RIAA lost the war

A new sur­vey just high­lighted that three quar­ters of teens feel that file shar­ing should be legal. This pretty much caps any chance for the music indus­try to sur­vive under their cur­rent model.

The issue here is that if kids are per­ceiv­ing file shar­ing as some­thing that should be legal, they will prob­a­bly not grow out of it. Half of the teens that were polled had down­loaded free music and gave an inter­est­ing set of reasons:

Those who down­load music but have never paid for a down­load say they down­load because: They only like one or two songs on a CD (59%); They want to get music quickly (48%); They believe that music is too expen­sive to buy (46%); They want to get music for free (44%); They want songs that are not avail­able for sale (40%); And they believe that music should be shared (38%).

There is hope though. If you look at those stats, stores like the Apple iTunes Music Store or the new Nap­ster can sat­isfy over 50 per­cent of the pub­lic. The third point, how­ever, shows issues relat­ing to pric­ing. Obvi­ously, the Inter­net has had an impact here as kids are prob­a­bly more aware than their par­ents about the cost of music pro­duc­tion. They are real­iz­ing that prices are arti­fi­cially inflated to out­ra­geous lev­els. What is needed here, how­ever, is some level of edu­ca­tion. While 46% saw music as too expen­sive, 44% thought it should be free. This is a huge warn­ing sign for the music indus­try as it is seen as an indus­try cre­at­ing no value. If I were work­ing in that indus­try, I would worry.

At issue here too is the fact that some music is not avail­able for sale. This is an inter­est­ing stat. What are those kids look­ing for? Any smart music mar­keter should inves­ti­gate this one and make sure they start offer­ing this con­tent online. Could be a good way to unleash some extra value.

Last but not least is the fact that more than one third (38%) think music should be shared. Let’s not for­get that this kids are the next gen­er­a­tion which will come into the work­force in the future. If two thirds of them believe that law­suits for file shar­ing are wrong and over a third of them believe that music should be shared, the RIAA will loose the pub­lic rela­tions fight in the long run.