DISQUS

Hi Nic,

I’m in agreement that the ad funded model makes sense and that ISP’s will struggle to prevent the illegal downloads of music.

The internet offering many things to customers, but the overriding driver, and what’s changing market economics the most, is one simple word – choice.

Consider The Pirate Bay, a peer to peer file sharing ‘solution’. Or in other words a method for people to download paid for content for nothing. Pirate Bay is currently being investigated by the Swedish authorities as well as being sued by Prince and perhaps more surprisingly The Village People. Also according to www.news.com.au the site mysteriously disappeared from Yahoo! search results on February 18th only to re-appear again on the 20th. Suggesting Yahoo! Australia decided to take matters in to their own hands and then thought better of it.

Do consumers care? With a reported 10 million customers it would appear not. The choice these customers made was not to pay for content. Read any blog about Pirate Bay and you’ll see massive support and justification of such download sites, one extract below sums up consumer sentiment.

“For years I was forced to buy CD's for $30+ where I'd find about three good songs and the rest fillers! Who are the real pirates here? The record companies got away with it for too long.. Drop CD.. drop the big production costs..”

This is of course questionable logic, and I’m not advocating illegal downloads. But the lesson is clear. The internet has given consumers much more choice and what people want is what they don’t have to pay for.

Some sites will get shut down, and some might get blocked from search results, but the internet simply isn't controllable and free content will always be available for those that want to seek it out.

Glen Conybeare
(Note: Extracts from the above are taken from the a recent article in Marketing that I was the Ghost writer for)