In the context of the debate going on over copyright protection in the Digital Economy Bill there is an interesting event happening tomorrow night at the Performing Rights Society in London.
Entitled “Is Pre-Release Killing Our Business?” tomorrow’s discussion is centred around the fact that in order to raise awareness the music industry conducts promotional campaigns for up to three months before a CD is released. This stimulates demand for a product that is not yet available and it only takes one promo copy of a CD to be pirated and loaded onto a P2P network for that CD to be freely available which of course eats into sales at launch.
Because of this industry bodies including ERA and the MMF are calling for abolition of pre-release windows in their entirety. Tomorrow night’s speakers including the BBC’s Head of Music for Radio 1 George Ergatoudis, Martin Talbot, MD of the Official Charts Company, Ben Drury of 7 Digital and Emily MacKay of the NME.
It just goes to show that the whole fight against music piracy is something that has to be conducted across many fronts.
More details on the Music Tank website here.
It strikes me that there are so many discussion points/arguments surrounding the Copyright aspects of the Digital Economy Bill that it will be worth collating them all in an easy to access format – watch this space.
One reply on “Is Pre-Release killing the music business? #Digital Britain”
I don’t think you need to fight pirates, and if you do you will never win.
I think the music industry needs to stop holding on to an obsolete business model and play fair instead of whinging to government to look after them. For too long they have milked the teenagers, and now the kids are getting one up on them and they Don’t Like IT.
tough titty.
If they make the music affordable and cut the hype and spin then everyone will be happy and pirates will be out of a job.
And it will take away the dark lord’s excuse to break our internet. win win