muzik 2.0 音樂大件事➴ 1130 數字音樂銷售上升圖解－☭ marselip0910 叶俊华™

A Graphic Look At The Rise Of Digital Music
2009/11/3

budget software from mint.com

No Thanksgiving At WMG
2009/11/26
WMG Stock Falls Another 11.29%.

U[PDATE: WMG was down another 6.2% on Friday closing at $5.16.

Wall Street has another flat day rising just .29% on Wednesday, but that did stop investors from battering Warner Music Group stock once again. WMG fell another 11.29% in pre-turkey day trading to close at $5.50.

On Tuesday, just hours after Warner Music Group reported an $18 million quarterly loss,
the company's stock had fallen 18% recovering
slightly by the close of trading, ending at $6.20 down 12.8%.

Stock Fall Could Put Edgar's Dream On Hold

It's no secret that despite improving sales, EMI is struggling under huge debt that Citi recently refused to restructure and that Warner CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. has long coveted the major label group. But WMG is paying off a $1.1 billion debt of its own at 9.5%; and a 25% two day fall in share value reduces both the chances of a successful stock swap and investor willingness to take on more obligations.

Warner Music Group Reports Continuing Losses
2009/11/24

This morning Warner Music Group reported:

Revenue of $861M for the fourth quarter of 2009 increased 1% from the prior-year quarter. Full-year 2009 revenue declined 9% to $3,176 million.
Digital revenue was $184 million or 21% of revenue; up 5% from the previous quarter. Full-year 2009 digital revenue rose 10% to $703 million or 22% of total revenue.
Income from continuing operations for the quarter declined 18% to $54 million. Fourth-quarter 2009 operating income included $14 million in severance charges. For the full-year 2009, operating income from continuing operations was $135 million, a 35% decline from $207 million in fiscal year 2008.

Operating income before depreciation and amortization (OIBDA) for the quarter fell 10% to $120 million from $134 million in the prior-year quarter. Fourth-quarter 2009 OIBDA included the Severance Charges. OIBDA for fiscal year 2009 was $397 million, down 16% from $475 million in fiscal year 2008.
For the quarter, loss from continuing operations was ($0.12) per diluted share compared to income from continuing operations of $0.04 per diluted share in the prior-year quarter. Fourth-quarter 2009 income included $0.09 per diluted share in Severance Charges. For the fiscal year, loss from continuing operations was ($0.67) per diluted share versus loss from continuing operations of ($0.24) in fiscal year 2008.

環球音樂集團第三季度收入利潤暴跌

編輯terry @2009-11-17 00:53

根據環球音樂集團的母公司Vivendi的第三季度財報結果，環球音樂集團在本季度收入和利潤呈現明顯下降。總體收入下降14.1%為9.69億歐元，利潤（按EBITA計算）下降了62.2%為5800萬歐元。傳統唱片繼續增大跌幅，數位音樂、衍生品和版權的收益增長只是減緩了收入下跌的幅度。
這也受到了索尼娛樂旗下的MJ事件引起的銷售反彈的因素影響，儘管環球集團在本季也有發佈些重量級樂隊的作品，包括U2，Eminem，Black Eyed Peas，Lady Gaga等等。
但從今年到目前為止的資料來看狀況並沒有那麼惡劣，收入為29.78億歐元，下降8.4%，利潤下降37.4%為2.69億歐元。

VEVO To Launch December 8th

Major online music contender VEVO is set to launch the evening of December 8th. "The VEVO service at VEVO.com and at YouTube.com will go live in coordination with our launch event in New York on December 8th," read an email sent late Wednesday from the Universal, Google and Sony backed startup.

VEVO is being created to help the major labels better control and monetize their online video content. UMG’s YouTube channel has more than 3.5 billion views, making it the most watched on the top rated video site, and VEVO will benefit from some of that traffic at launch. “We believe that at launch, VEVO will already have more traffic than any other music video site in the United States and in the world, said Universal CEO Doug Morris when announcing the formation of VEVO earlier this year. "And this traffic represents the most sought after demographic for advertisers, especially as advertising dollars continue their shift from old media to new."

But VEVO has not yet convinced all the major label groups to jump on board. Yesterday EMI announced a deal to deliver extensive content to popular online video service HULU; and WMG appears to be taking a multi-channel strategy recently renegotiating its deal with YouTube and partnering with FreeWheel for video monetization.

