No, You Can't Advertise To Your Target Market
from the um,-okay dept
The BPI, Britain's version of the RIAA, has slammed Apple and Napster for advertising on file-sharing sites, calling it a "sick joke". The companies probably weren't aware their ads were on the sites, since they use outside media buyers, but have said they'd remove them, and the BPI has attempted to name and shame other well-known companies whose banner ads appear on the sites, saying how deplorable it is that people try to make money "by selling advertising on the back of copyright theft". That's a pretty short-sighted view, though -- after all, aren't people doing file-sharing exactly the audience to which they'd want to advertise legitimate paid services? Of course, the BPI is looking out for nobody's interest like its own, and it's priorities appear to be shutting down file-sharing sites over all else. Separately, it's also trying to reduce the royalty rate its member labels pay out on online music to less than 8 percent, a rate a group of music managers says means an artist would have to sell 1.5 million copies of a song online to make a profit. Even as digital music sales grow, the industry would rather simply shut down file-sharers, full stop, without doing anything to turn them into paying customers.
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