome that will allow the music videos to return.

The Music Industry thinks it can create a Hulu for Music Videos

Duncan Riley — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 23:25:01 +0000

Fresh from the news that Warner Music and YouTube are no longer playing nicely together comes new rumors that the music industry ~~cartel~~ are talking about creating a Hulu for music videos.

According to a source quoted at Silicon Alley Insider, Sony BMG, EMI, and Universal Music Group all think they could do better creating their own music video Web destinations and are in early talks about forming a joint venture similar in concept to Hulu.

It would be easy to label the joint venture a joke before it starts, but Hulu did prove one thing: even previously clueless media companies can occasionally get it right. Having said that though, the obvious question is where is the money coming from? The vast majority (actually pretty much all) of the revenue made by music companies on YouTube came from royalty payments from licensing deals with YouTube itself, with peanuts coming from advertising served against the videos. Unlike content on Hulu, music videos are short play, and while users might happily sit through a 30 second pre-roll (or longer: Hulu allows users to opt for longer pre-rolls for no ads during the show) for a 30 or 60 minute show, users won’t be too happy about sitting through a 30 second commercial to play a 2 or 3 minute music video.

There’s then the question of audience: YouTube’s licensing deals extended to songs played over user generated content, where as this service would presumably focus on music video alone, and while there would undoubtedly be demand for such clips, it wouldn’t be anywhere close to the demand for television shows by comparison. Scale is the key, and I can’t help but think that this venture, cut off from mainstream services would struggle to find it.

Sorry, there’s no easy way of putting this: Lala Sucks

Duncan Riley — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 05:31:37 +0000

Lala is gaining headlines across the tech blogosphere for a new service that allows users to play songs on the web. The glowing reviews mention support from major record labels and an extensive library. Some are calling it “The Next Revolution In Digital Music,” “Spectacular” and “Switched On.”

Here’s what Lala is offering. Users sign up, and if they choose to they can sync what they own locally with what’s on Lala (no uploads, but owned single recognition). Users can then play any song on Lala for free…once. If they already own the song (as identified through the sync process) they can play that song on Lala on an unlimited basis, if they don’t own that song, they have to pay 10c for the rights to play it on an unlimited basis, per song.

Lala comes bundled with the ability to purchase songs at competitive rates vs Amazon or iTunes, and songs purchased are DRM free. 10c play payments are credited against the future purchase of the song.

Pay to play: fail

What’s revolutionary about a site that charges people to play music on demand that is freely available on other sites (some legal, some dubious) at no cost at all. It’s not only bizarre, it’s beyond stupid. It is spectacular…spectacularly dumb. This is the third incarnation of Lala, with the site having started as a CD swapping service. One headline said it may be third time lucky for Lala, more like three strikes and you’re out.

People are not going to flock to, and use a service that charges them 10 cents every time they want to play a single more than once. Why would they? Last.fm and Grooveshark are two perfectly legal players in this space where they don’t have to pay (Last.fm can be limited at times), and there are a range of other sites, such as Seeqpod that offer free on demand music as well. It’s insane to enter a market trying to get users to make micropayments when your competitors don’t.

Bonus points: it’s georetarded

Now here’s a surprise (not), Lala can’t be used outside of the United States, so the chirpy voice, with a couple of translations told me when I tried to play a song on the site. So you’ve got a model which charges users for playing songs when your competitors don’t, and it’s only available in the United States, so you immediately reduce the odds that you might be able to find enough people gullible enough to cough up to use the service. lalalalalalala.

Conclusion

Lala sucks, and I can’t believe that so many in the tech blogosphere are either taking drugs, or drinking so much kool aid that they think this service is a good thing. I tried extremely hard to find something I liked about this site, really, really, hard, and I just can’t. Dumbest business model ever combined with the myopia of georetardation. Three strikes equals an EPIC FAIL.

Lala

AC/DC downloads hit 400,000 prior to physical only release

Duncan Riley — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 01:29:32 +0000

AC/DC has hit new highs this week, but their own stubbornness means that they may miss out from the record numbers.

According to TorrentFreak, a leak of the forthcoming AC/DC album Black Ice, due to be released October 20 in physical form only and with no digital sales, has been downloaded 400,000 times from BitTorrent alone, so not including other P2P and file sharing services.

AC/DC maintain a complete refusal to allow their music to be sold online, because they believe that their music should be sold in album form only, where as Apple forces bands to offer sales of each single from the album individually. AC/DC cites album sales figures that have actually increased in the last 5 years as proof that their refusal to offer digital sales works for them.

The downloads from BitTorrent may lead to increased sales of the new album; studies have previously found that downloaders are more likely to buy the official release having sampled an illegal copy, than those who have never heard the music previously. And yet, the correlation between downloads and physical copies of music is hit and miss: a Canadian study found increased CD sales, another reported by the BBC found the increase went to purchasing digital copies. AC/DC is limiting those buying outcomes by offering a physical copy only, and the downloads actually do demonstrate one thing clearly: listeners want access to AC/DC music digitally.