Kids Have Discovered Music Swapping Via Mobile Phones
from the took-'em-long-enough dept
Sometimes it just takes a little longer for the delusions of the entertainment industry to be proven incorrect. Three and a half years ago, just as the mobile music market was taking off thanks to ringtones, a few of us were suggesting it wouldn't last. What makes mobile content any different than other content? The economics of the content are the same, and it seemed like only a matter of time until mobile content had its "Napster moment" where the industry realized that people were sharing content left and right without paying for it. Amazingly, perhaps what's slowed this process down was the fantastic incompetence of the mobile operators, who continue to try to lock everything down, despite it slowing the growth of the mobile data market drastically. There were signs of cracks in the mobile content market last year, and earlier this year there were loud complaints that mobile content was way too expensive.All of that, of course, was simply preamble for the obvious next result, which came out in a study today making it clear that kids like using their mobile phones to share content. Many kids are sharing music via mobile phones using Bluetooth, and nearly half of those who aren't already say they'd like to do so. As more kids get more advanced mobile phones, it's likely all of the numbers will go up -- and yet the recording industry still doesn't seem to have much of a plan other than to hope they can keep convincing people to pay big bucks for ringtones (a market that will get killed as kids get better and better at putting songs on their handsets for free). The article about the report trots out all the expected lines about how the industry needs to stop this now, while it's still small. Of course, that didn't work very well on the greater internet, and it seems unlikely to be very successful on mobile phones either. At what point does the recording industry realize that perhaps it's time to put in place a different strategy?
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This is different to Napster
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Well...
Although, this problem wouldn't even exist if people would use a phone as a PHONE and not as a do-everything media device that so many cell phones aspire to be. Hell, I was content with my black and white, no camera cell phone until the antenna cracked a few months back. Even then, the cheapest most 'basic' phone available had a camera, color screen and could browse the web, none of which I care for on a phone.
*grumble*
(On a side note, I'm surprised USB thumb drives haven't made the news more often about this as well. With cheap 4gig pocket drives, it doesn't take much to load one with several dozen songs and head over to a friend's house.)
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Why don’t the music industries start a p2p network and charge for access say $15 a month. The content of the network would be the responsibility of the members being allowed to share anything. This would mean that the industry would get an income and the users would get anything they want. I realise that the free networks already do this but they could tempt people by offering exclusive content too. (DRM free of course)
This would solve quite a few problems for both parties.
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Re: Well...
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Re: Re: Well...
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Why pay for ringtones?
Within 5 mins you can have any track you want - so why would you pay for the privilege? It's hardly rocket science and so no wonder the sales are finally dropping.
I agree with "Simply Gimp"'s comment about phones doing too much though. As the point of call in my family for all things technical, I know how difficult it is to find a mobile (in the UK at least) that DOESN'T have photo, wap etc capabilities. And my 80-year old grand-dad just wants to make calls. As does my father, mother and uncles and aunts. When will they realise that some people just want a phone! Oh, and the shrinkage of phones might be great for the nimble-fingered youth, but smaller key pads just make it hell for the older, less nimble with larger hands and poorer eyesight...
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Why buy the cow...?
Maybe if they make it free, I'd use it-- especially if it worked from my phone, but until then, I'll just use the tools described in dance_bob's comment, which work extrememly well (minus the fact that verison disabled most of the bluetooth capabilities on my Motorolla v710-- luckily it's still got a SD card!)
and lest I forget, the ipod is completely cabable of sharing music, I've done it between my own computers ever since I found out where the music is stored on the ipod... itunes even helps a lot with it (if you feel like using itunes, for whatever ungodly reason)
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the customer of tomorrow
My point here is that these kids are customers of tomorrow. Let them share the songs, big wuppin' deal. They aren't pirates selling this stuff to make a buck. It's basically free advertising for the artist. The more a song gets around, a.k.a. radio, the more likely the album will be sold. Lock down the music from the kids and they'll find someone else to listen to.
If you keep the kids locked out, I'll guarantee you, when they become adults they will remember what a pain in the butt it was to get any music. Then again, maybe we should encourage this. It can only help the Indie music industry and in a generation or two the corporate music industry as it resides today will be all but a memory.
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Music
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Because carriors like VERIZON lock-out all the bluetooth upload abilities on all their phones - and generally go out of their way to make it hard to use your own content. They do make it easy to purchase their content though, as a consolation prize.
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Re:
If you do a little research on your phone, you'll find that people have found ways to undo all (or most) of the crippling things verizon did to our phones to make us have to get ringtone from them and only them.
Check it out, I unlocked most of mine (bluetooth is still crappy), and it works great for getting my music to my phone!
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I'm in IT. I bring my 60GB USB drive in with me - other guys have 200GB external drives. We throw them on our network (connected at GigE) and throw shares up on the net. Then we just peruse each other's MP3 directories looking for music we don't have that might be interesting. We can zip a CD's worth of files to each other in about 20 seconds.
I'm slowly ripping my old CD collection - I use CDEX and the on line libraries for file names. Works great - takes about 5 minutes a CD - save it to my USB drive.
I suppose the record industries will change in about 30 years - when the "kids" who do this now become execs and the old geezers who are stuck in the 1900's die off. Course by then it'll be like, what's a record? Maybe we'll be calling it the MP3 Industry ... ;)
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Re: Well...
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Re: Why pay for ringtones?
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Re: Bubba
Granted Bluetooth is easier, but since Verizon goes through the effort of trying to block it, I just use a data cable (bought from eBay) and programs like BitPim.
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Re: Well...
1934 called for you gramps, they want you to come home.
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My Thoughts...
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zune-itis or ads?
On another note, maybe there can be a "watch this ad" model where you watch or listen to an ad and your music will be free?
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Re: Why pay for ringtones?
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Accessability in the future of digital media
I don't know what it is yet, but I'm sure that very soon, mobile providers will find some kind of clever way to market these kids, and squeeze another buck out of them. Terrible for the parents that actually finance their purchases, don't you think? :]
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Jitter bug mobile phones
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Re: Re: Why pay for ringtones?
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