Matt Powell – 0540421 MDST 4022
April 2, 2010 Senior Research Project
Modest Mouse and Beck have admitted that piracy is a good way to hear about new music (Hadden 44) Sandulli and Martin Barbero present three mechanisms that‟s influence consumer willingness to pay for music online on P2P networks. They argue that the music industry has made specific efforts to curb piracy through the following defenses: 1. File pollution: the music industry deposits polluted files into P2P networks like replacing parts of songs with “white noise” and cutting song durations 2. Value differentiation: online music stores try to develop consumer value by providing better quality files, more compressed files to produce better reproduction quality and faster downloading times 3. Behaviour correction: the industry has tried to show consumers the damaging effects illegally downloading music has on the overall industry Based on the 95% piracy rate still rampant in today‟s market, it is incredibly obvious that these theories are not practical, or have not worked. To truly adapt to today‟s market, the industry has to learn to understand that piracy could help in the long run, and adapt new models to off-set financial losses associated with it. The music industry will continue to suffer until it can better understand its consumers (Cohn and Vaccaro 55). The use of relationship marketing, convergency and interactive marketing paradigms create a competitive advantage for the music industry. Utilizing these strategies should succeed in the developing legitimate music businesses (Cohn and Vaccaro 56). Social networks Page 1 of 64