One of the biggest Internet phenomenon is the peer to peer sharing of files, which allows internet users to exchange digital files. Digital files can contain pictures, word documents, PDF files, as well as music and movies. The big controversy started when the group Metallica sued Napster for copyright infringement that ended up fueling a new industry headed by apple with its itunes and ipod combination.
The itunes store became a good solution to stop piracy because users could purchase one song at a time or a full album, and artists being able to sell their productions again. However there are artist like Prince that don't like to sell their music over the internet.
Prince decided to give away his last album for free to fight the online music industry giving the the Mail on Sunday exclusive rights to distribute his new album as a freebie, and this way he modified the distribution channel allowing his fans to have his latest creation for free and possibly adding more fans to his already long list.
What the music industry and other artist can learn from prince, is that it should be more important as an artist to interact with their fans and make them aware of new projects than just selling their albums this way making it easy to obtain more concert tickets that may generate better returns.
Artist don't necessarily need to block Internet out of their way to make the interaction mentioned above possible. Instead they can use Internet tools to their advantage not only to sell their albums, but also to reach their fan base and humanize the relationship.
Personally, I consider iTunes the revolution of the music industry, but still does not stop people from getting free songs. New regulations need to be implemented to stop piracy which is making musicians and artists to lose a lot of money.
ReplyDeleteGood post!