Official Ares Free Download

p2pnet news view | P2P | Music:- A popular corporate music industry argument is: every time someone shares a song with someone else,  it’s exactly the same as though the alleged ‘criminal’ had walked into a shop and stolen a CD off the shelf.

The assertion is about as accurate as claims that Big Music gives a damn about the musicians who depend on them, or the fans who keep both groups alive and in business.

But now,”People who illegally download music from the internet also spend more money on music than anyone else,” says a new poll of 1,000 people between 16 and 50 from UK think-tank Demos.

Quoted in the Independent today, it goes on those who “admit illegally downloading music spent an average of £77 a year on music – £33 more than those who claim that they never download music dishonestly”.

This suggests “plans by the Secretary of State for Business, Peter Mandelson, to crack down on illegal downloaders by threatening to cut their internet connections with a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ rule could harm the music industry by punishing its core customers”.

Artists Lily Allen and James Blunt “recently voiced support for the Government plans,” says the Daily Mail.

They did indeed, leading directly to creation of a2f2a.com, a unique new site with UK artist Billy Bragg as a co-founder.

Its goal is to put fans together wth artist, and vice versa, under the tenet, “Artists need to be paid, and fans want to pay them”.

Meanwhile, the survey, “also revealed nearly two thirds of file sharers said new and cheaper music services would encourage them to stop accessing illegal services,” says the Daily Mail, adding,  “It found that by lowering the price of music available online to 45p per track – compared to between 59p and 99p on iTunes – providers could expect to double interest in legal sales.

“Eight-three per cent of people downloading music illegally said they buy more music as a result, while 42 per cent said they did so to ‘try before you buy’.”

Net users are file sharers … plain and simple

This is being heralded as news, but in fact  members of the online P2P communities have known this for years.

And there’s another facet rarely discussed by the mainstream media, but which we can confidently expect to see highlighted in other ‘new’ poll results.

As the likes of Arctic Monkeys and others discovered, and are still discovering, the Net is the 21st digital century way to make your name not only online, but off.

“The Sheffield rock band the Arctic Monkeys release their first fully marketed single today but the group has already built a hugely devoted following by becoming one of the first to harness the power of the internet to reach young fans,” said the Guardian when the band first went mainstream.

It played to 2,000 fans at a sold-out London Astoria, “with touts asking up to £100 a ticket,” said the story, and, the speed with which they band developed a “large and committed fanbase” was attributed to the, “viral marketing effect of the internet, with fans swapping tracks with one another with the blessing of the group,” the story adds.

The fact the Monkeys went on to shit on the people who’d boosted them to fame is incidental.

It’s called viral marketing and as Paul Walker points out in Business Wealth Reviews, “There are probably ten million people online, looking for downloads at any given time.”

He goes on »»»

People like using file services to download music for two simple reasons, they’re free, and there is an incredible selection. The fact is Pandora’s Box has been opened. In Napster’s wake, other quasi-legal services quickly emerged … a lot of them. Even if they are closed, others will succeed them.

Major record companies would like to thing otherwise but they are never going to stop file sharing. Net users are file sharers … plain and simple. Long before the Internet came into being, people made cassette tapes of their favorite music for their friends … cd burners are so much easier and faster.

So how can you use this to help your viral marketing campaign along? Think about this. Once someone downloads your MP3 files and those files are available on that listener’s hard drive, viral marketing begins. After two users start sharing your files, suddenly, your music is on the hard drive of a second computer…then a third… and on and on. When users are searching and they find your music on a lot of different computers, they are more likely to download the files. It’s just a matter of time before you’ll find your files showing up in more and more places.

No matter what genre music you play … Rock and Roll, Country, Tejano, Mozart sonatas, Heavy Metal, of Brazilian Jazz, there is an audience for it somewhere.

In this new paradigm, you aren’t hawking a product, you are offering free music via a medium that lets you be directly connected with your audience.

However, the Big 4 2009  marketing plan isn’t woo customers.

It’s sue them.

And spearheading the attack against music lovers and, by default, against musicians, are the likes of Peter Mandelson.

Stay tuned.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

Follow p2pnet on Twitter.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Guardian- Arctic Monkeys climbing high – thanks to the net, October 17, 2005
shit on the people – Arctic Monkeys slags file sharers, April 5, 2007
Independent – Illegal downloaders ’spend the most on music’, says poll, November 1, 2009
Daily Mail - Illegal downloaders spend MORE on music than those who obey the law, November 1, 2009
spearheading the attack – UK Three Strikes plan too costly: ISPs, November 1, 2009

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