Internet firm Tiscali has suspended its music sharing Juke Box [web site] and accused the European recording industry of being “virtually impossible to work with”.
It took the move after it was told to remove the service’s “search by artist”.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said Juke Box had offered a level of interactvity that breached its licence.
“Consumers were allowed a high degree of interactivity that breached these rules in many ways – for example, streaming individual tracks on demand,” it said.
A Tiscali statement accused the industry of “short-sightedness… in not making any effort to understand either the basic needs or habits of music fans that choose to consume music via the internet, or the acts directly benefiting from this promotion”.
It also said: “The industry’s conservative attitude makes any collaboration for the promotion and marketing of any type of legal, innovative service very difficult.”
Tiscali’s sales of legal downloads had increased 30% since they debuted the Juke Box web site. Reality continues to have little or nothing to do with recording company policies.
I think iTunes, Rhapsody, and every service should be halted for about a month and lets see the industry have a seizure of frustration!
In the very first day of Economics classes they teach this little concept called “supply and demand”. Amazingly, huge mega-companies think they can prosper while defying the most basic concept of economics. Hint to the IFPI: if you refuse to give your customers what they want, they’ll find it elsewhere; that is, they won’t be your customers any more.
I’ve enjoyed all the Apple-heads who have complained that the Mothership is taking too long to roll-out the iTunes music store worldwide, or that you can only buy music from a given country’s iTMS if you have a valid credit card issued in that country [i.e. you can’t buy a song from the Japan iTMS without a credit card issued by a Japanese bank – with a Japanese billing-address]
If the kind of people who were bitching that it took too long to get iTMS running in Australia – and didn’t open in New Zealand at the same time – had some clue as to the how these deals have to be worked-out on a country-by-country basis, trying to forge legal agreements with the various licencing agencies, they would be surprised there are as many online music sales as there are.
People complain about Apple or Microsoft DRM restrictions – when it is the license-holders who demand the DRM, and won’t sell a license without it…