索尼宣佈在2010年運行線上娛樂商店

編輯terry @2009-11-22 21:29

索尼本月19日宣佈將在明年運行一個線上娛樂商店，銷售音樂、電影、書籍以及用於移動產品的可下載應用程式。此服務暫定名為“索尼線上服務”，儘管官方沒有透露過多細節，但面臨與iTunes競爭是必然的。
分析師認為運用軟體去銷售一系列的線上服務和內容是索尼未來最佳的發展方向。索尼之前太專注於硬體，它現在應該把重點放在網路產品和遞送數位娛樂內容給消費者。金融危機的影響，硬體利潤率的下降，也促使索尼公司迫切需要確立線上戰略。
ps3

索尼的這項服務將基於sony的PlayStation網路。三年前建立的PlayStation網路已經有3300萬註冊用戶並線上銷售數千款遊戲、電視節目和電影。在本財年，索尼預期PlayStation網路的收益將達到5億美元，是上年的三倍。今年10月，索尼已經與線上電影服務公司Netflix達成合作，讓PS3用戶可以通過他們的遊戲機點播電影和其他內容。
索尼將會嘗試採用有別於iTunes的服務，例如可能允許使用者通過索尼攝像機上傳視頻、索尼數碼相機上傳相片…存儲於他們的個人線上帳號中。

Sony Wants To Take On iTunes
Sony is taking a page from the Apple playbook and will open an online store for music, film, books and other digital content next year. Years after iTunes launched and went on to dominate more than 70% of the global digital music market, the electronics and entertainment conglomerate has decided to enter the game.

image from screenshout.files.wordpress.com

Dubbed temporarily the Sony Online Service, the store is part of a wider plan to return the ailing giant to profitability. "Sony has been too focused on hardware," says Tokai Tokyo Research Center analyst Osamu Hirose. "It has to focus on networked products [and] delivering digital entertainment to consumers."

百代MV登陸

編輯個籬 @2009-11-21 15:12

EMI已經成為了四大中第一家為美國正版授權視頻網站Hulu提供音樂視頻的唱片公司。據悉這份交易將從Norah Jones新專輯Fall中的MV開始。來自Virgin, Capital, Blue Note 和其它百代旗下唱片公司的視頻將很快在Hulu上可被觀看到。
現在登陸Hulu網站已經在首頁可以看到Norah Jones的幾十個現場視頻和一些MV。

Despite Debt EMI Reports Improvement

Last week Citi refused to re-write EMI's massive debt forcing owner Terra Firma to write off 90% of its original investment (a bit of a tax trick, but still...). Despite all the debt and turmoil, EMI managed to report improved sales figures for late 2008 and the early part of 2009. And that's before adding most of the sales from the recent Beatles re-masters. In fact, EMI may have been the only major label to grow sales in the period.

Full-year earnings to March 31, 2009 up 7.4% to £1.563 billion ($2.58 billion)...
Recorded music sales up 4.% to £1.095 billion ($1.81 billion)
EMI Music Publishing sales up 14.6% to £468 million ($773.83 million)

Read a pdf chart from EMI of its 2009 fiscal year performance here.

EMI Music Publishing Adds To A&R Team
EMI Music Publishing North America has rearranged its North American creative A&R team, including the appointment of Rich Christina to a new senior role in its East Coast team. Christina joins EMI as SVP of Creative, based in New York. He was previously VP of A&R at Sony/ATV Publishing.

Leotis Clyburn has also joined the company, from TVT Publishing as Senior Director of Creative. Clyburn will work on projects for EMI Music Publishing and Roc Nation, based in EMI's New York offices. Andrew Gould, who joined EMI's East Coast A&R team in November 2007, has been promoted to Senior Director of Creative. Gould will make the switch to EMI’s Los Angeles office later this month.

