The Chumbawamba Factor

putko writes "Chris Dahlen has written about BigChampagne, a company that looks at peer-to-peer downloading to provide marketing data to record companies. By analyzing what folks are downloading, when and where, BigChampagne can tell the record companies what people like, what other records they like and other information critical to deciding how to allocate marketing dollars. As mentioned in the article, record companies started using this information (secretly) even as they were trying to stop filesharing via the courts."

Comments

The large music companies are dinosaurs

[stefanlasiewski]

You can clearly see that BigChampagne is only looking from a mainstream perspective. From their limited point of view, Chumbawamba is a "one-time punk band".

Reality is far different-- Chumbawamba is one of the most successful punk bands in existance. They've been around for 25 years, released 20 albums & EPs, individual members released another 20 or more and have one of the largest followings of any non-mainstream bands. Their styles range from English Rebel Songs from 1381 to their modern pop-punk hits.

BigChampagne makes the same mistake as the big record companies-- they only look at the most popular bands, and are completely ignorant about the success of smaller bands and smaller labels.

The small band segment of the music industry is growing, and the mainstream music industry seems to be shrinking -- they keep complaining about reduced sales every year.

They are a dinosaur.