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A hot topic amoung everyone in the forums is that of DRM. It seems this is also a hot topic with the record companies who have been in talks at the annual industry meeting in France this week.
Music sales are on the decrease and have been for the last 7 years now despite digital downloads being on the increase and in fact doubling to $2 billion in sales in 2006.
Its no doubt a complicated issue as its very hard for a business to compete with people who are freely giving away what the sell. How can you compete with free? Well one of the answers may well be to sell music DRM free as some are suggesting or to lower the price. Or as Chris Anderson, the editor in chief of Wired magazine has to say:
"You cannot have zero piracy and if you try to get to zero piracy you will make the experience of consuming music so painful you'll have zero industry."
The industry is looking for a way forward from this problem. They are even considering using current P2P technology to deliver the content. This would pay the user a small percentage of the sale if say they recommended it to their friend who then buys the track.
I think the record companies are beginning to realise that the fight against piracy and the use if DRM may well be isolating online sales. Fighting piracy with the ultimate goal of destoying it is an unrealistic goal. It distracts them from selling music.
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People like me still buying CDs and maybe the ocassional DRM'ed tracks (I hate free P2P), DRM will not target non buying people. Everyone I know who can access e.g. LimeWire thinks it's normal to get them and would never buy those tracks anyway, even if they were cheaper!
...and I WILL NOT BUY a song that doesn't play either.
