Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

This sadly is not simply a matter of the BPI being poorly informed: Thing is, industry lobbies aren’t trying to quash file-sharing because they think that piracy is stealing sales, they want to quash it because it’s diluting sales. The big problem is that file-sharing is effectively a form of grassroots advertising, and file-sharers are turned on to many bands and artists that they might not otherwise learn of. That’s great for the artists, but it is perceived as hurting the label’s bottom line: if they farm 10 new artists in a year, market-test them and then focus advertising on one in particular the end result will likely be one artist that shifts a lot of units and a bunch that (because they never really had a chance) do not and get their contracts torn up. They make a truckload of $$ off one act and scrap the others to keep development costs down, and the cycle beginds anew the next year. If instead they farm 10 artists in a year and a comparatively small number of people hear about each band and snatch up their albums, then they have 10 mediocre-selling artists and no way to cull the herd, meaning that their A&R costs will be 10x higher than if they only had one artist selling out of the bunch. Sad but true, but the current model the record industry follows requires that the majority of artists in their catalogs not sell.