In-Depth
The Piracy Problem
Last week the government announced it was considering banning those people who illegally download music and films from using the internet. Under these proposals the government would force Internet Service Providers to scan everything you download and check it’s not illegal material- a task that the ISP’s equate to the Post Office having to open and read every single envelope sent in the post.
Not only would this be technically unfeasible, it would also be a horrendous violation of every single internet user’s privacy. But what is to be done? The music industry is growing ever more desperate in their attempts to curb the growth of illegal downloads. Their current policy of taking arbitrarily picked individuals to court to set an example to all the other illegal downloaders out there is not only entirely unfair but also does not seem to have any effect since most individuals feel it will never happen to them. Raids on servers, such as major file-sharing site Oink last year, fail since internet pirates have instituted what they call the hydra system whereby every download website that is shut down is replaced by several more. Furthermore, the very principle underlying this campaign is contentious. No one can say for sure that illegal downloads are playing that big a role in the decline of music sales. Instead, it may be that people’s tastes are changing- they don’t want albums full of filler in an age where the mp3 playlist is king.
The music industry has to come to terms with the idea that things will have to radically change in the future and this may even mean accepting that recorded music as a commercial product is doomed. Digital downloads are not picking up the slack left by the huge decline in cd sales. The music industry will have to capitalise on the huge interest in live music (whose increasing ticket prices are already offsetting the diminishing value of the music itself) and perhaps let the recorded music act as freely distributed promotional material for bands. This model is already being adopted by the grassroots ‘MySpace generation’ of bands that rely on giving away their music to try and build up a fan-base.
In the wake of Radiohead’s pay-what-you-want release of In Rainbows, followed by a premium cost live tour, it seems that bands are increasingly willing to adopt this kind of attitude to their music. In a recent edition of the magazine Prospect, the guitarist of the American hardcore band Anthrax rather concisely summed this all up by declaring- “Our album is the menu. The concert is the meal.”
