Wednesday, June 07, 2006

AllOfMP3.com

To my mind the most interesting thing about the BPI's latest bete noire, AllOfMP3.com, is not its alleged illegality but the way in which it has effectively demonstrated the commercial viability of DRM-free downloads and inadvertently test-driven a new business model for a largely reactionary and unreceptive record industry.

AllOfMP3.com has demonstrated what most of us already suspected; that people will happily pay for MP3s (which they could acquire for free from friends or illegal P2P networks) if the service is good and the price is low enough. The site has also challenged received wisdom about viable business models in the music download space, by charging by volume of data downloaded, rather than per track or monthly subscription.

Sadly, I suspect the major record labels will be too fixated on legal action to learn any lessons from AllOfMP3.com about future music distribution models, which, in the words of Miss Shirley Bassey, is all just a little bit of history repeating...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fully agree. Once again the music industry refuses to learn any lessons...

To update the quotation from Brecht: only an amateur thief engages in file sharing, the real professional founds a record label. ;)

Anonymous said...

There are many internationally based web sites like Allofmp3 which offers music download service, and are continually coming under pressure from other countries to shut down. i know more 19 store or service that provides the best digital music experience at lens http://www.squidoo.com/review_russianmp3site