Study Suggests Music Industry Embrace Piracy 293
unassimilatible writes to tell us that according to the Financial Times, the music industry should embrace illegal file-sharing websites. A recent study of the recent Radiohead album release found that huge numbers of illegal downloads actually helped the band's popularity and, by extension, concert ticket sales. "Radiohead's release of In Rainbows on a pay-what-you-want basis last October generated enormous traffic to the band's own website and intense speculation about how much fans had paid. He urged record companies to study the outcome and accept that file-sharing sites were here to stay. 'It's time to stop swimming against the tide of what people want,' he said." Update 19:46 GMT by SM: Several readers (including the original author) have written in to mention that it isn't stressed enough that this study was engaged by the music industry itself, making the findings that much more interesting. Take that as you will.
BRB (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What "study"? (Score:5, Funny)
I definitely agree. It's problematic to try and draw any sort of industry-wide lesson from the experiences of an already enormously popular, wildly successful band like Radiohead. It's like saying U2 benefits from file sharing. Shit, Bono could fart into a harmonica and they'd sell a million copies.
Re:What "study"? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, that explains How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb...