Kazaa Launches Legitimacy Campaign

Beolach writes "The Washington Post has an article on Kazaa launching a $1 million advertising campaign promoting itself as a legitimate media distribution tool. From the article: 'The campaign is the latest push by the Kazaa file-sharing service and its parent company, Sharman Networks, to counter a multi-million-dollar legal and lobbying effort launched by music, software and movie firms convinced that peer-to-peer (P2P) services are a major source of online piracy'."

Comments

Like Tobacco

[Davak]

I love kazaa. And I think this approach will help... Kazaa needs to highlight it's "other" uses...

however, many people will see this as I see the tobacco companies offering anti-smoking advice/commericals?

Public appearance is everything.

Re:Show me the money ...

[shark72]

"First off, since they give Kazaa away, where is the money for the ad campaign coming from?"

Ad revenue, of course. Kazaa is a for-profit business. Like a web site, they provide a medium and then sell ad space on it. Kazaa usage is down, and this means ad revenue is down. They are (rightfully so, as any business should be) alarmed about this. One thing which may have them concerned is the relative success of the legitimate download services.

When this ad campaign was reported on news.com three days ago, the news.com article covered a point which the above glossed over: Kazaa has been going to the record companies for a while now, trying to work a deal with them. Kazaa wants to morph itself into a legitimate distribution network by partnering with the big record companies, or (as I believe they fear) they will be squeezed out by the iTMSes and Napsters of the world, lose that critical mass of users and -- this is the important part -- will not be able to get the ad revenue they have in the past. Said record companies have, so far, replied with something that rhymes with "duck shoe," and this ad campaign is an attempt to start a grass roots effort to get the record companies to change their minds.

So, Kazaa and a typical record company have a few things in common:

• Seeing lost revenue
• Concerned about their business model
• Using public-awareness campaigns to get their side of the story across
• Slowly trying to change their business model
• Don't pay artists as well as slashdotters would like (ignore this one if you're a slashdotter who's in the "artists get paid TOO much" camp)

"Secondly, if the MPAA & RIAA are both doing so badly, where are all the broke movie and music superstars?"

It's not the superstars you have to worry about; it's the folks more like you and me, but who happen to work in the entertainment industry. Tower Records is in serious trouble and has reportedly asked Kazaa to buy them out. Record companies are hurting and consolidating -- the Sony-BMG merger could mean thousands of people laid off and dozens of artists dropped. But before anybody dances with glee over the artists being dropped... it won't be the Madonnas and Britneys that will be dropped. More likely it will be the more marginally profitable acts. Some of them may be hard working, just like you and me, and not superstars worthy of contempt because they have too much money. This is just a guess, though.