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Today one of the hot news stories is that a new music service called SpiralFrog will allow users to download any universal music file for free and that the revenue will be derived from advertising. As intelligent as this might sound, trust me we have already hit the peak and it is now going to be a long trip down hill from here on out.

Ok so the first thing you will have to do to download music once this service starts is watch or listen to a one minute commerical, you can then download one song. OK so far not that bad right, it gets worse! Next that song will work for a “period of time” but to keep it working you have to go back and watch more commmericials by logging in at least once a month to do so. NO, NO wait we are still heading down hill. Next when you download it to your MP3 Player it must stay there you can’t put it on a CD it is pretty much locked into your Windows Media Player and your MP3 Player.

Oh but my friends we are not done yet! Nope it is also not compatable with the iPod so you have to use a player that works with Windows Media. Now here is a secret about me I am a Creative Labs fan myself and really like their players BUT to set up a music service that excludes 70% of the market is kind of starting with a pretty big handicap. One last thing for right now you have access to all the songs from Universal Music but no others. Universal is huge and the biggest ones others will follow but it doesn’t help that only one music company is available up front.

To me this is just one more example of the music industry screaming “we are so stupid, we do not understand the market is it not amazing that we became one of the worlds richest industries, oh God why does everyone hate us and steal our property”.

In an article by Vnunet called SpiralFrog offers free legal music downloads, the companies cheif executive Robin Kent stated, “Piracy continues to be one of the biggest issues facing the music industry where illegal file sharing and unauthorised CD burning are the prime means of music piracy”.

OK well just why do people use services like LimeWire to file share and “steal” music? How about the facts that is it is easy, free, fast, works well and you can find any song in the world there.

Yet I think people will be happy to pay for music but if the industry wants to solve the problem they need to address the two key reasons people continue to use file sharing services.

1. People want to be able to play music in their car on a CD or on one of their other PCs, if they have and iPod (and many do) they want to use it. Most services prevent this in an “attempt to prevent file sharing”, but it just doesn’t work. Name that tune and I can get a copy on Limewire.

2. The music industry has told us for years why they have to charge as much as they do and the biggest expense they point to is printing the lables, burning the disks, the art work, shipping, stocking shelves, etc. Well, you can’t have it both ways we all KNOW that it costs a LOT less to deliver electronic music so the price point of around a dollar a song for music you actually own and can keep with out a subscription is too high.

So what is the solution? The music industry would be smart to just build a system where people can buy songs at about 50 cents a title and then do as they please with them. The industry would counter that, then people will share them, my response would be BUT THEY ALREADY ARE AND YOU CAN’T AND NEVER WILL BE ABLE TO STOP IT.

The music industry needs to look back at the dual tape deck and realize it did not distroy them.

If you are a younger person you might not really remember tape decks but they were “the music media choice” in the 70s, 80s and much of the 90s. When the first dual tape decks came out in the 70s the music industy went ape over it, clammering how the piracy would be insane and starve the poor artists. Sorry but last time I visited the Sony Executive offices in New York City they still had LEATHER WALLS and marble floors.

Every single top executive in the music industry should be forced to write the following 1000 times on a chalk board.

Music by its nature is simply sound and if it can be played it can be recorded, if it can be recorded it can be placed in a portable format and if it can be placed in a portable format it can be shared. Since we can not make music with out sound we can’t stop sharing so we need to embrace it and learn how to profit from it.

These record companies reaction to file sharing is one of the most short sighted and profit killing business moves made in the history of the free market. If 10 years ago they had just jumped on board and made a site that sold music cheap and portable, integrated forums and community features, developed mailing lists of people based on their prefrence and did the basic things successful web companies do they could be making more money from ADVERTISING today then anyone in the world and no not by making people be forced to watch an ad prior to one download.

The model is simple, today if you control traffic you can make billions and music drives traffic, grasp that music execs it is your only way out of this issue.

As for SpiralFrog, in Florida when I was growing up when the first rains came each year many of the frogs came out and got squished on the road, when I think of SpiralFrog, the image of those little squished frog is all I can see,

~ Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: universal music, download music, MP3 Player, Windows Media Player, iPod, Creative Labs, file sharing, CD burning, music piracy, LimeWire, spiralfrog, ipod, digital music, download music

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