On File-Sharing

A lot of webloggers, such as Bruce Baugh and Eric Olsen have been talking about the file-sharing recently. The recording business, an industry notirious for ripping off consumers and screwing over it's creative talent, loathes file-swapping services such as Napster, and blames them for declining music sales. They're even proposing highly dubious laws (via their bought-and-paid-for US politicians) enabling them to hack into and destroy other people's systems to stop file-sharing.

The music business of course claims that they're losing sales because people download MP3s instead of buying CDs, and seem to believe that every MP3 downloaded represents a lost sale. I can remember them using the same argument against cassette recorders in the late 70s and early 80s. I wasn't convinced by those arguments then, and I'm even less convinced now. And people tell me they've tried this argument against FM radio as well.

Eric Olsen's blog reprints an interview with Janis Ian, in which she claims that file-sharing is actually increasing her sales of CDs. With so much commercial radio following a narrow top-40 or golden oldie format, non-mainstream artists can't get their work heard. Internet file sharing lets people sample their work, and translates into CD sales.

I'm increasingly thinking the real reason the major record companies loathe file-sharing is that they don't want this to happen. Their business model is based on a small number of million-selling artists, like N'Sync and Britney Spears, boosted by massive amounts of hype. The less talented and more manufactured the better, so they realise they're totally dependant on the company and won't insist on silly things like 'artistic freedom'. The last thing they want is the finite money people have to spend on music dissipated amongst millions of independant artists. Worse still, to artists not signed to major record companies, but selling direct to their audience via the internet. The horror! People might start listening to Marillion or Uriah Heep.