The recent court verdict regarding Pirate Bay makes me wonder if it will make any difference to the download world, this also begs a new question, whether illegal file downloads are actually damaging to the music industry like the major labels would have you believe.

I don’t think I know one person who doesn’t own some music downloaded via P2P or torrent, it has become a normal part of life for a whole generation and will only increase even though the authorities are frantically trying to strike the fear of god into people.  The Pirate Bay verdict is in my opinion futile, there are an infinite number of torrent sites offering the same services as Pirate Bay, all this recent verdict and any future verdicts will do is force change within the download community.  For example before torrent there was Peer 2 Peer, and after torrent there will be something else and so the cycle will go on.

At the heart of all this is the music labels fear of users getting MP3s for free, but hasn’t that always been the way of things, from vinyl to tape, Mini-Disc to CD  there has always and will always be a way to copy and share; what is it that makes the industry assume illegal MP3 downloads will suddenly put them out of business.  The industry lays blame for the drop in revenue on download culture but surely it could be simply that media is just more accessible and cheaper than ever before, even if downloads have increased I don’t believe for one minute that would stop people purchasing music they really like; there is just something more human about wanting to own the music you really like.

I mean, am i missing something , surely MP3 downloads are only making music more accessible? If music is more accessible then you can hear a wider range and if you can hear a wider range then I believe the user is likely to buy more music not less.  In my late teens I would purchase an album every few months, Cd’s were expensive back in the day and I wanted enough cash left to go and get blitzed at the weekend!  These days I purchase music monthly and instead of having the weekend to worry about I have a house, 3 kids and car to maintain which are not cheap, yet I purchase more regularly, the music business is missing the point I think.

The internet has always offered things for free, google are a prime example of how giving users something they want for free can make you money (they are after all one of the richest companies in the world!), and in recent years a number of bands have chosen to give fans the option to put a price on what they feel the music is worth, immediately you would expect that to be a mistake but Radio Head were said to have made more money on their recent album than their previous offering, surprising?, no not really, if you offer something for a low price then interest will be considerably bigger. A good example of offering music for free is spotify where you can listen to music through there website, although you cannot download the music to own, but you just never know what may happen.

If the authorities and industry fail to realise that free isn’t always a negative then I will start to worry for the Internet, the ethos of the web has always been the free communication and sharing of information between people, to try and control this would be to change it for ever and that will be the worst crime of all.  I am not saying that illegal downloading is right but maybe there is something in the idea of free downloads that could be controlled by the music labels, and maybe, just maybe it would increase sales and restore people’s faith in the music business.