Early Results From Google’s China Music Service

200911/5

The WSJ reports that so far Google’s music service in China—which is a partnership between Top100.cn and Google (NSDQ: GOOG)—has attracted five advertisers who have committed $370,000 in spending. Doesn’t sound like much, considering the service was officially launched seven months ago and that ad revenue is split between Top100.cn and the record labels. However, the paper says that the companies plan to have 30 advertisers on board within six months, some of whom will dedicate $1 million to it. That could provide the start of a real revenue stream for the labels in China, since they don’t currently generate anything from the 99 percent of music downloads there that are illegal.
For Google, a bigger goal here is to drive traffic to its search engine, by competing with Baidu (NSDQ: BIDU), which gets a substantial percentage of its traffic from searches for MP3s. Google promises legal—and higher-quality—free downloads, a pitch that seems to be working. The WSJ says that about five million songs are now being downloaded a day via the service. Baidu has also been put on the defensive. Last week, it said it would partner with ad-supported music downlaod service Qtrax so it too could offer some legal ad-supported downloads.

扯下數位音樂價格最後一件衣裳

編輯tony @2009-05-28 21:36

（文/鄺新華）3月30日，全球四大唱片公司、140多家獨立唱片公司、國際四大詞曲出版商和中國音樂著作權協會，把旗下110萬首歌曲放到谷歌上，給中國用戶提供免費下載。

誰端出MP3的免費午餐
3月30日，全球四大唱片公司、140多家獨立唱片公司、國際四大詞曲出版商和中國音樂著作權協會，把旗下110萬首歌曲放到谷歌上，給中國用戶提供免費下載。唱片工業為什麼要把自己的產品無償送給中國人？白送對於唱片工業的百年老店意味著什麼？

把唱片業糾集在一起的是山西人陳戈。
2004年2月，陳戈的普淶音樂經紀公司走到盡頭。董事會開會決定，到期的藝人再不續約。這是陳戈繼1995年把崔健帶到美國巡演大虧之後，第二次在唱片業遇到的挫折。
2005年10月，陳戈成立了巨鯨音樂網。他的設想是，把人生與音樂的關係貫徹到商業中。吃飯、開車、催眠、懷孕，人生的每個時刻都需要音樂。如果你是西餐廳老闆，需要背景音樂，直接查分類就可以。每首只需1元，包月只需十幾塊。

失意：從＄0.99到￥1.00
“今天看來，別說一塊錢一首，即使是一毛錢一首，也沒有人付費下載。”陳戈笑著挖苦自己。雖然是這樣，這個1塊錢的定價來之不易。“一塊錢就是一毛多美金，唱片公司分一半就只有六分錢，要比iTune便宜八九倍。”
雖然不容易，但陳戈還是做下來了。到2006年3月15日消費者權益日，Top100下載店上線，陳戈已經簽下了大概100家唱片公司，其中包括四大唱片公司裡的兩家。
那天的產品發佈會，陳戈發現，上臺的嘉賓都是在鼓勵他們，覺得他們是壯士。“就好像要說：在中國做正版收費下載，離死不遠了。”
“今天想來，很多唱片業的朋友對這種付費的模式也是懷疑的。”陳戈說：“但當時是很難聽進去的，所有創業者都認為自己的想法是對的，人在一定的歷史階段是看不到自己的錯誤的。”
雖然現在明白了，但陳戈知道，像2009年這樣，做一個免費、不加密的免費MP3下載在2006年是絕無可能的。專案做到2006年10月份，陳戈已經感覺到壓力了：下載的人數寥寥，平均每天就幾千個，連個人網站都不如。
兩年前，陳戈的唱片公司被沿海地區源源不斷的盜版CD擊垮；兩年後，陳戈的音樂公司即將被互聯網上的盜版MP3擊垮。伴隨著前兩個進程，互聯網的盜版MP3也正在把盜版CD擊垮。
五大唱片公司每年發行音樂從2001年到2005年的量減少了60%。互聯網上可以下載的歌曲大概增長了5倍——這是源泉智慧財產權代理公司CEO吳峻提供的資料。“CD的發行量到2008年已經跌到不能再跌了。”
源泉代理著幾十家唱片公司幾十萬首的歌曲。

