Illegal download blogs

by Cosmo Lee

For all the attention given to P2P networks, the music industry seems curiously indifferent to illegal download blogs. Perhaps their impact is relatively small compared to P2P. Or perhaps resistance is futile. That arcade game comes to mind where one knocks down frogs that pop up randomly. Squash one blog, and three spring up to replace it.

But maybe the industry should pay more attention. A casual Internet stroll reveals that the blogspot.com domain has become a massive, if crude, P2P-like network. Loadown is a prominent download site for death metal. (Here are two posts excoriating its opponents.) Its sidebar lists scores of similar sites. For the black metal equivalent, try Dunkelheit. These “blogs” have hardly any content aside from artwork, track lists, and download links. They’re really just glorified FTP sites. Ironically, though, they’re more faithful to the original conception of the term: “weblog,” a record of one’s Internet travels.

Let’s say a label expects to sell 10,000 copies of a CD. It gets leaked, and 1,000 people download it. 500 people would never have bought it anyway. Those are nonexistent losses. Of the remaining 500, 400 keep the download. For them, the sound quality and convenience are enough to displace a CD purchase. (The inferiority of MP3’s to CD’s and LP’s is well-documented. But as the iPod becomes the dominant music playback device, such inferiority becomes commercially moot.) The remaining 100 supplement their download with a CD purchase. Even this figure is generous. Who actually does this? The number is probably closer to 10. In this example, though, the label sustains a 4% loss simply through one download link.

Some solutions come to mind. Perhaps some intern could monitor rapidshare and megaupload all day, sending copyright infringement notices when necessary. Labels could also deal with the problem at its head. Who leaks albums before release dates? Aside from internal leaks, music journalists do. Perhaps labels could watermark MP3’s. (And, no, streaming is not an answer, at least yet. I hate being chained to my computer to listen to a record. Reviewers should not be placed in hate-filled mindsets. Also, streams are piratable.) That’s not foolproof, though. What if someone steals a journalist’s iPod and leaks albums? Is the journalist on the hook then?

Labels could also employ the Internet equivalent of anti-missile chaff. On her blog, a friend of mine posted a fake download link to the new Animal Collective album. It was really 11 tracks of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” (see Wikipedia entry: “rickrolling”). People went bananas. Her hit counter went through the roof. She got death threats. (People send death threats because they can’t illegally download albums! Unbelievable.) The band’s clueless label Domino got its panties in a bunch. It shouldn’t have. My friend demonstrated possibly the perfect anti-piracy measure. Fill the Internet with fake downloads; imagine the consternation of Coldplay fans when all their downloads are Gorgoroth albums!

A more realistic but related solution would be to leak the album first, at high quality. One harm of pre-release leaks is lack of control. Copies floating around of badly encoded, low-bitrate MP3’s can actually create negative buzz. Why not control the message and be the first leaker? Audio pirates aren’t terribly creative; they often just repost links they find elsewhere. Of course, this means kissing goodbye to album sales. However, I’ve advocated that here.

A possible corollary of this proactive approach is targeted advertising. I don’t know how it would work with MP3’s, and I’m not sure I support the idea. But this white paper (.pdf) sets out the interesting possibility. Downloaded content could serve as a platform for targeted advertising. A watermark could reveal telling information about a user. (The paper uses the example of “Stairway to Heaven” downloaded at Starbucks in San Francisco – which should yield a targeted ad by Brooks Brothers.) This raises all sorts of issues, like privacy. But it’s a start. The Internet is the world’s most powerful publicity tool. It should be harnessed, not fought.