The Recording Industry Association of America got it’s moment of clarity when the company stated that innovation is the only way to stop people who are illegaly downloading music. After closing down Limewire, sueing students and crazy anti-piracy laws the company wants record labels to compete with piray.
The statement comes with the usual statistical madness to prove that meisures already taken have been very effective. One of those statistics can be seen in the following graph. It shows the decrease in Free Music Downloads after the closure of the Limewire network.
As you can see the decrease gets even stronger after May 2011. That is the period when Spotify got available in the US. The RIAA doesn’t mention this in their statement which is weird: while opening up legal ways of enjoying your favorite music is a huge succes RIAA prefers mentioning their own action which isn’t exactly about enjoying music the way the public wants it: easy, online and free if possible.
According to the RIAA record companies and the entertainment industry should innovate, experiment and work together with technology partners to offer music fans a broad array of legal music downloads. The exact quote the RIAA makes can be read below.
“The single most important anti-piracy strategy remains innovation, experimentation and working with our technology partners to offer fans an array of legal music experiences”
The guys at Torrentfreak, from which this article was taken, were very clever when they saw the word ‘remains’ in the statement of the RIAA. Only once innovation and experimentation were mentioned in relation to Free Music Downloads from the internet. Instead both the RIAA and the record companies were enforcing: not the best way to get what you want or offer your customers what they are asking for.
Interesting to know is when record companies and the entertainment industry will actively pursue their goals with innovation. Maybe a decent deal with Grooveshark is a good start? We will see but for now it might be a step in the right direction.