Music Industry - Online Age - Has the music piracy battle been won?

Has the music piracy battle been won?
Read full article here (from wired.co.uk)

Extract:
But they [the stats] show that very few people, proportionally, are interested in downloading music files, despite the BPI chief Geoff Taylor's recent claims (PDF link) that "the enormous scale of the piracy problem shows no signs of abating".

Music set the foundations for the current filesharing community -- it's what made the likes of Napster, Kazaa and Limewire so big in the first place. At the start of the 00s, you couldn't move for websites offering as much music as you could listen to for absolutely nothing.

For a while, the major record labels didn't notice -- people were still buying CDs, so it was less of an issue. But then they stopped, and all hell broke loose -- the major labels poured what was left of their rapidly-dwindling cash into their legal departments and the anti-piracy efforts co-ordinated by trade bodies like the BPI, RIAA and the IFPI.
[...]
In fact, what's more likely to have been the cause for the decline in music filesharing is the glut of good, legal, music services that have emerged in that time. The likes of iTunes and Amazon MP3 made it simply and easy to get music onto portable music players and mobile phones, and companies like Spotify and Last.fm proved that sharing free music isn't something to be feared -- it's to be encouraged, and it can be monetised.

With the evidence showing that pirates are the music industry's most valuable customers, and all the barriers to digital content nirvana having been removed by innovative technology companies and record companies that are willing to license more freely, is it really any surprise that music piracy is far less of a problem than it once was?

The State of the INternet Infograhic -great info at a glance

Created by: Online Schools

From Online Schools website

Joanna Yeates disappearance generates massive hunt on Facebook

Networking sites used to spread pictures and appeals in bid to find answers to missing architect's whereabouts
Whole story here.

Radio Industry + Online Age

More than 8m Britons have downloaded podcasts
Rajar research also finds 6.6 million have listened to radio on smartphones, with many downloading dedicated apps
Read article here.

One to follow for A2 students - Untangling the web with Aleks Krotoski

This is really interesting stuff to find out about We Media and Media in the Online Age.
Untangling the web with Aleks Krotoski

About this series:
How has the most revolutionary innovation of our time - the internet - transformed our world? What does it mean for the modern family? How has it changed our concepts of privacy? Of celebrity? Of love, sex and hate?

Recent topics:
Hate and the internet
Does the internet encourage insidious and bullying behaviour? Aleks Krotoski investigates

The internet's cyber radicals: heroes of the web changing the world.
A generation of political activists have been transformed by new tools developed on the internet. Here, a leading net commentator profiles seven young radicals from around the world

A2 Media in the Online Age - 3 articles

Generation Wiki's web savvy - Institutions have yet to catch up with net natives' instinct both for sharing information and guarding their own privacy
Read article here

Facebook's 2010 trends: 'HMU', Wagner and global disasters. Another day, another end of year list – Facebook unveils most popular status updates of 2010
Read article here

Twitter's 2010 trends: From the Gulf oil spill to Psychic Paul
Read article here

Mapping Facebook friends

Mapping facebook friends: how they did it

How the internet really affected the election - Guardian.co.uk

A very interesting article, particularly for A2 students, since it is an interesting case study for your Critical Perspectives - Media in the Online Age unit
How the internet really affected the election