File sharing & Music Buiness

[paul]

Does File-Sharing hurting the Music Bussiness?

[kev woodman]

Controversial. I've seen lots of arguements both ways. Personally I think that the RIAA etc suing downloaders hurts the music business - doesn't seem a good idea to use the law to attack your customer base. And maybe they wouldn't have this problem if they spent less time suing BitTorrent sites and more time developing a decent business model for themselves, given that the Web is the most powerful distribution channel ever invented.

[Pumazooma]

I think they were too slow to see what was happening and join in. Also I think the prices are a bit high. They should do it a bit like albums in shops. When they're new out they could be 80p a track then after 6 months put it down to 40p. And have some scale right down to anything pre-1960 being 5p or something. If it was like that I think a lot of people would fill the gaps in their collections by cherry picking the tracks they want instead of being put off by buying a whole album.

Having said that I use the iTunes store a lot and really like it.

[kev woodman]

I think they are really misguided over DRM as well. If you buy a song or a movie then you should be able to play it whenever, wherever and on whatever you want.

[paul]

According to a recent study, 13-17 year olds are both the most likely to pirate music, it seems very hard to stop such practice as most of the targeted customers are from these age group;
Read more at " pcworld.ca//news/column/1eee6b9b0a01040801c7c7c3a13c0faf/pg0.htm "

[sparky]

INMHO I would say if they keep the price low e.g. iTunes, I do not mind if I can only play it on some dedicated devices.
I would be opne to pay more for being able to play them on further devices or to pay the same low price for each device.
I think DRM is important and should be kept proprietary.

Best,