I don't think piracy is going to kill the music industry. But digital technology and the ability to download will change the packaging from CDs to a single-based business.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Just as the music industry couldn't combat the financial impact of digital piracy, major corporations will have to rethink how to maintain margins when many of their most profitable items can be easily manufactured at home.
Because of piracy there has been a massive downturn in people buying music, which makes it more difficult for artists to make money from the sale of records.
With Napster and the sharing of music, of course, there are going to be people who exploit it. Greed has no end. But there's a lot of good that could happen. We shouldn't let the economic concerns of the major labels infringe on our freedom to share music.
The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it's not going to happen. I'm fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years.
Even if the music industry simply gave away all their music people would complain that they don't have the bandwidth to download all the stuff - the problem would merely shift from availability to distribution.
Even if there were no illegal copying, the advent of digital distribution will put a lot of stress on the movie and music industry. When the distribution costs comes down, that puts more price pressure on the rest of the cost.
I think downloading is both saving and killing the music industry at the same time.
I've never worried about how a new release will be received. I simply try to do the best I can and leave the rest to the gods. The music industry in those terms is something I loathe and detest. It conjures up images of a gigantic factory spewing out parts of the machine.
I think the music business is probably not happy with what we've done, because the people buying the record have actually got to pick what they want to buy, rather than being told what they should buy.
We have seen the damage already caused to the music industry and we have to continue to make the public and government bodies globally aware of the damage that will happen if DVD piracy is not brought under control.