sxsw2008 How Piracy Will Save the Music Industry

March 23, 2008 · Leave a Comment

Piracy can no longer be thought of as a nuisance. It is the paradigm through which people obtain music. This panel will discuss specific tactics on how piracy can be harnessed to our advantage and why it is a positive thing for the music industry.

Jason Schwartz Prod Mgr, Angelsoft Randy Saaf CEO, MediaDefender Inc I was one of the few people who didn’t make it to Jane McGonigal’s keynote, which sounds like it was excellent. But, I thought this panel might have some insightful parallels to publishing. Especially as recently there has been a lot of talk about piracy increasing the sales of books. The panel consisted of two guys who took very different approaches to piracy online. One worked for a company who, together with record labels, promoted bands by seeding albums on torrent sites. The other, who also worked in conjunction with labels, spent his time filling torrent sites with as many corrupt files as possible in an attempt to bury any actual pirated material. Jason Schwartz from Angelsoft explained how piracy can be a positive marketing tool:

When seeding content you can track the number of downloads but also geographic data. Every IP address is logged. That information is then used strategically to plan tours etc.
They are using piracy channels to distribute music freely.

Randy Saaf from Mediaedge really only had one point:

Piracy is stealing. We want people to buy music legally instead and hopefully if we make it harder to find people will.
He was behind the Madonna campaign to try and get one up on pirates.

I suspect Randy is fighting a losing battle. People will just find other ways and different channels to distribute pirated content. The guy did get a bit of a hard time at the panel. But I was really interested in the idea of piracy as a valid marketing device. I initially thought that no publisher would be willing to experiment with this, in my experience agents are wary of putting a few sample chapters online, so going the whole hog and encouraging piracy probably wouldn’t be met with a favourable response. But I was pleasantly surprised to read via Teleread that No Starch Press is using P2P sites to distribute a couple of their titles. They then hope that people who like will buy the pbook. Teleread also has an article suggesting that ebook publishers could use file sharing sites to their advantage.

Publishers are finally coming round to the idea that distributing entire copies of books online increases physical sales. Tor has been offering an ebook a week for download in the run up to the relaunch of their new site. And real proper ebooks, DRM-free, not just the entire book in a flash file nonsense which other publishers have been offering. But at least HarperCollins are recognising that offering the entire book online is not a bad thing. Publishers know that obscurity is the bigger threat, not piracy. And some authors aren’t in favour of stamping out piracy. But major publishers using it as part of their marketing activities? Now that I’d like to see.

Categories: sxsw2008
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