On one hand, any chance to read the words of a major entertainment company should be highly valued. On the other hand, the last person Coolfer wants to hear talking to the head of a major music group is a technology writer. It didn't turn out all that bad, though. The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg, the king of gadget reviews, put some humorous, thoughtful questions to Sir Howard in yesterday's article. A straight-up business writer would have been nice, though.

Here are the three questions relating to Sony BMG:

"Mr. Mossberg: You own a record company.

Mr. Stringer: I do.

Mr. Mossberg: How's that going? How is it to own of the four big entrants in one of the stupider industries in the world...?"

Mr. Stringer: And it's not true that I beat my wife either ... I think you're right about the music companies. They are like all companies that are great and are doing things really well and having a fantastic time. They want the status quo to remain long after the quo has lost any status.

The record companies, remember, were not enthusiastic about the CD. They loved plastic and when the CD came along, they said, 'whoa, look -- windfall.' They were resistant to the digital world and in a way they forced Sony to try and create a music-download system that was utterly and completely secure, and that turned outto be a dream that customers didn't want. Customers drive everything now, not the product.

Mr. Mossberg: Well, on that theme, when is your next copy-protected CD coming out that will install, you know, malicious software? How did that happen?

Mr. Stringer: Actually, it didn't go so far. Computers did not crash. Big Ben did not stop. I'm not trying to blame sombody else, but this was an attempt to do the right thing at a low level. The senior management of BMG or Sony did not know this was going on. We responded very quickly and put out patches. ... We didn't say to ourselves as a company, we're going to screw every computer in town. We made a mistake and Sony paid a terrible price."

Posted by Glenn at 12:00 PM | Link
|Business Writing|

The Motley Fool is again commenting on digital music, this one an article by Anders Bylund titled "Entertainment Industry Breaking the Wrong Rules." In it, Bylund writes of how digital piracy busts and digital music stores represent the entertainment industry's digital strategy. The problem is he connects the wrong dots.

Bylund makes the common mistake of confusing the thirst for free music with the desire for a user-friendly music service, and then mistakes taking a fight against piracy as an unwillingness to take digital music seriously.

Taking down an ISP that hosted copyrighted content is an apple. A legitimate store like iTunes is an orange. The fight against piracy doesn't mean entertainment industries are against digital business models, it means they're against giving it away for free and without restrictions. There's a big difference. (It's as big a difference as illegal file sharing and fair use rights for sampling purposes, two issues that too often get lumped together.)

Continue reading "Foolish (Again) on Digital Music" »

Posted by Glenn at 4:45 PM | Link
|Business Writing||Digital Music||P2P|