Lawsuits often represent the last desperate gasps of those
unwilling to take real, substantive actions. Case and point, the
Recording Industry Association of America sued 532 more people last
week for illegal file sharing. In their continuing attempts to
scare freebie-loving Americans away from their precious Avril
Lavigne mp3s, the RIAA is doing more harm than good.
It is not just that they have alienated their consumer base,
they are hurting their own long-term financial prospects by not
pursuing new and innovative ways of working with the technology
they are so hell bent on destroying.
The most recent string of lawsuits, together with the 261
lawsuits in September, mark a shift in the RIAA’s strategy.
Previously, the RIAA focused their attack on the programs that make
file sharing available. They are now prosecuting the individuals
which make peer-to-peer possible.
Suing your user base can be seen as either a stroke of genius or
a mark of idiocy. In this case, I would tend to argue for the
latter. While the mere fear factor might be enough to make some
people stop downloading music illegally, it doesn’t get to
the heart of the matter. CDs are quickly becoming obsolete and
consumers are begging for a better alternative with every illicit
download.
Napster was brilliant not for its unlimited access to free
music, but for its “any song, any time” interface. You
were literally a double-click and a few seconds away from hearing
any song you desired. The hype surrounding the new Napster
demonstrated that people will gladly pay for this convenience.
Unfortunately, however, Napster and other pay-for-use
alternatives like Music Match have been completely deficient,
coming nowhere close to offering the selection a comprehensive
downloading program needs. These programs have not taken off
because they are second-rate ““ not because of competition
from free alternatives.
Apple’s iTunes has shown that when consumers are presented
with a comprehensive and legitimate program with which to get their
mp3 fix, they will rock toward it. Released just nine months ago,
iTunes surpassed the 25 million song mark as of December at a
current rate of 75 million songs a year.
Apple’s catalog offers more than 400,000 songs from all
the major labels plus all your anti-MTV favorites from over 200
independent labels. They created a legitimate downloading service
with a selection that rivaled that of Kazaa, and in turn, became
instantly competitive with Kazaa’s 2.4 million downloads a
week ““ shocking.
Perhaps if the music companies had collaborated earlier to make
this kind of selection possible, they would have realized that
lawsuits were unnecessary to make people pay for music again.
In focusing on lawsuits to turn the digital tide, the music
industry has been closed-minded in looking for alternatives.
Stronger moves are needed to break into the online music world. A
monthly subscription-based service may make the RIAA cringe, but
that is because they fail to see the big picture. Musicians do not
make money solely by the number of CDs or iTunes sold. The old
business model of charging $13.99 for a CD with 11 tracks and
pretty album art will not work in this day and age.
The music industry is in the unique position of having an
audience willing to pay to listen to a song live in concert, even
if they’ve heard it a million times on their Winamp. They
could be using the widespread propagation of file sharing systems
as cheap advertising for the artist, instead of merely bundling and
selling the songs they sing. Encourage people to share and
experience music freely, and expand the familiarity of a popular
song to the concert and merchandise aspects of music. In music,
familiarity can pave a road straight to the bank.
Nobody is trying to argue that the downloading of music cannot
hurt profits ““ at least in the obsolete CD market. Still,
there are numerous ways in which file-sharing can increase profits
and even more ways for the RIAA to get a piece of the action.
For example, however much record companies lose in making a CD,
how much do artists gain on the t-shirts, concerts and boosted CD
sales from a song’s popularity online? If you really want
something to think about, consider that the top three downloaded
artists of 2002 (Eminem, Nelly and Avril) were also the top three
selling artists of the year.
The RIAA is missing the point; lawsuits will not stop the
direct-access revolution. Ease up on the courts and just follow the
clicks ““ a new business model is just around the corner.
Moon is a second-year psychology student. E-mail him at
jmoon@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to
viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.