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01 September
Last Century Music Business Model Continues To Fail in 21st Century Digital Ireland
...Irish Record Labels Remain Confused.
by
SoftwareGuru
The above may read like a headline story
from the satirical news site
The Onion
but sometimes the truth needs to be spelled out no matter how
obvious it may be.
Given how fundamentally crucial an issue like illegal
downloading and piracy is, not only to an Irish company such as
Software4Students but in relation to the
economic regeneration of the entire country (given that by 2020,
70pc of all exports will be services) means that everyone should
think carefully about their online actions.
This is not a time for knee-jerk decisions to be made to
serve the interests of the few when the entire country's
economic regeneration is tied into our online strategy.
Where is the leadership from
Government?
Demands are being made on Irish ISPs that have, according to
the likes of UPC and BT Ireland, "no
legal basis". Despite this the likes of Eircom have
already bowed to pressure and have started to ban sites.
When did Ireland turn into China?
The demands in question involve banning Irish users from
accessing certain websites such as The Pirate Bay which offer
torrents that are used to carry out free downloads of digital
content that would normally cost money to buy.
Yes, online piracy must be tackled but let's get our facts
straight first.
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You Can't Handle The Truth
The statistics put forward usually assumes that every illegal
download is a lost sale, which isn't true when it comes to
music.
We're not talking about Microsoft Word here, an
application which many people would struggle without, as opposed
to not owning the new single from Girls Aloud.
The downloaded music figures (in terms of value to the economy
and jobs it supports) can't be taken seriously when music fans
tend to buy the records they really love but will download
pretty much anything just so they can have an opinion on it and
delete it afterwards.
If they had to pay for it, they wouldn't download it in the
first place. It's simply more convenient than the 80s equivalent
of waiting for a new song to be played on the radio so you can
decide whether you like it or not.
When your target demographic is also the least patient age
group, this shouldn't come as a surprise.
Gary Marshall for .Net magazine in recent issue 192
brilliantly critiqued the whole situation and in the process
debunked the figures used.
- "the piracy press releases continue to pour out of the
industry's a*** - so when U2's single stiffs on the not
unreasonable grounds that nobody like it (it struggled to reach
42 in the UK charts), the industry blames piracy rather than U2
making a crap record."
He makes also makes the key point that...
"Even when money isn't spent on music, it doesn't
vanish. It gets spent on something else, such as £40
console games, box sets of The Wire, stupid clothes or cider."
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Playing Catch-up
In terms of digital content, it comes down to distribution
models, quality of product and value for money.
For example, if RTE don't buy a TV series that is on a U.S.
network such as HBO, Irish internet users can simply download it
immediately after broadcast using torrents.
Fans of TV shows don't want to wait and in 21st century
digital Ireland we shouldn't have to either.
I'd happily pay the price of a pint to watch the latest episode
of
Dexter or
House so
why isn't this possible? Why expect people to wait around on
domestic broadcasters still using the last century rulebook?
It's gone. It doesn't apply anymore. Wake up!
In terms of software, there is a clear split between what's
value for money for a company and what an individual home user
is prepared to pay.
Software companies know this and students and home users reap
the benefits through official discount companies such as
Software4Students.
There's always a price point where the value of a popular
product becomes so great that it outweighs the alternatives.
You wouldn't put a dodgy engine in your new car. Likewise, you
should know better than to put an illegal copy of an operating
system in your new PC or laptop.
The software industry is quickly getting up to speed
when it comes to core issues such as 'quality of product' and
'value for money'. Any industry that fails to do this shouldn't
start complaining to ISPs.
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Posted by
admin
at
09:07
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Read more about online and digital issues in Ireland at Software4Students.