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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...

9 of 335 comments (clear)

  1. 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.
  2. 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

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

    Where have we seen this before?

    --

    Doh!
  4. 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 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

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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