Downloading

I have been following this discussion with much interest and think it is a very important one. It also made me think what my opinion was, but to be honest I had never really thought about it and do not have so much of an opinion. So I did not vote yet.

With that in mind this morning, I found a blogpost of Seth Godin. I had never heard of him, but what he said was very interesting. His overall point (as I understood it) was that it needs a new paradigm to get solved and that was something, I think, I can agree with.

Here is the blogpost: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/02/music-vs-the-music-industry.html     

And here is the interview where he is reffering to:  http://www.rollogrady.com/rollo-grady-interview-seth-godin/

Some parts:

“The music industry is really focused on the 'industry' part and not so much on the 'music' part. This is the greatest moment in the history of music if your dream is to distribute as much music as possible to as many people as possible, or if your goal is to make it as easy as possible to become heard as a musician. There's never been a time like this before. So if your focus is on music, it's great. If your focus is on the industry part and the limos, the advances, the lawyers, polycarbonate and vinyl, it's horrible. The shift that is happening right now is that the people who insist on keeping the world as it was are going to get more and more frustrated until they lose their jobs. People who want to invent a whole new set of rules, a new paradigm, can't believe their good fortune and how lucky they are that the people in the industry aren't noticing an opportunity”.

“Digital is about to surpass the CD, and once it starts to happen it's going to happen faster and faster and faster. The more interesting thing to me is who is going to control the playlist. If there is an infinite amount of music available - and I would argue that as soon as the amount of music available exceeds the amount of time you have in your life, that's infinite - somebody will have the leverageable spot of deciding what to listen to next. And it's unclear whether someone will charge to tell me that or will pay to tell me that. It's still up for grabs in every one of these vertical silos. Who are the tastemakers and how do these ideas spread? The analogy I like to give is if you're an author and Oprah Winfrey calls, you don't say, ‘How much are you going to pay me to go on your show and give away all the ideas in my book?’ In fact, if you could you would pay to be on Oprah.”

“It's really fine and good to have a moral or ethical conversation. I think it's more productive to have a practical conversation about power. The fact is that the industry will never have enough power to keep someone from pirating something because they think they're going to end up in jail. The numbers that would end up in jail are too big. They're probably not going to have enough power to get people not to copy something because they think it will get them in trouble with their mom. After all, it's an industry built on getting in trouble with your mom”.