The record industry hates you

Many of the music blogs I visit are all about highlighting great new music. For people like me, it's often the only way to discover new schlager and hard-to-find mp3s of long-deleted tracks. They share music through links to download services such as ZShare or Rapidshare, and in doing so, they're breaking the law.

In setting up this blog, I made a conscious decision that the music I post would be YouTube performances, to avoid any contentious music rights or illegal file sharing issues. But I resent the music companies for putting me in this position. After all, if I want someone to hear how good a song is, I'd rather they hear a high bit-rate version, rather than a youtube clip where the audio's been compressed into oblivion. Still, unless I want the piracy police knocking down my door, I've no option. Which is pretty damn stupid.

As marketing budgets shrink and record labels look for ways to slash spend, they need grass roots campaigners to do the hard work for them. It's the passionate fans and dedicated listeners who go out there and drum up support for the artists. But to do so, they have to share the product, so that people know what it is. And yet the short-sighted music companies think that these people are the enemy.

That may sound melodramatic, but they really do treat music fans with contempt. For example, they get pissy around filesharing and downloads, and then release 'special editions' of the year's best selling albums, on the back of a few scraps of extra content. They expect that the fans will buy a whole new CD for a couple of new tracks.

There's another issue as well. Music rights. So much of the music I discover online and enjoy is from outside of the UK. And yet the labels think it's smart to restrict availability. They block tracks on Spotify, they limit regions on iTunes, or they just flat out fail to release stuff in the UK.

This means that once people's appetites have been whetted, they're keen to consume, but told they're not allowed. Is it really any wonder they turn to filesharing, torrents and illegal downloads to find the music they love? Given the option of a legal alternative, this problem would disappear overnight.

As Seth Godin pointed out recently at a seminar in London, music companies are in the music business, not the CD business. They need to remember that, and focus their commercial efforts around the content, rather than the medium. If they made it available in every region, and updated those otherwise unavailable back catalogues, there'd be a whole lot less piracy.

In the meantime, we're stuck with YouTube clips. Happy viewing...