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Recording Industry's Unexpected Benefit from P2P

Posted by Cliff on from the having-their-cake-and-eating-it-too dept.

Matthew Schultheis writes: "Yahoo / AP is reporting that the record industry is using the files traded on Kazza et al. to track where music is popular. It turns out that they even pay for this information. 'It's the most vast and scalable sample audience that the world has ever seen'" Now if they could only use this data to somehow put out better music...

22 of 335 comments (clear)

  1. In other news by BlackCobra43 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Razor-sharp irony kills 3, wounds 25.

    --
    I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
  2. Eh? by DeadHateMachine · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So they are sueing us for downloading but yet useing the stats of our downloads? Sounds hypocritical to me.. This really goes to show you that corperations and selfish organizations will stop at nothing to make a profit.

    --
    -Here we are now, Entertain us.
    1. Re:Eh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Eh? That is what corporations are supposed to do.

    2. Re:Eh? by spacecowboy420 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You make it sound like selfishness is not a virtue. What drives the world? Certainly not solidarity.

      Selfishness is a character flaw, not a virtue. Unfortunately, it is also human nature. If not for selfishness and greed, we could have a true altruistic society; one where everyone worked for the good of the community instead of themselves. In other words, selfishness is why communism is only good on paper.

      --
      ymmv
  3. hmm... by Hi_2k · · Score: 5, Funny

    We could abuse this: Everyone, start sharing plenty of Polka, 80's pop, and Barney. Now lets talk about targeted marketing!

    --
    When life gives you crap, Make Crapade.
    Sluggy Freelance.
  4. Ironic... by danielrm26 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So they treat it like it's a child porn network in their PR statements and then turn around and find a way to make money off it.

    That's big business for you.

    --
    dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
    1. Re:Ironic... by fleener · · Score: 4, Funny

      Evidently the concept of irony is not lost on most /.ers. I have seen like 5 posts that look identical to mine in the last minute. :)

  5. You mean... by Fnkmaster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    P2P is just like radio, only the people actually listen to music they _like_ instead of shit that the stations are payed to pimp out as top 40? Fucking amazing. These guys are geniuses.

    1. Re:You mean... by paulthomas · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Oddly enough it serves as a mere extension of corporate radio's long arm. How do you discover new music on P2P? Geeks may know about things like iRate Radio, but your average P2P user is going to download the trash that the radio tells them to like. And next, listen to this new Madonna/Britney smash hit! -Paul

  6. hmmm.... by Smitty825 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Where have we seen this before?

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    Doh!
  7. Benefitting from a crime... by SUB7IME · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have absolutely no legal background (that statement goes way beyond IANAL), but I'm sort of thinking that benefitting from a crime must be illegal. If the RIAA considers filetrading (of their copyrighted files) to be illegal, and the legal system agrees, then nobody should be using that data to then profit.

    (Just as we do not, for ethical reasons, use information that the Nazis gleaned from their experimentation on the Jews in World War II. Clearly the magnitude is nowhere near the same, but the underlying ethical principle is similar.)

    1. Re:Benefitting from a crime... by DarkSarin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You are mistaken in one thing though--we DO use the information the nazis gleaned from their experimentation. Sorry to bust your bubble, but they made vast advances in the medical fields with their very unethical methods that would take us much longer today.

      DON'T get me wrong, though. I AM IN NO WAY ADVOCATING, CONDONING OR APPROVING OF, what the nazis did, their methods, or of utilizing such procedures. It is one of the most dispicable acts in the history of mankind. Nevertheless, it is a fact that society uses the information they obtained through these methods.

      This is not an uncommon situation. In psychology there are a LOT of classic expirements that would not be performed now due to ethical concerns. That in NO WAY limits the usefulness of that information or the fact that is has been used as the basis for a lot of theoretical framework. An example would be the researcher at John Hopkins Medical Center who conditioned a young child to be very phobic of anything that was white and fluffy. Such experiments are not ethical, but much of what we know about phobias and treating them is a result of his research.

      Flame me if you wish, but we DO use information gathered in an unethical manner frequently--as long as it is regarded as accurate, which the data gathered by the nazis is. They were, if nothing else good can be said, very methodical in their research.

      Once again, I DO NOT CONDONE WHAT THEY DID.

      --
      "We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
    2. Re:Benefitting from a crime... by mantera · · Score: 5, Interesting


      i don't know why you feel you have to clarify time and again that you do not condone or approve or whatever... the nazis were a product of a situation and an era... the "final solution" if such a thing existed was a result of the age of reason that saw such a course of action as rational... the catholic church and pope weren't even vocal enough about it... now some people continue to deny much of the atrocities and say they were grossly exagerated... i don't know about that, maybe, maybe not... but i know one thing... losers tend to be vilified and winners write history books...

