The music industry is dying. According to themselves, and their marketers, at least. And the disease that is causing this mighty giant to fall? Napster. Their dying cries are of treason. They claim Napster is infringing on copyrights, allowing approximately 70 million users to steals from them. There were 1 billion such thefts last year.
It is easy to be swept up in the enormity of it all but ask yourself, if this truly is the end of the music industry then why did music sales rise by 8% last year. Curiously, much of this is down to Napster. Statistics show that most users who download the music will buy it if they like what they hear. Statistics show that Napster users buy more than three times as much music as non-users. Napster is nothing more than a promotional tool, like television or radio, an opportunity for people to listen to music before buying.
Three weeks before The Dave Matthews Band released their album, Everyday, the first single, ’I Did It, ’ was featured on Napster at the band’s request. Now they’ve got the #1 selling album in America. The number two slot is occupied by Shaggy, due to the international smash hit, ’It Wasn’t Me’, which became popular when an Hawaiian DJ discovered the song through Napster and began giving it airplay.
As Damian Harris, owner of SKINT, musical home of Fatboy Slim points out,
“The amount of time companies spend stressing about getting a record on radio, you would think that the idea of some big, global listening post would make perfect sense.”
As television and music plunge to the depths of musical shallowness, it has become almost impossible for fans of anything vaguely alternative to hear the music they love. Napster provides relief from teen queens and boybands, offering a platform for all types of music, regardless of image or reputation. Napster has won its place in modern culture and musical history, not through style or image, but by giving people what they want. In the music folders of Napster, Frank Sinatra resides happily alongside Slipknot. Where else is this possible?
The judge in the lawsuit against Napster, Marilyn Hall Pate, claims that there are no lawful uses for Napster. What about an opportunity to hear music by artists and bands who would otherwise be ignored by the music industry. Each week on napster.com, six unknown artists or bands are highlighted and profiled, giving them a chance to be heard, in theory, by those 40 million thieves who are Napster users. Napster also lets the user access rare, deleted and unavailable tracks. People can rediscover music they have lost over the years. Luddites can abandon their abraded vinyl for the same music at near-CD quality. Travellers can leave their CDs at home and simply download their favourite tracks.
To conclude, let me remind you of a similar case twenty-four years ago. In that case Goliath was played by the film industry, David by the electronics firm Sony. Sony had produced the first VCR and was accused, just like Napster, of copyright infringement. The film industry wanted it banned but, in time, they saw how they could use the VCR to their advantage and the first pre-recorded videos emerged from the film studios. The home video market has been highly lucrative, providing considerable income for film companies. Last year alone they earned the film industry$20 billion. And all this came about after the media giants tried to ban something which they claimed would threaten their very existence.