Robbie Williams who last year signed a $120 million (£80million) record deal has said to reporters (20/01/03) that he sees nothing wrong with downloading music, he bragged (yet again) about his deal and said that record bosses he met last eyar didnt know what to do and as no one can stop it, feel free to download his music.

I know other artists support downlaoding of mp3's too (David Bowie asking Sony not to put copy protection on his CDs is one I know of). So what do you think the record companies will say about this "biting the hand that feeds you" incident?

Palladium and TCPA is approaching, which "could" spell the end of file sharing for music and the RIAA caniving away as usual. I saw footage of a record industry representitive saying how he saw people going and buying CDs and cassettes as a fading method to get music. When someone can download an album in less time than it takes to go to the record store (and of course for zero charge right now), will the record store's fade away in the next 5-10 years if piracy isnt stopped?

What Ideas or methods do people here consider a good way for the record industry to tackle the pirated mp3music industry??

Linky (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/2676117.stm)

The recording company owns the distributing rights, not Robbie, who only owns performance/composer copyrights. IF he really wanted to make his music available for free download - and threaten his big distrbution contract - then he's quite welcome to do so!

Who would download robbie williams anyways? :eek:

Originally posted by adminME
Who would download robbie williams anyways? :eek:

:emlaugh:

Brilliant well he is getting 80 million quid a year so i dont see why we shouldnt ;)

Originally posted by mufc
Brilliant well he is getting 80 million quid a year so i dont see why we shouldnt ;)

Yes that's the thing, if he tells people to download the music the label might just drop him making him get nothing...

People download music for two reasons:

1. it's easier to get just the songs they want
2. it's quicker to get than by going out to a record store

If the music industry used foresight, they'd:

* come up with a music format that could not be played more than X number of times unless it was paid for (similar to how many shareware or demo software programs run these days)
* put a selling path in place to let people pay for songs individually or as the studio's album-concept

This would let the labels still get their money for promotion and all that razzmatazz, but let people download the songs they want WITH a trial listening period to let them decide if they really wanted to pay however much for the song / album. The overhead wouldn't be eradicated so much as shifted - instead of record stores having to pay for employees, inventory, shipping costs, warehousing, et cetera, the server and bandwidth and tech-employee costs would have to be paid - but the cost could be reduced. For one thing, it probably costs quite a bit less to "warehouse" electronic music files than it would to warehouse X number of CDs or cassettes.

Then again, that would never be done. It's too logical and makes too much sense. (And the RIAA still seems mortally scared of the whole "music over the Internet" phenomenon. Luddites.)