8 years ago
9
We need to teach young people stealing content online is wrong, says Philip Pullman
The creative industries face a “disaster” unless young people are taught that stealing music and books from the web is wrong, the author Philip Pullman has claimed.
Continue Reading
http://www.independent.co.uk
Join the Discussion
The same younger generation that are engaging in piracy are those who would not have bought an artist's music in the first place. Piracy may actually be exposure for some artists and creates lifelong fans. Those fans may purchase merchandise or future albums as a result of having been able to hear the music for free.
As for top 40's music, I'm sure that those get enough pay from the radiostations that play it over and over.
And that's without considering how little of the money from music sales actually goes to the artist. The vast majority ends up with the record label and distributor. If you really want to support a band go to shows and buy merchandise where a lot more ends up with the artist.
So piracy is actually spiting the label and not the artist?
I feel it's still spiting both but definitely more so to the label than the artist. I personally don't like piracy but agree that if someone is going to pirate they wouldn't have bought it in the first place.
I agree with him. Music, and other forms of entertainment such as games, movies, books, ect. are increasingly going digital. We need to make sure that the teenage generation knows that to support content creators, and they want to consume more of their content, they need to pay for it.
At the same time they need to remember that going digital has also come with major side affects, mainly being the cost and licensing restrictions. When I buy a CD I am free to rip it for personal use, sell it if I want to, trade it to a friend or anybody else for a CD they have. With a digital file I am allowed to listen to it, some of the licenses even come with broad wording that makes it sound like I can't even let a friend listen to it without me. If they want to teach children the downloading is wrong and should be considered theft, they also need to give in and allow a third party market. How they do that I am not sure, but until they do that they're going to have a major problem. The cost of digital files is also insane, 29.99 for an HDX movie on Vudu and 29.99 for the Blu-Ray at Walmart...I'll get the physical copy and sell it when I don't want it anymore. Then you have music where if you want the whole album it's 11.99 digital on iTunes but only 9.99 physical on Amazon. I may be in the minority but when you have something that costs the same as something physical I'm going to go physical because the digital with no ownership is too high. Find that sweet spot on price and I'm more likely to drop physical and in the case of pirates probably piracy, there have been studies showing a correlation between lower prices and lower piracy.
That's why I love services such as Patreon, which I think is an excellent system for those involved in digital content creation.
I wonder if he paid to perform those songs
I think, when it comes to the producer-consumer relationship, the business model needs to change completely. Within the industry, they can handle money the way they always have, but in the digital age there are such fundamental differences that it doesn't make sense to follow the old rules when dealing with consumers. Convenience has proven to be something people will pay for. What else?
I think it will just take a huge paradigm shift to solve whatever the problem is — we are still thinking about it one way when it's become something totally different — and we'll see how it plays out in the coming years.