Comments on: Numbers of Mass Distraction

By: Musing about unheralded heroes and heroines and accidental criminals and IPR – confused of calcutta

Sun, 26 Jun 2011 22:20:36 +0000

[...] tends to be based on very questionable numbers, again something I’ve written about before in Numbers of Mass Distraction. Don’t believe me? Why not read what the US Government Accountability Office has to say on [...]

By: Funky Monkeys Spain

Funky Monkeys Spain — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:11:43 +0000

Seems like Murdoch wants to go ahead and try it out. Can’t see it working either

By: Ingles Para Ninos

Ingles Para Ninos — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:36:43 +0000

It will be interesting to see what the industry reaction is. John’s comments about the reactions to it including what Murdoch is proposing to do are interesting. I think Murdoch’s scheme will fail horribly but in order to succeed temporarily it doesn’t need to convert many customers into paying ones

By: Teach Your Child To Read

Teach Your Child To Read — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:59:19 +0000

I am sure that music companies will continue to kick and scream about illegal downloading but the figures speak for themselves. They really should be encouraging the micropayments model to increase sales however they can

By: John Taysom

John Taysom — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:11:31 +0000

Great contribution JP.
If Mark is right, of course, then for the mass market a web service wins and not a web application which requires to be downloaded. i certainly believe this to be the case, at least for music discovery. I am not convinced on rental vz ownership for my own music collection. Why would i junk my investment in past purchases and then rent it all back in perpetuity? I don’t mind this for films – i only watch most once and novelty is crucial; and even ultra favs films i watch maybe only 6 times. But, by contrast, i listen to fav music tracks sometimes 6 times a day…..
So maybe there are multiple use-cases, as you would expect.
But i am on the other hand quite certain that defeating piracy is not about just offering new ways to pay, rental vz purchase. Murdoch bangs on about pay-walls; but news piracy has not been a big issue because on-line news was free to air and funded by advertisements from 1995 (I can claim significant responsibility…).
Of course ads wont pay for all content. But it will pay for all ‘good’ content. Where ‘good’ means ‘popular’ for sure (whats new?), but also popular with niches of economically valuable consumers (worth advertising to and generating leads for). and ’twas ever thus – consider the black blues and the ‘white blues’. Eventually the roots are uncovered and black blues/Fada/ Gregorian chants can become ‘popular’ too. Its not pretty but it is capitalism.
btw we7 started with ad funded downloads and this would really help the industry in my view – we can attach a download to a song; when you hear the song you hear an ad tailored to you. But the music industry is focussed for now on streaming being the solution for ad funded content. I think it is a big part of the solution, which is why we7 has focussed on streaming, but i still think in the bandwidth environment we will be in for the next 5 years, ad funded downloads would be a great help too for those who cant or wont pay. Maybe the industry will eventually agree.
John Taysom, Chairman and Founder, we7.

By: Mark Bagley

Mark Bagley — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:57:12 +0000

It is all about the social, the way everything is going IMHO.
Kids will buy singles, just like we did or do, due to recommendations from friends. Pressure from advertising only goes so far, it might make you try the song, but maybe not purchase.

Whole model is thankfully going the way of DVD, to rental. LaLa and co is a much better model. Also like Zumodrive, stick my content in the cloud with both solutions, access it from many places. Exactly what I do with Flickr. Stick it one place access it in loads of other places.

Mark

By: Houses for sale in Spain

Houses for sale in Spain — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:47:14 +0000

I am absolutely amazed at these numbers and it shows that the worries of the big companies and artists about illegal downloading killing the biz are totally unfounded. Nice insights too

By: Maneesh Jain

Maneesh Jain — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:03:54 +0000

funny – does it not occur to the BPI that maybe sales of singles are at an all time *because* of all the illegal downloads, not in spite of them? what better way to get someone to buy your product than to give them a free sample…?

By: Ben Griffiths

Ben Griffiths — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:53:01 +0000

A little while ago, I tried to make sense of another set of ‘official’ numbers here: http://www.techbelly.com/2009/05/30/filesharing-numbers-dont-add-up/

I came to the conclusion: “with these numbers, even if every broadband-connected household in the UK was involved, some 48 hours of pirated content would be being watched by each of them online, every week.”

The numbers being bandied about are tissue-paper solid.

By: JP

JP — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 22:51:41 +0000

You’re right Aaron. Nice to see you here. The problem with the statements that have been made around downloads is that there’s rarely any attribution. Bullying and scaremongering are more common in these sorts of debates than you would think, which is why I used the term NMD. The approach is similar in many respects.

IFPI, who pushed the 95% number, also claimed that the total annual number of illegal downloads was in excess of 40 billion. *Billion*. So somewhere we have a bear of little brain actually believing that the music industry has lost revenues to the tune of $35bn or so. This, for an industry where the RIAA claimed total digital and physical shipments 2008 were around $8.5bn.

Words don’t fail me. I just won’t waste any more on them tonight.

BTW I will be in Boston in Nov and in Dec. Will ping you dates. Dinner sometime?