      Just consider for example the Tuskegee Syphilis experiments; google for it... For forty years between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) conducted an experiment on 399 illiterate black men who were lied to and a disease such as syphilis was deliberately allowed to take its awful course on them without treatment. here

      While you're at it you might wanna also google for the CIA mind control experiments during the cold war... they experimented on soldiers and mental patients, gave them high doses of drugs, hundreds of electric shock treatments per individual within a few days... and stuff like that...

      most importantly, had you or the person you responded to been living in nazi germany, you would've probably done the same. Just see the Milgram experiments ... google for them if you don't trust the source

      don't exonerate yourself; given the situation, we're all guilty

  8. Why doesn't an enterprising label..... by ShatteredDream · · Score: 4, Interesting

    work on creating a community site where bands can pay $5-$10 a business quarter to be listed with samples that can be streamed, that connects the bands to venues for say..... 5% of the proceeds and that lets users post comments about the band and rate their music? Then said label gets out of the old business of being a content producer and a service company for musicians providing them everything from merchandising to recording studios to instruments to music software? Basically become a service/product Walmart for musicians and fans as opposed to the current model of milking bands for records.

    --
    Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
  9. Optimistic Aren't You? by femto · · Score: 5, Insightful
    > Now if they could only use this data to somehow put out better music...

    Naah. They'll use it to reduce the quality of the music down to the 'most efficient level', whereby the quality of the music is just above the level at which it stops selling.

  10. Kazza? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Be careful how you spell it, Kazza is a recording industry frontend where you fill a form with your name and e-mail address. You probably mean Kazaa.

  11. the better article by noah_fense · · Score: 4, Informative


    has been around for a little while . . .

    http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.10/fileshare .html

  12. Yo, to all of you Alanis' out there... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Stop telling us how ironic this is. It's not. It's just fsckin' sad.

  13. it's really not that hypocritical by nudicle · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Guys, I'm on the anti-riaa, etc boat with you guys but I don't think it's that hypocritical. The music industry currently finds itself in a world in which there's massive p2p going on. If it can keep the control it once had (eg win the legal war or develop some effective technical self-help), well, then it sees that as the best. So we have the lawsuits and the DRM attempts.

    But then there's also the first part of the above sentence -- the world as it is now features p2p and music sharing. Even if this isn't the world as they want it, they need to figure out how to exploit it as best they can. Hence, makethe most of (from their perspective) a bad situation, and mine p2p for some useful data.

    They're trying to maximize their profits. If there's money to be made scouring p2p data then they'll buy the research, but just because they are scavenging some benefit out of it doesn't make it hypocritical for them to want it to go away .. it just makes them pragmatic.

  14. Read this carefully... by Entropy248 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "When someone plops down 99 cents to buy a single, that shows a higher level of interest than just getting it for free," Welt said.

    As any 1st year marketing major could tell you, this data will not be as useful as one might imagine. Knowing who wants a product (in this case, a CD) in no way relates to knowing who is willing to pay for a product. Some consumers want Ferraris; not all of them will buy one (for reasons of Price). Without a clear way of associating user names with demographic or psychographic data, this will not even help to more clearly define the target audience for an artist. All this data represents is the number of computer literate people who are actively sharing a song; this may or may not be related to whether they actually enjoy the song; this may or may not be related to whether they would/could pay for the song; this may or may not be related to the fake files that are being posted on KaZaa (that song's popular? Shove a couple thousand fakes online; discourage lots of people). Move along people, nothing to see here...

    --
    Webmaster Wanted - Entropic Reactions
  15. Piracy is not the reason. by rice_burners_suck · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Well, as you can see, the file trading networks aren't all bad-news to the poor artists, like the RIAA would have you believe. But then, some people are aware of the real reason that the RIAA wants to kill filesharing, and it's not piracy.

    What? Not piracy? Then why in the world would they want to kill a system that is so beneficial to them?

    Because of a problem that they consider bigger than piracy: The growing number of independant artists, many of whom are becoming increasingly popular. Yes, that's right folks. The RIAA doesn't want to protect its poor artists from the piracy that is putting them in the poorhouse. On the contrary, the RIAA is the one putting its poor artists in the poorhouse. No, no, no, folks. The RIAA is doing this to take business away from the artists that the RIAA is incapable of putting in the poorhouse, because it is incapable of stealing their money, because they didn't sign their soul over to the RIAA.

    That, my friends, is why the RIAA wants to kill filesharing.

  16. Given the great number of ... by SiliBelgian · · Score: 4, Funny

    people who share their entire hard disk on Kazaa, this could result in the production of the Biggest Hit Song of All Times...

    The name would be somewhat like explorer.exe...

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    "Hell hath no fury like a hippo with a machine gun."