訴訟：一些曠日持久的爭鬥
有唱片業人士稱中國的數位音樂市場為“非常沒有秩序的蠻荒時代”。盜版就像如來佛祖，多少個孫悟空也是白給。“沒有人統計過，但你讓業內的人講一個數，我相信都會說1%。99%的音樂消費是盜版的。源泉再怎麼努力去授權，我們得到的也只是1%裡的我應該得到的份額。”
近年來，數位音樂的盜版的形式也越來越豐富：P2P、用戶端、移動互聯網，還有搜尋引擎。“現在大部分使用者得到音樂都是通過搜索。百度在互聯網上音樂下載的份額應該是60%到80%。”這是唱片工業把矛頭指向百度的原因。
音樂智慧財產權的官司有兩起比較著名。一個是2005年國際唱片業協會對百度的起訴，另一個是2008年年初吳峻攜中國音樂著作權協會對百度的起訴。
不過，這兩個官司都還沒有結果，因為百度提供的僅僅是連結，即使不小心提供了盜版音樂的連結，智慧財產權律師游雲庭說，百度在收到版權人通知後24小時內刪除即可免責。
“這個過程非常的冗長。(起訴百度)到目前為止已經一年多了，我們也不知道還需要多長時間，才會怎麼樣。沒有結果，這是很慘的一件事。”
吳峻說，在搜尋引擎上獲得盜版的取證，技術上需要幾十萬人民幣。“我們一搜索它，它把我們的IP地址遮罩掉。如果這首歌是比較有名的，搜索出成百上千的結果，要一頁一頁地去翻，去取證，那成本就太高了。”
現在，越來越少的唱片公司去起訴盜版公司了：“原來50%的話，現在只有20%、30%，沒有一個告的公司有一個正面的回報。”
在這樣的環境中，陳戈的專案很快就陷入了困境，直到穀歌的出現。

豪門：不謀而合音樂夢
2006年8月，谷歌的戰略合作部門看上了巨鯨音樂網的榜單，邀請陳戈與谷歌熱榜合作。這本來是一個普通的網站合作，但雙方都對一個話題很感興趣：音樂合法化的搜索和下載。9月12日，陳戈、章明基和谷歌的投資部門在洲際酒店一起吃飯，雙方開始討論這個問題。
“我們和谷歌不謀而合，我們不認為一個改良的產品會成功。前面有很多先烈的屍體在那了。”兩者直接談論免費的音樂下載。之後，陳戈給谷歌提了些建議書，關於免費音樂搜索下載的商業模式，還安排了四大唱片公司和谷歌的會談。
2007年的1月4日，陳戈接到谷歌的通知去開會。“新年的第一個工作日，穀歌得有多少事要安排呀。”陳戈似乎預感到事情的到來，進入會議室後，“谷歌的投資部門、戰略部門、技術部門，一屋子的人都在。”當陳戈得知谷歌有興趣投資巨鯨後，各種心情都起來了，“患得患失，貪婪，覺得要傍大款了。”
那以後，陳戈把原先的業務都放下了，人力、物力和財力全部轉移到與谷歌的合作上，開始跟各大唱片公司談判。
從只同意免費試聽，到同意免費下載，唱片公司的底線是：我不管是收費還是廣告模式，總之每一個下載都要給我一定的錢，拉不拉得來廣告是你的事。
那這個價格是多少呢？這是陳戈談判中重要的部分。但肯定不是陳戈兩年前拿的一塊錢了。“有說六毛的，有說四毛、三毛、兩毛，相當於按批發價給我，我再賣給廣告主，但廣告主能給的價錢大大低於這個。”陳戈的演算法是：“比如說我一天有3000萬個下載，一年有一百億個下載，用一年可以掙的廣告費除以100 億，你就能知道一個下載值多少錢了。從1元錢的人民幣要降到幾分、幾厘。”
就在這樣的價格之下，到2007年的10月陳戈已經簽下了三大唱片公司的廣告模式：免費下載和免費試聽，下載後有加密——三個月後這首歌失效。
因為檔有加密，在某些手機和MP3裡讀不了，陳戈還開發一些補丁——可惜沒用上。這些事情結束後，11月16日，谷歌投資的第一筆錢到位。“在此之前，理論上我們和谷歌隨時可以分道揚鑣。如果這筆錢不到位，還有一個半月就要關門了。”
“那天，我和我女兒跳舞慶祝。在此之前很多人問我為什麼谷歌投資你們？因為你們有錢？有實力？有用戶？有品牌？有技術？我答不上來。”
事實上，谷歌早就希望進入MP3下載的領域與百度PK了。礙於“不作惡”的傳統，有人把160多家唱片公司整合在一起，當然是谷歌樂見其成的。
來源：新週刊
原文連結：http://ip.people.com.cn/GB/9371003.html

