RECORD COMPANIES are feeling pretty smug. The US Supreme Court ruled this week that they can file lawsuits against software companies such as Grokster that help people to download music for free.
The music industry now naively believes that everyone will stop being naughty and pay to download songs from iTunes or Napster.
Well, if any industry execs are reading this, I suggest that they settle their large middle-aged bottoms into the nearest Eames chair, for I have a shocking revelation for them. Most music fans do not want to break the law; they are quite willing to pay for tracks. But this myopic business won’t let them buy the songs.
For a decade record companies have thought it terribly clever to give new singles to radio stations and music channels weeks or even months before they are available to buy in the shops. Although radio stations then play the songs to exhaustion, patient mugs still buy them when they finally stagger on to the shelves before swiftly disappearing from the top 40.
The problem is even more acute if you like dance music. Hear Pete Tong play a trendy new track on Radio 1 on Friday night and you either wait two or three months until it is released, or you do what I sometimes resort to — go searching for it on a file-sharing service such as BitTorrent or WinMX.
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In a download world, the lumbering approach of the record companies is daft and unsustainable. When will the dinosaurs at the labels realise that if fans can log on and buy a new song as soon as they hear it, they might actually sell more copies? It’s easy; even a marketing department with coaching might be able to grasp it.
Ever since downloading music became possible, record labels have pretended that the business model they have profited so richly from for a century is not crumbling around their ears. They stop artists from putting out more than one album every two years, rerelease titles with “bonus tracks” in a cunning attempt to sell fans the same thing twice and treat consumers with utter contempt.
If EMI, Sony Music and BMG et al had stopped milking fans and allowed them to buy the tracks they wanted, when they wanted them and for a reasonable price, their profits would not be sliding. Instead of hiding its ponytailed head in the robes of judges, the music industry needs to wake up and see that the world has changed.