We’ve dropped Radiohead’s name several times while discussing the future of… No, let’s face it. The present of the music industry, and how sharing affects consumption. But after a slumber party with a painfully uninformed Lily Allen, there’s now a taped interview making the rounds in which Ed O’Brien suggests, outside the offices of PRS For Music, that throttling the bandwidth of file sharers may be the answer to the big Problem, a “compromise” between doing nothing at all and cutting off internet connections.
It’s retarded.
First of all, Lily Allen is parroting talking points fed to her by an industry that funded its own most damning counter-argument. We now know that many in the industry know that file sharing is better than just good for business, but the very blood in its veins. We have empirical proof of this. Yet some still cling to old dreams in which the music industry survives, let alone thrives, when no one can listen to music without paying for it first.
Second, bandwidth throttling is only slightly less futile than cutting off connections. And it will never happen. At least not here in the US, and not likely in the UK or Europe either. As Sweden’s ISPs learned the hard way, crippling service to the most demanding customers is kinda like McDonald’s taking the meat out of fat people’s burgers. It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out how that one would turn out.
About Skwerl
Kevin "Skwerl" Cogill was taught his first computer programming language by his Mother's marijuana dealer at age ten. His first job involved hustling TicketMaster lines on behalf of a New Jersey concert ticket broker at age fourteen, followed by a job in graphic design shortly after graduating high school and trade school simultaneously in 1998. He built his first website in 1996 or so, and continues to do things the way they should be done, rather than the way everyone else does. He's a bit of an asshole, but he's fiercely loyal to fellow fans of good music.
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Skwerl now resides in Los Angeles.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:23 PM
Cool interview. I know for a fact that creating bandwidth limitations would affect my downloading.
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But you know what would affect my decision to purchase a record? If it was actually good perhaps. I haven’t bought a new record since Alice In Chains’ latest…which for me is a long time….because there is nothing catching my attention right now.
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Though Nov. 17 I will be in the record shop at 9AM to buy the TCV album…that is something to be excited about.
November 7th, 2009 at 10:37 AM
Damn right.
November 9th, 2009 at 4:08 PM
The Recording Industry, it can be argued, is finally getting what it deserves. I agree with Rory. I would buy records if they were good, but unfortunately, a lot of what is served is rubbish. I download music, have a listen, and if it’s really good, buy the record. If it’s crap, I don’t listen again. Simple. I just don’t want to be forced to buy a record just to hear it (although you could argue that record stores have listening booths – but how much longer will that animal be around for, thanks to iTunes and the like?).