Interchangeable Identities: The Collision of Culture, Technology, and Self
Kyle Bylin, Associate Editor

Photo Courtesy of Sara Kiesling

For those who came of age just before the rise and fall of Napster, what music they listened to depended greatly on where they were from, who their friends were, what their parents listened to, and, above all, it was primarily determined by the “tyranny of geography.”¹ Such tyranny, Chris Anderson suggests in The Long Tail, made it so fans only had access the music that existed on the limited shelf space in stores that were within a few miles of their homes. Much of this is still true, but with one exception. “Now,” Seth Godin writes in Tribes, “the Internet eliminates geography.”² After the fact, what we have is those who were born digital and epidemic of file-sharing that has preceded them — where an entirely different portrait of music consumption has emerged – because fans are no longer limited by geography, but by their ability to imagine and willingness to explore the abundance of music that lives online.

"What happens is that we begin to “take stuff because it’s there..."

Many would argue, and correctly so, that the appeal of file-sharing among college students and teenagers alike is because it made music free. This, in their minds at least, being the positive implication of file-sharing, but there are many negative sides too. “People often don’t care as much about things they don’t pay for, and as a result they don’t think as much about how they consume them,” Anderson says in Free, his follow-up release. “Free,” he contends, “can encourage gluttony, hoarding, thoughtless consumption, waste, guilt, and greed.”³ What happens is that we begin to “take stuff because it’s there, not necessarily because we want it.” Yet, even years later, common rhetoric in the record industry still says every song downloaded off the file-sharing networks is a lost sale, which, as Anderson suggests, may not actually be the case.

The problem with this assumption is that it negates the core appeal of the Internet, which is that – beyond its aspects of sociality and sheer capacity for establishing and maintaining connections – it also gives college students and teenagers the ability experiment, explore, and reinvent their identities. “Digital Natives are certainly experimenting with multiple identities,” Professors John Palfrey and Urs Gasser write in Born Digital. “Sometimes, they are recreating or amplifying aspects of their real-space identities when they go online.” They explain further, “In other instances, they are experimenting online with who they are, trying on roles and looks and relationships that they might never dare to try on in ‘real space.’”⁴ It is this aspect of identity experimentation that aligns with file-sharing in the way that college students and teenagers often times will download music that they may have never considered listening to or buying.

“During our teenage years, we begin to discover that there exists a world of different ideas, different cultures, different people,” neurologist Daniel Levitin writes in This Is Your Brain on Music. “We experiment with the idea that we don’t have to limit our life’s course, our personalities, or our decisions to what we were taught by our parents, or to the way we were brought up.” He adds, “We also seek out different kinds of music.”⁵ This is where the true appeal of file-sharing becomes clearer. In the college dorms and bedrooms of Middle America, you have students and teenagers – who at no fault of their own – have questionable access to “good music” by traditional means. Yet, through the Internet, lives an abundance of songs that probably outnumber the purchasing power of them and their parents combined.

II.

The moment music became digital and shareable on the Internet, all bets were off. You had students and teenagers who were essentially consuming and deleting music. Download seven albums, put them on their iPod, and listen to them for a week. Then, delete the four that they didn’t like as much and keep the three that they did. All of the sudden, they were less likely to accept sunk costs. What this refers to in music is when you get so excited for an album that you buy it the day that it comes out. You play it in your CD player and listen to it. The longer you waited to hear it, the more you’ll listen to it. And, even if you didn’t like it very much, that’s okay, because, maybe, it will grow on you. Eventually, you stop listening to the album, but you won’t sell it, since doing so would force you to acknowledge a loss.⁶

"College students and teenagers don’t have the money for that..."

With digital music there is only and inevitably the feeling of loss if we purchase an album that didn’t live up to our expectations, because there is absolutely no resale value – even if and when we decided to live up to our poor decision and accept the sunk costs. College students and teenagers don’t have the money for that, especially when they are at a point in their lives where they are experimenting with their identities and their taste in music. We think of file-sharing and have been programmed to associate it with stealing, yet, no one, it seems, has taken the time to stop and wonder whether or not the true appeal of file-sharing aligns with their path through adolescence. However, this is not to be taken as an excuse for behavior that runs contrary to the profitability of an industry, but of a plea for us to reconsider our thoughts.

