Written By: Jim MarkunasPhoto Credit: James Worrell
Not To Beat A Dead Horse, But...
They did a scientific study, and it turns out that prosecuting illegal P2P file swappers is bad for the music business as a whole.
Check out the article.
To further buttress my point, let's do a rough crunch of the numbers:
The Cost of Litigating P2P
* Staff Attorneys (Studio/Label) - $100,000 - $150,000 annually X 6 staffers X 4 labels = $2.4 M - $3.6M
* Bad Debt (As Reported in A Corporate Financial Report) - $1M per lawsuit X 6 = $6M
* Lost Record Sales - 690,000 songs per day, 250M songs per week, and 13B songs per year are downloaded illegally. This is a yearly loss of $13B.
Debt that is won in court is more often than not, unpaid by litigants (on the defendant end). However, this "income" will show up on a company's financial report. But... If the debt goes unpaid, it shows up on the annual report as a loss.
Per year, labels are losing (this is just a rough estimation) $14B on P2P lawsuits and illegal filesharing.
That's quite a loss!
Here's what would happen if labels stopped litigating and instead negotiated with ISP's for a $1 per month music fee
If the 1.6 billion internet users world wide were charged an extra $1 per month for internet access in return for unlimited music files the music industry could stand to make $19 billion annually.
Enough said.
Jim Markunas is a music industry futurist and editor-in-chief of Chicks With Guns Magazine. Jim has a decade of new media and music industry experience, he's run highly successful new media campaigns and has worked with James Brown, Miles Davis, The Walt Disney Company, Truckee Brothers, Mick Fleetwood, and Minty Fresh Records. Currently Jim's focus is monetization strategies for record labels and digital business development. He's a free agent available for hire.
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