2007 - Love & Hate of Illegal File Sharing
Bruce Warila
10 Comments
It just occurred to me as I was writing the post below (below the line) that the best way to "marginalize" illegal file sharing networks would be for the industry to create a "Quality Certification Trademark" for digital music. Here are some bullets on what I'm thinking:
- Educate (confuse) consumers that much higher encoding rates are simply better; better in the car, better on your speakers, better, better, better... No viruses, no lawsuits, etc..
- Create a trademarked quality seal and certificate.
- The certificate should be a secure-trust digital certificate...
- Enable ALL legitimate sites to inexpensively use the seal/certificate.
- Make sure the average (confused) person understands that you NEVER, NEVER know for sure what you are getting - in terms of quality - unless you buy from a "certified" vendor.
- Encoding is too complex for the average person to understand; and consumers will opt for something that is a SURE thing - if they really want the best, and most (time-starved consumers) people do.
- Add a certified column to the iTunes client (for example) - demonstrates quality and not stolen.
- Perceived reality is reality.
This plan marginalizes file sharing networks to carriers of "lower quality" MP3s; there's no way they will be able to compete with "legitimate quality"; you just cant completely "TRUST" something that's illegal. However, the file sharing networks may continue on as a great way to spread music; albeit "demo" quality music.
BTW - I back the band Jediah. All Jediah's current songs are available for sharing under a Creative Commons license.
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If you are still on the fence about giving away your MP3s, consider giving away a "DEMO" version. I have said this before; the industry is going to attempt to educate consumers that "higher quality" (I use that term loosely) MP3s are worth purchasing.
Billboard has a blurb today on Universal's announcement to sell classical music as MP3s encoded at 320 kilobits.
"At launch, the new DG Web Shop will offer nearly 2,500 classical albums, of which more than 600 titles are no longer available as CDs. More deleted titles will follow, the company says.... part of UMG's ongoing DRM-free download trial, all titles will be offered in MP3 format, at a transfer bit-rate of 320 kilobits per second."You can change the encoding rate of your tracks using iTunes, or you can do it with any number of useful utilities. The bottom line is: you should be offering at least a demo version of your songs for free, and from every site you maintain a presence on.
Appending the word "demo128", or something similar to your track names, sends a message to consumers that you may have a higher quality version of your song for sale someplace else, or at some other point in time.
To all you pirates - good luck convincing people that you truly have the "high quality", 320+BPS versions of songs; you will never be able to compete with the "real" or the "official" versions that are sold from legitimate sites run by labels and artists. Then again, I haven't seen a label that's smart enough to stomp illegal sharing by leveraging "certified quality"...
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Reader Comments (10)
Hmm to play devil's advocate: though I think that may work with say the soccer mom and anyone else that is not that tech savvy, I don't see that working so well with the younger people that are pirating without moral dilemma, because they won't be tricked that easily. And the first category really isn't that big of a pirating community to begin with.
As a suggestion it makes total sense - give music a "seal of legitimacy" and you may convert those some of those considering p2p as a music option away from that choice - much like you'd consider a vendor approved by the BBB rather than one without any "independent" evaluation.
I believe this purchasing decision happens already, though - folks who're pressed for time or concerned about legitimacy already turn to iTunes. I don't see an additional "certified standard" as particularly "doomed to failure" but whether it would turn enough potential file-sharers to buyers is certainly up for debate.
That being said, it wouldn't hurt to try - as a way to differentiate one vendor from another (eMusic vs. allofmp3.com for example), I think it would even be a welcome addition.
Nick
The market is as large as the sum of people that don't have TIME to be cheated by the cheaters.
If you have time to learn how to verify quality versus lesser quality, and time to verify every download thereafter, then you will stick with file sharing networks.
However, if you want to upgrade your listening experience - because you rightly believe that MP3s don't sound all that good in the car - and you don't have TIME to dig into all that encoding mumbo jumbo, then you will purchase from a trusted source.
