various rambling thoughts: Music Ostriches

The recent conviction of the four co-founders of Pirate Bay has once again thrown open the question of whether mere conviction of individual companies will stop the idea of file-sharing and raises the more serious question of whether the music companies and the musicians supporting them are like ostriches burying their heads in the burning sand that would probably end up burning them…

If past is something that we should ideally be learning by, then the music companies have remembered nothing, learnt nothing. Napster was a celebrated case, Kaazaa had somewhat lesser publicity but is an often quoted one. Sure, they led to a handful of companies opening up legal music downloads websites most notably iTunes. But its a telling statistic that today more than 90% of all downloaded music is through P2P networks like that of Pirate Bay.

Its time that the the music bosses at EMI, Warner, Sony, Universal etc understand that the idea of music sharing is the proverbial idea whose time has come and all the legal and legislative armies of the world will not be able to stop it. People will always find a way to get hold of those songs ‘illegally’ no matter how many sites they close. Its ridiculously cheap to set up a website which will provide links to user’s files. You bring down one and another one will spring up in no time. Its only a matter of time before another Pirate Bay comes up.

It is also time for these music companies and for some jaded musicians like Metallica and Rolling Stones to stop insisting that piracy will bring about death of the music industry and instead concentrate on changing with the times and embracing the opportunities that would come with the new technologies. In any case its only the past-their-prime musicians who are bent upon fighting file sharing, claiming life long high royalties as their birthright – think they need to read up more on pension funds.

And there are opportunities galore. Radiohead demonstrated this amply with their album ‘In Rainbows’ which they made freely available to the general public relying on their goodwill to make a donation. Against conventional wisdom, they collected a huge sum and showed how the power of volume can be harnessed on the internet.

The internet is a powerful medium for independent musicians to provide a platform for their music thus bypassing the bureaucracy of music companies. Communities of musicians have sprung up which provide their music freely and interact with their fans on a one-to-one basis.

And this is a change that has been embraced by the whole net community and will only strengthen as time goes on. Things, in fact, will become even more innovative because most people like to move on with the times and embrace positive changes unlike the music companies who still dream of going back to the good old days when they made super profits by over-pricing their music.

Well, the consumers have had enough of this exploitation and a Pirate Bay will spawn a thousand.

Pirates Forever!!!

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