Some industry folks are forward looking enough to make plans to capitalise on the online marketplace.
http://torrentfreak.com/swedish-labels-see-filesharing-as-virtue-080227/While the RIAA sues its customers, and blames filesharing for the decrease in record sales, a coalition of seven independent Swedish record labels explores alternatives that make use of the Internet and filesharing technology.
High quality, DRM-free music that they can buy online for a reasonable price. Filesharing is a virtue, and the coalition of Swedish record labels understands this, as they introduce The Swedish Model. They write:
We in the music industry have shown ourselves unable to follow in this change. Some of us have even waged war against those the music is recorded for – the listeners. The rift between producers and consumers has never been bigger. “The truth is that Internet has provided us with a fantastic grey scale of possibilities! Instead of fighting back we ought to obtain learning from the daily newspaper and the computer game industries. They early realized the superiority of the internet and developed new services there.
We asked him what he thinks the greatest benefits of filesharing are: “Well the first thing is pretty obvious, that you can reach much larger audiences more quickly,” he said. “You bypass many of the existing power-structures and communicate directly with the listeners. It is also a very direct medium where the step from production to consumption is extremely short which is good for creativity I think. In the old days you could have an album ready and have to wait like a year or so to have it released and now you can have your music up online the same day you get the master.”
Lets hope the Cartel learn a few lessons from their smaller brethren and use the online folks as a virtual viral marketing tool, instead of trying to purchase every p2p network to seize control and monopolise things online as they do in the offline arena.
