Wesley Verhoeve

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Fans Would Love To Pay For Music (Or The Tale Of The Reluctant Pirate)

Fred Wilson recently wrote about his experience as a loyal and paying cable TV basketball viewer, and how a lack of options has driven him to consume the pirated product instead. A customer more than willing to pay is being turned away because the product isn’t made available in a customer friendly and convenient manner? Hmm that sounds familiar. Replace “cable tv” with “music industry” and read Fred’s post or the quote below:

“I’ve long believed that piracy is largely a business model problem not a human behavior problem. If you give people a legal way to consume the content they want, they will pay for it. But when you make it impossible to legally consume the content they want, they will pirate it.”

Fred hits the nail on the head and identifies exactly what went wrong with the music business as well. Every customer knows this to be inherently true. If you don’t believe that, just look at the numbers. In countries where legal streaming was launched and allowed to prosper, like Sweden, illegal downloads are way down. We might not be happy about the drastic reduction in income when customers move to streaming, but that doesn’t change the actual point of this argument. And it doesn’t mean we should drive customers to piracy. If we provide a convenient and affordable alternative to illegal consumption, customers will pay for our products. And sure there will always be some that will refuse to pay, but that was no different before. The grand majority will pay if we make it possible for them to do so. It is our challenge as an industry to figure out how to best execute this, and not the fan’s challenge as a customer. So let us stop complaining, let us stop blaming customers, and lets get this right in 2012. We’re not the victim unless we choose to be.

Related Reading:

  • The Benefits of Streaming (Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (read)
  • The New Way Of Consuming Music (Or A Dollar Less To Rihanna Means A Dollar More To Tegan And Sara) (read)
  • The Best Does Not Always Win (Or Why Spotify Will Beat Rdio) (read)
  • Music On The Move (Or How We Listen) (read)
  • The Importance Of Free Music (Or Give ‘Em A Taste First) (read)
  • Digital Retailers, Revenue Per Song (read)

13 Comments | Music Business | , , , | 01.05.12.

  • http://www.facebook.com/wraldpyk Rene Pot

    A perfect view on the world. That’s exactly how it works. The music industry doesn’t want to see it this way (some exceptions here and there). They believe their policy they have been using for decades still works, because it used to work. It’s like you also wrote some time ago,if you give away free music, they will buy it. Like you did when you gave me the Pearl and the Beard CD. I bought the second one!

  • David

    Not convinced. Could you give some examples of music that cannot be obtained legally at affordable prices?  In my experience, the vast majority of music I am interested in can be obtained as individual downloads for about a dollar from iTunes or Amazon.  Is a dollar not ‘affordable’? 

    • http://wesleyverhoeve.com Wesley Verhoeve

      David, if we make “convenience” and “affordable” the criteria instead of merely “affordable”, we’ll see that the original decade long run of digital music sales fell short from a customer point of view. DRM, limited freedom of use, lack of ways to engage in legal social sharing (like streaming allows), lack of metadata standards, etc. Illegally downloading a zip file provided a more pleasant experience than legally downloading, for a long time. We’re turning it around right now.

      • David

        I accept that, up to a point, but it is a far cry from claiming that it is ‘impossible’ to obtain music legally.  Against the convenience of illegal downloading should also be set the very real risk of being infected with malware.

        • http://wesleyverhoeve.com Wesley Verhoeve

          David, impossible was certainly never invoked. “Inconvenient” and price issues are together really the core.

          As far as malware goes, I’ve never heard any of my friends complain about that, nor have I ever experienced that, but of course that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. I just think it’s not as big of a problem as the difficulty and inconvenience of the past digital business models, otherwise we would’ve seen a decline, not a massive increase, over the years.

          Thanks for your view on these things! I appreciate it.

        • http://twitter.com/michaelsb Michael Brandvold

          Not impossible, but can be difficult when it is music controlled by a label. A fair price and the ability to buy it when you want it (like all products) will help users to buy. Time is money and my time is worth $10 if I can get any music I want
          now and not have some business tell me no we won’t take your money because you live in the US, or the UK or name any country. How can any business survive with that sort of model? The moment that happens the user is being driven to steal the music. They still want the music now, but now the only option is illegal download.

          I also agree that the threat of malware is small. I don’t know anyone infected from a illegal download. Watching a stupid video on Facebook yes, but not a download.

          • http://wesleyverhoeve.com Wesley Verhoeve

            BTW Michael, read your post and this resonated with me:

            “The album was released overseas earlier this year. I don’t want to buy the cd and pay for shipping and wait, I want the music now and I want to pay for it.”

            This is why at Family Records we sell all physical albums with an automatic instant digital download.

  • http://twitter.com/michaelsb Michael Brandvold

    I agree and wrote something to that point late last year, http://michaelbrandvold.com/blog/2011/10/why-can-it-be-so-difficult-to-buy-music/ As a fan looking to buy music and hitting roadblocks that prevented me from paying it would have been very easy to steal the music I wanted. I have since heard from fans around the world who experience the same frustration. We want to support bands we love, but often we are told no you can’t buy their music because you live in the wrong country. No you can’t buy the music because we are not releasing the album in your territory until later this year. Wake up… there is one territory now and it is the world.

    • http://wesleyverhoeve.com Wesley Verhoeve

      Very much agreed Michael. Territory restrictions should be off the past, but often times aren’t yet.

  • http://twitter.com/emmieinjeans Emmalee Lovelace

    I definitely agree with what you’re saying.

    Personally before I decide to go out and purchase an album I want to stream or
    sample it first. I’m not going to run over to HMV and spend 20 something
    dollars on an album to find out that I only really like the one or two released
    songs and the rest of the album is just mediocre. I could be spending that
    money on something that I know that I like and will spend a lot of time
    listening to.

    • http://wesleyverhoeve.com Wesley Verhoeve

      Same here Emmalee!

  • Jeff Jacobson

    Funny ’cause I just saw this the other day and was heartened by it: http://blog.bandcamp.com/2012/01/03/cheaper-than-free/ Seems to prove your point. I’ve always found Bandcamp to be quick and easy, and the sliding scale makes it affordable, too.

    • http://wesleyverhoeve.com Wesley Verhoeve

      Great link Jeff! Thank you!