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Universal Music, the world's largest music company, has shaken up the record industry by announcing that it will make its song catalogue available as free internet downloads. Backed by Universal, Spiralfrog will become one of the first sites to offer free music legally.The service - which will be supported by advertising, unlike other legal download sites that charge for music - will launch in the US and Canada from December. It will become available in Europe in early 2007. The move is expected to have a dramatic impact on the digital music industry.
Source: The Independent [news.independent.co.uk]
A dramatic impact indeed...
Syzygy
You'll either get crappy music, copies with stupid ads in front of the song, or basically any kind of hitch you can think of.
Not to mention, it's only one music company. So, IMO, you'd be better off signing up with napster or itunes.
The service would be a legal file sharing system.
Anyone could submit to it - each document, book, audi tape, music, software, dvd, game, etc would be reviewed by the file systems staff before going life. Those submitting it would enter LOTS of useful meta data (e.g. file type, age restriction, commercial/home made etc). Movie/record companies would probably have a direct way of adding new content.
Ideally media files would all be categorised into a directory format reminiscent of the old Yahoo (this would be an alternate way to search for things - but not the main way).
People can download whatever they wanted to, with no limit (other than the normal bandwidth allowance).
Revenue is given out according to some agreed formula - but the essence of it from the users point of view would be that your 10GBG would essentially be split between the owners of the files you downloaded (though some - e.g. non-commerical ones could opt out of or be excluded from this).
I'd guess that there would be a minimum amount given to each commerical file (e.g. 1p). Those very popular files would make a lot of money quicker. Those files that are less popular (e.g. old music) will still make money but would take a bit of time.
Non-commerical uploads - e.g. amatuer videos and bands releasing there own stuff - would get far, far less of the split than the commerical ones (if we risk removing the need for music distributors it wouldn't get off the ground).
Some files could request an additional charge - which would come of your isp bill. E.g. the latest pc games and dvds would require and additional charge. People could choose to show additional charge files or exclude them completely from their search.
Parents could also activate parental controls.
Things like watching live tv shows (free channels) and "hiring" dvds could be added/make use of the network.
People want to download many more files than they currently do, quickly, easily and without having to take out their credit card and without having to pay out a fortune - they'd also much prefer to do so legally.
We keep hearing in the UK how much piracy costs - but to be fair most of the pirated stuff downloaded would NOT have been bought anyway - theres only so much that people will pay out on entertainment in a month.
Its time the industry began to release this and to provide what its customers want, instead of striving against it.
The companies that are letting the industry bodies sue everyone have to waken up - these industry bodies are fighting for their survival.
Should the current situation go on for any longer we will begin to see legal networks emerging for new artists that BYPASS record labels, arthurs that don't bother with publishers and profressional and amuteur film producers bypassing cinemas and releasing films/tv shows live on the net - instantly worldwide.
In short the distributors battle to sue people who do the strikingly obvious (use user-friendly quick downloading file sharing to download any media they want) will simply backfire to the point where everyone decides that distributors should just be bypassed.
If distributors want to survive they will need to find a way to embrace the technology and change their business model.
And there's no point in individual distributors releasing stuff on their own system/site - people want to (and can) use a file sharing network that has whatever files they want (regardless of which unknown distributor owns it). Really - its daft. I know my favourite bands, movies, books - but who knows which distributor they belong to?