What we forget is that, “Human beings are complex creatures who are going to do whatever it takes to make themselves as well off as possible,” Charles Wheelan explains in Naked Economics. “Sometimes it is easy to predict how that will unfold; sometimes it is enormously complex.”⁷ This relates to the law of unintended consequences, which, Steven Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics, describes as, “Even when you have someone clever designing the rules, the incentives, with thousands or millions of people with something at stake, scheming on the other side, they almost always figure a way around whatever system you set up.” He says, “The most powerful idea of [that law] is that anyone who thinks they can set up a set of rules, thinks they are smarter than the market, in some sense, usually loses.”⁸

It was the record industry who released their golden compact disc into the hands of college students and teenagers who would later figure out, with the advent of personal burning software, that they could make perfect physical and digital copies of it. Neither the record industry nor the students and teenagers intended to bring a nearly $15-billion-a-year juggernaut to its knees, but together, they did. Point being that, for as long as we try to prop up the old model, we are only denying the kind of access to music that the next generation of music fan actually wants, which is, to the best of our knowledge, the ability to experiment, explore, and reinvent their tastes in music — much in the same way they do so with their identities on social networks. This “freedom” to be themselves, that’s what they really want.

III.

As digital music migrates from iPods to mobile phones, it is necessary to take into account what makes this shift so profound. According to Sociologist Barry Wellman, “Computer-supported communication is everywhere, but it is situated nowhere. It is I-alone that is reachable wherever I am: at a home, hotel, office, highway, or shopping center.”⁹ He says, “The person has become the portal.” In recent years, the mobile phone has become not only a fashion object and signifier of social status, but it “has become one dimension of how we construct our own identity.”¹⁰ It’s the central hub where college students and teenagers alike navigate their on- and offline identities, store their music collection, and stay constantly connected to their various worlds. It’s their life, in their pocket.

“young people … use it as a badge to convey information
about themselves and the social groups to which they belong…”

Never before has so much of their lives been open to interpretation and discrimination. Whether they are conscious of it or not, many of them are making clear public statements about who they are and how they want to be perceived.^10.5 “The mobile phone is not just a functional item; it is also a symbolic item,” Jonathan Donner and Richard Ling write in Mobile Communication. “The selection of mobile phones and mobile telephone services is not only a signal to others of how we wish to be seen, but also a way that we integrate our self-image.”¹¹ The identity claims that individuals make with mobile phones are not unlike the ones they make with music. It has been suggested in a recent study that, “young people … use it as a badge to convey information about themselves and the social groups to which they belong…”¹²

“In Western culture in particular,” Levitin continues, “the choice of music has important social consequences. We listen to the music that our friends listen to. Particularly when we are young and in search of identity, we form bonds or social groups with people who we want to be like, or whom we believe we have something in common with.”¹³ With the increasingly public nature of their social networks and the identity claims they make – a collision of culture, technology, and self occurs – and a new breed of music consumerism emerges. It is an ever more complex “blending of the longing for individual statement and the simultaneous and opposite desire for group identification”¹⁴ – one that is navigated and mediated through mobile phones, not in isolation, but in the public eye.

It, then, is the ownership of the ‘correct’ type of mobile phone, the possession of the ‘right’ genres of music, and participation on the ‘approved’ social networking sites that show students and teenagers are “aware of the current fashion and that they are active in the creation and maintenance of their own identity.”¹⁵ For those who are too passive in this practice, the social consequences are much, much higher. When viewed through the lens of fashion, it becomes clear that the mobile phone and digital music have gone beyond simply being digital technologies and culture “to being a type of icon in the adolescent's pursuit of their own identity.”¹⁶ How successful that individual is at interpreting the current styles can be translated into the degree of influence that they have within the peer culture in which they participate.¹⁷

IV.

In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell tells a parable of the epidemic of teen smoking in America that occurred in the 1990s. What he observed at the time is that much of the efforts to stop smoking among teenagers had failed. Despite the measures taken to restrict and police cigarette advertising, raising the price of cigarettes, and running extensive public health campaigns through various media outlets to try educate teens about the dangers of smoking, they still smoked and in increasing numbers. “As any parent of a teenage child will tell you,” he says, “the essential contrariness of adolescents suggests that the more adults inveigh against smoking and its dangers, the more teens, paradoxically, will want to try it.”¹⁸ Sure enough, he argues, that’s exactly what happened.

