The snowman cometh – in the shape of the Big Four record label’s IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industries).
The PR / faux police agency has a certain panache lacked by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), its brother agency in the US.
The former has a brutal Mafia feel to it whereas the latter’s style is that of a practiced and successful confidence trickster – smooth and oily. And its latest con – that there’s a healthy online corporate music market – is being swallowed whole by the mainstream media.
Downloads Show Impact of Digital Music Revolution, says The Scotsman in the UK. Legal music downloads ‘take off’, BBC News Online, Global Digital Music Market Booms in 2004, Forbes, Online Music Stores Break Into Mainstream, Reuters, Millions join download revolution, This is London, UK. And so on, ad nauseum.
And it’s all complete and utter nonsense based on a single report from one Big Music-owned organization now run by former UMG boss John Kennedy.
Here are the four principal elements to the IFPI’s first outright con of 2005:
* Legal music sites quadrupled to over 230 in 2004
* Available music catalogue has doubled in 12 months to 1 million songs
* Paid-for downloads up more than tenfold to over 200 million
* Consumer attitudes more favourable to buying music online
Read the complete story @ P2Pnet News
