Why Music Biz Loves P2P
Jason Shultz over at CopyFight just posted this story about The Mercury News’ story about how record labels use P2P stats to boost sales.
Record Labels Using “Pirate” Data to sell more CDs (posted by Jason Schultz)
The Merc has a great article on how the RIAA bashes P2P out of one side of their mouth while secretly using data from the networks to boost sales of their CDs. Check out this tasty bit:[quote]Record-label executives discreetly use Garland’s research firm, BigChampagne, and other services to track which songs are traded online and help pick which new singles to release. They increasingly use such file-sharing data to persuade radio stations and MTV to give new songs a spin or boost airplay for those that are popular with downloaders.
Some labels even monitor what people do with their music after they download it to better structure deals with licensed downloading services. The ultimate goal is what it always has been in the record business: Sell more music.
“I know of a case where an artist had obviously gone with the wrong single, and everyone loved this other song they had on their record,” said Guy Oseary, Madonna’s business partner and head of her label, Maverick Records. “In the world of what we do, it’s always good to have real information from real fans.”
Maverick used BigChampagne’s 100-city breakdown of popularly downloaded songs to persuade radio stations to start playing a new band, Story of the Year, during prime daytime listening hours instead of at night.
The online data revealed that despite Story of the Year’s lunar rotation, its single “Until the Day I Die” ranked among the top 20 most popular downloads, alongside tracks from Blink-182, Audioslave and Hoobastank that received significantly more airplay. And when the band performed in a city, “we didn’t necessarily see the phones blowing up at radio, but we saw download requests for the song skyrocket as they went through,” said Jeremy Welt, Maverick’s head of new media.
Armed with this data, Maverick fought for more airtime at radio, which translated into more CD sales. Story of the Year’s album, “Page Avenue,” just went gold, selling more than half a million copies….
Folks keep asking why more artists aren’t breaking into the mainstream through P2P. I think this may provide some answers — they are; the record labels are just taking all the credit.[/quote]
This whole P2P, music swapping thing probably deserves its own category here at MaisonBisson. I followed up on the legal battles in February after it became clear that ISPs were fighting the RIAA’s subpeonas and in August I wrote up a summary of the music biz’s stupidity so far. Finally Copyright War has the rest of the story this week.
1 Comment(s)
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
Aurgh! I knew it. The RIAA is so wrong in this one. It’s hypocritical. Sue people for using P2Ps, yet, use the data to keep track of the songs most downloaded. Whatta rip off. They better not come knocking at my door–I’d slap a counter-lawsuit on their asses so fast…