Archive for October, 2009

What is music really worth? Sometimes it’s free. Sometimes you pay a few pence. Sometimes you pay a few pounds. Or you might even splash out more for a great musical experience.

It’s a question that has puzzled experts for years. Economists, forensic accountants, business analysts and IP consultants spend hours poring over the figures. They analyse every 79p that’s spent, every subscription and they even look at the purchasing habits of consumers when music is providing a conducive environment for spending.

The answer is to look at the market. The market of artists, record companies, retailers, online services, radio stations and nightclubs has come up with almost every conceivable way of consuming music and a myriad of business models to support that. Some music is given away free. Some is bought. Some is part of a service, maybe with other goodies thrown in.

But the market isn’t working. The help yourself mentality of the freeloaders is holding back that market from delivering the true worth of an artist’s music.

Unlike the MySpace page, it is not the artists who are giving away their material. It is others who seem to think they have a right to take something just because they can. The online environment is still more like the Wild West than the High Street.

And it is not just artists that are affected. It is now undermining the creators and investors in film, TV, books, images and the wider creative economy. The Government has put forward proposals, supported by the opposition parties, which aim to deal with this. Do we want a society which condones the wholesale theft of creators’ work or should we back those trying to make the internet a better place?