"sharing in the emotional experience and expressive
language and rituals of adolescence..."

“Teenage smoking,” he writes, which is, perhaps, much like file-sharing, “is about being a teenager, about sharing in the emotional experience and expressive language and rituals of adolescence, which are impenetrable and irrational to outsiders…”¹⁹ What do the chances of getting cancer later in life or being sued for $150,000 per willful infringement of a downloaded track have in common? Well, in a study done in 2006, researchers concluded that “teens are more likely to ponder the risks, take longer in weighing the pros and cons of engaging in high-risk behavior than adults – and actually overestimate the risks.” The primary difference being that in these scenarios teenagers just “often decide the benefits – the immediate gratification or peer acceptance – outweigh the risks.”²⁰

Thus far, the recording industry has focused on shutting down the services and sites that facilitate file-sharing, and, then, even went as far as targeting and suing individuals in relation to file-sharing. “Which,” as Mark Earls, author of Herd, argues, “misses the point entirely, because we are not discrete, self-determining individuals; we do what we do largely because of our interaction with — and under the influence of — others.”²¹ College students and teenagers file-share, because everyone is file-sharing, and almost everyone, at their age, does it, because they too, are experimenting with their identities. “What we should be doing instead of fighting experimentation,” Gladwell says towards teen smoking, which also applies to file-sharing, “is making sure that experimentation doesn’t have serious consequences.”²²

Why file-sharing and new services like Spotify and Grooveshark appeal so deeply to college students and teenagers, perhaps, isn’t that big of a mystery. At a time of continuous influx in their lives, music becomes their only constant in a sea of change. “Given that individuals use music as a vehicle of self-expression,”²³ in a world where they are experimenting, exploring, and reinventing their identities, it should be of no surprise that they figured out a way around the set of rules that “clever people” in the record industry put in place in the physical world, because to them, such “rules” no longer make any sense in the digital world. Instead of acknowledging the nature of the next generation of consumers, they have simply denied college students and teenager’s access to a system that actually appeals to who they are and how they experiment with their identities.

Photo:

Sara Kiesling (@sarakiesling) is 24-year-old music photographer from Minneapolis, MN. She can be reached at: sarakieslingatgmaildotcom.

References:

1. Anderson, C. (2008). The Long tail. Hyperion Books.
2. Godin, S. (2008). Tribes. Portfolio Trade.
3. Anderson, C. (2009). Free. Hyperion.
4. Gasser, U. (2008). Born digital. Perseus Books Group.
5. Levitin, D. J. (2007). This is Your brain on music. Plume Books.
6. Schwartz, B. (2005). The Paradox of choice. Harper Perennial.
7. Malkiel, B. G. (2003). Naked economics. W. W. Norton & Company.
8. Charile Rose Interview with Steven Levitt
9. Wellman, B. (2003). The Social affordances of the internet for networked individualism.
10 -11. Donner, J., & Ling, R. (2009). Mobile communication. Polity Pr.
10.5 - 12. Rentfrow , P., McDonald , J., & Oldmeadow , J. (2009). You Are What You Listen To:Young People’s Stereotypes about Music Fans. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations , 12(3), 329–344 .
13. Levitin, D. J. (2007). This is Your brain on music. Plume Books.
14 -15. Ling, R. S. (2004). The Mobile connection. Morgan Kaufmann Pub.
16-17. Kraut, R., Brynin, M., & Kiesler, S. (2006). Computers, phones, and the internet: domesticating information technology. Oxford Univeristy Press.
17. Kraut, R., Brynin, M., & Kiesler, S. (2006). Computers, phones, and the internet: domesticating information technology. Oxford Univeristy Press.
18 -19. Gladwell, M. (2003). The Tipping point. Back Bay Books.
20. Why Teens Do Stupid Things
21. Earls, M. (2009). Herd. Wiley.
22. Gladwell, M. (2003). The Tipping point. Back Bay Books.
23. Rentfrow , P., McDonald , J., & Oldmeadow , J. (2009). You Are What You Listen To:Young People’s Stereotypes about Music Fans. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations , 12(3), 329–344 .