Peter Bradwell
Researcher
Peter Bradwell is a researcher at Demos. He is interested in digital identity, technology and the ways that information and knowledge is shared...
at 11:27am
on Wednesday, 30th August 2006
So Universal has signed up to the incoming download site SpiralFrog - which promises to offer free music and rely instead on advertising for revenue. For those of us who see the big-players of the music industry's reaction to digital music as the example of industry fudging the promise of new technologies, this might come as a surprise.
But I suspect that amidst the extraordinary publicity the news has generated, we might miss an important distinction that unlocks some questions that are rather more interesting than whether we can get free Razorlight tracks.
There's a distinction between monetising sites though innovative adverstising models - and thereby potentially offering free music - and embracing the potential that network technologies offer for decentralised music distribution. The contraction of the gap between production and consumption promises to disrupt the linear industry model that characterise people as consumers of music more than producers of culture. Mix-tapes, Minidiscs, Cd-rs, radio- and mp3-blogs, Limewire, Soulseek - these are means of communicating with others in ways different to industry-led channels.
I'd like to see whether this move is accompanied by a shift in Universal's attitude to Digital Rights Management, to file-sharing networks, and to copyright more broadly.
I Googled (conducted a Google search?!) and found SpiralFrog's del.icio.us page. Oddly, it only has two links at the moment - one to Universal, the other to the American Federation of Musician's stance on online music piracy. Combined with stories like this, I wonder whether anything really significant is happening at all.
DownhillBattle always have more information about this area than I could give you. (They're the same people responsible for the excellent Democracy internet TV player.)
But I suspect that amidst the extraordinary publicity the news has generated, we might miss an important distinction that unlocks some questions that are rather more interesting than whether we can get free Razorlight tracks.
There's a distinction between monetising sites though innovative adverstising models - and thereby potentially offering free music - and embracing the potential that network technologies offer for decentralised music distribution. The contraction of the gap between production and consumption promises to disrupt the linear industry model that characterise people as consumers of music more than producers of culture. Mix-tapes, Minidiscs, Cd-rs, radio- and mp3-blogs, Limewire, Soulseek - these are means of communicating with others in ways different to industry-led channels.
I'd like to see whether this move is accompanied by a shift in Universal's attitude to Digital Rights Management, to file-sharing networks, and to copyright more broadly.
I Googled (conducted a Google search?!) and found SpiralFrog's del.icio.us page. Oddly, it only has two links at the moment - one to Universal, the other to the American Federation of Musician's stance on online music piracy. Combined with stories like this, I wonder whether anything really significant is happening at all.
DownhillBattle always have more information about this area than I could give you. (They're the same people responsible for the excellent Democracy internet TV player.)
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