The TIME to acquire (hunt & gather) songs is more valuable to consumers then the money consumers have to pay for songs. The plan above is about selling (saving) TIME as much as it is about selling music.
Nick - great comment. I thought about Apple / iTunes as I was writing the post. The problem with iTunes as it relates to higher quality MP3s or just higher quality music is there has been zero consumer education on the subject. Right now, as far as most people are concerned, you can get the same exact product on a file sharing network (sometimes even better) as you can get on iTunes.
When and if the industry engages in a massive effort to sell a quality listening experience, that would be the time to roll out a quality-certified certificate program...
Some interesting thoughts, but I don't think it would serve any other purpose than confuse consumers even more. P2P users and the like couldn't care less - believe me. You say it will save me time - compared to what? Downloading an album via RS in less than 1 minute? I've been around for a while, and the occasionally bad rip on the file sharing networks has never been an issue. Finding a new and perfect rip usually only takes a few minutes or less. Should 320 rips ever be used and accepted as the only true good quality ripping (despite the fact that very few will ever notice the difference from a 192 rip, and it will take up a lot more space on your harddrive) I would think that all illegal rips would be in 320 as well. Sorry, but I don't get the point. If you
To all you non-pirates - good luck convincing the industry that this is the way to fight piracy. And the very best of luck to get the music industry to agree on the terms and implementation of such a certificate.
Interesting post- but I've got to kind of agree with manna. Firstly I don't think the majority of people (with the exception of audiophiles and the artists who produced the tracks themselves) really care that much about song quality. Most likely they've got the bass way to loud in their car stereo or they're using their own eq settings, or they're listening with $5 headphones anyway, so using quality of the encoding as a way of marketing certified music I do not think is going to work. And like manna said, the better the encoding or quality, the larger the file size, which for a lot of people I think would be a more pertinent factor.
I think you were more on track with your ideas to sell enhanced content, not song quality (video shorts, art, webisodes, blog posts, etc).
I wish I had proof read that...
All of what you wrote is very true... however... would be nice if there were "music" to argue over... and it seems that music and quality of music has all but died... that is where the energy should be focused first & foremost.. on getting some great music back out there..worry about the details later.. It has become one big angry media whoring venture.. and the primary , most basic ingredient... credting music has all but been forgotten... so, I will worry about all this when people get the balls to demand great music again.
and ps.... I could give a rat's pitootey what happens to the people creating crap... they don't deserve to be making a profit spreading their angry, lazy, hateful noise anyway... they are taking away from the true musicians who are all but starving... get some real music back out there.. then I will support your cause... unless of course, you know Oprah... that seems to be the only way to get an artist heard... and her taste totally sucks to me anyway... it's one big media whore fest and the public is getting ripped off everytime a piece of crap is promoted.
Some interesting idea's.
I don't think pirates/kids will care too much about 320kbps, and I think that whenever anything is released at 320kbps it will find it's way onto the torrents soon enough for everyone to steal anyway.
Saying that, it's a worthwhile idea to pursue.... can't do any harm, and it would be good to educate the public as to bitrates.... having an official quality mp3 seal should help do that. Until that happens (which could take years the way the music industry work) why don't we all get a graphic designer to creat a badge for us all to use in the meantime?
btw there is ALOT of good music out there. I may be biased, but my wife is recording an album at the moment (to be released in Feb 2008). She is the human face of music... a mother with 2 children and a 3rd on the way, who had suicidal depression years ago and had fought her way out of it back into life and got an album funded through sellaband.com. Her blog is at www.mandyleigh.com/blog/ . Will have some free mp3's available when the album is out (256kbps drm-free). You can download other free tracks from Sellaband artists right now in fact.
There are some great music blogs out there as well, like Nothing But Green Lights etc etc. There's alot of great music out there. Don't forget there's people out there sweating blood to bring you music. Download it if you want, but if you like it... buy the albums please.