The Culture Of The Music Blog

by Rob Pearson on 13.11.08

It’s been just over seven years since this download culture started, with the injunction against the peer-to-peer program called Napster. Back then hardcore downloaders were considered almost enemies of the state for their alleged destruction of the music industry.

Well the music industry hasn’t been destroyed and is still going strong despite the moans from the big four labels that they’re losing out on the sale of around 80 million CDs.

This may sound like a huge amount of money, until you realise that it only equates to 0.7% of all sales (according to the Journal of Political Economy in 2002) Its only then that you can start to imagine just how much money these record labels take from their artists.

However it seems the culture of downloading music has changed again with the introduction of music blogs. Thousands if not millions of individual sites owned by people like me and you just talking about music.

What new songs are out, what they like, what they don’t like, just voicing their opinion like people have been doing online for years. The difference is now they’re uploading the tracks for everyone to hear and to download straight from their site.

Now there’s something very fishy about this, just a couple of years ago we were told that the Internet police were clamping down on these illegal downloads through these old style Napster-like programs such as KaZaA, iMesh and eMule, you couldn’t really miss it, it seemed to be all over the news every week, report after report about the dangers of downloading and the risk of prosecution from the mighty BPI.

The only tricky part for the authorities was that the very nature of these programs tried to hide who was uploading and downloading the songs… but on music blogs nowadays everything is out there in the open for everyone to see, and you can be tracked very easily by your IP address. So my question is very simple: Why on earth are the authorities turning a blind eye?!

You would think the Internet police would be having a whale of a time taking down all these blogs, and that it would be pretty hard to find a blog still going strong after experiencing the full force of the law. However after a few conversations with these bloggers the truth became clear.

“I’m just working for nothing for the labels, then getting grief if I don’t post something, this isn’t what I started blogging for.”

I was amazed! This blogger (who shall remain anonymous) seemed to be receiving the tracks from the record labels so that the general public could download them for free. Not only were the labels letting this happen, they were actually facilitating it!

He continues to say:
“Last year I was getting visited by the web sheriff and threatened with legal action etc, this year if I don’t post anything in a couple of days that a labels sent through they’re giving me grief about keeping the material for myself!!! You can’t win. I’m not stressed or anything, it’s just getting a bit much. We’re getting about 25+ e-mails a day.”

And this isn’t just one case, after speaking to several major blogs the same stories came flooding back. So it seems the tables have turned on so called illegal downloads, after seven years of fighting with people over downloading a few songs they have finally realised just how much more money there is to be made through the extra promotion on this trendy new medium all the kids are in to.

But what of all the people still downloading on the KaZaA, iMesh and eMule style programs? Are they still on the authorities wanted list? The truth is we just don’t know anymore, there doesn’t seem to be any more news stories on the theme.

It seems that while the record industry is making money from using the blogs, and more importantly, making money from the people who write them the Internet police have withdrawn from trying to sue downloaders.

One thing is for sure though, if the record labels stop making huge amounts of money, you just know its going to kick off all over again.

Rob Pearson’s Top 5 Music Blogs

Fried My Little Brain
friedmylittlebrain.com

Get Weird Turn Pro
getweird.wordpress.com

Datasapiens
blog.datasapiens.net

Noise Porn
Noiseporn.com

Earwigs & Wax
earwigsandwax.com