It may have taken 10 years for one executive to come up with this revelation, but the head of the British Phonographic Industry, or BPI, has recently admitted that the industry shouldn’t have fought Napster, but rather, engaged it. Who knows? At this rate, maybe another executive will think that the industry should consider a truce between it and file-sharers by the year 2019.
Note: This is an article I wrote that was published elsewhere first. It has been republished here for archival purposes
Geoff Taylor, the head of the BPI recently suggested that he also regrets the industry not moving faster to sell music albums on the internet.
Still, he maintains that the websites since then still damaging the industry. There’s also the comment that suggests that he still believes that one download means one lost sale; though he didn’t say that specifically, only to say that there’s less money for music because of unauthorized downloading. Of course, he makes no mention of an earlier finding that points out how games and movies are more likely to be blamed for less money if there is a monetary loss in the market. Naturally, there isn’t a mention of how the industry plans on competing against such competing markets as a consequence.
Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group praised the fact that Taylor has realized this, but points out that there’s still a heavy push to get users disconnected in Britain as well. So really, this copyright war between the industry and it’s consumers is far from over. Back in April, one British minister shot down the three-strikes proposals calling them too draconian.
Who knows though? Maybe eventually the top music industry labels will eventually figure out how to tackle the internet and how it’s had such an effect on music. It just might take a while at this rate though.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.
