Some day soon we’ll be able to look up ”piracy” in the dictionary and find a favorable description like “peer-to-peer sharing of commercial products for the benefit of creator and consumer alike.” Face it: Illegal sharing of copyrighted music, movies, software etc. is a business model the industry just can’t afford to be without because it’s an effective adoption driver.
Bestselling artists like Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails and Franz Ferdinand have recognized this and smaller artists simply depend word-of-mouth to survive. In an interview with Torrentfreak, UK folk duo ‘Show of Hands’ puts it like this:
“You may call this process ‘piracy’ if you wish – for me it is an act of generosity and it both increases our audience size and record sales. And as I always say on the night – if you’re going to do it anyway you may as well feel good about it!”
Steve also says the band rarely objects if someone wants to film their performances as it’s yet another way of using technology to reach out to their audience.
“I believe the official term is ‘viral marketing’,” says Steve, “and we depend utterly upon it.”
“Don’t fight it – embrace it.”
Blip.fm
For years users have embraced online music players like Last.fm and Pandora for their social streaming features. Many a new music inspiration have been found here and afterwards downloaded – either legally or not.
The new kid on the social music block is called Blip.fm and it adds a little something to the genre. Iain Tait has reviewed it thoroughly on his blog and writes:
There’s something about the immediateness of Blip.fm – the fact that it’s what people are listening to ‘right now’. But not just what they’re listening to, it’s the particular tracks that they’ve chosen to share. Along with a short comment.
It’s the combination of comment plus track that makes it interesting. Or at least it is for me. It just gives a modicum of context. Just enough to make the track feel more connected to the person.
If you’ve tried Twitter – this is Twitter with music. The community is based on followers/friends with whom you create a constant feed of recommended music. “What are you listening to right now and why?” might be the tagline.
That spells word-of-mouth, recommendation and viral marketing possibilites. Piracy? Well, Blip.fm is only weeks old and maybe it’s not quite legal around the edges. It has all the no-copyright-infringement notices in place, but where does all the music on the site stream from? “Songs are hosted all over the internet by different servers and websites,” it says. Ok.
And who cares basically! Artists and users alike could just embrace this musical lifestreaming service and acknowledge the mutual benefit they get from it. I just joined today (thank you Ingvardsen for the Twitter-invite) but I’m loving it already.
“Drop the copies, save the originals” is the tagline of a Danish campaign against copyright infringement. Could it be that the two are not mutually exclusive?
This blog comment sounds like a new campaign video:
So me and my friends are out at a fancy restaurant and I get some über house specialty. I **LOVE** it so much and just rant about it. My friend asks to try it and as I’m about to give him some, the maître d’ named Riaa comes over and tells me that isn’t allowed. He says if they want to try it they will have to order it for themselves.
Hmmm… Wait, that would never happen…
A little more?
CNET: Piracy as a core business strategy