Actually that’s a lie but I’ve always wanted to open a story with that line, and I felt starting a blog with a five hour car journey from Sunderland to Kent wasn’t as cool. Plus it was a pretty grimy drive involving nothing but sweets, biscuits and milkshake.
For my dissertation, I’m working with the original cool kid Rob Law to create a 30 minute video documentary based around music piracy and its impact on the music industry and its consumers; exciting stuff, especially if we can interview Lilly Allan :)
Today we made our first of many trips down to the capital to interview Adam Liversage, the director of communications for BPI. If you don’t know what BPI stands for, join the club because I only recently found out it’s the British Phonographic Industry, but they’re more commonly known for the Brit awards.
Before I go into what Adam had to say though, I’ve got to make an observation. If you’ve ever been to Westminister tube station you’ll know what I’m talking about when I say it looks like something out of a sci-fi film. In order to get to the surface you have to ascend three massive sets of escalators and all I could think about all the way up was “Next stop Jupiter”.
Did I mention the giant Brits statues in the reception area? Imagine a normal Brit award and blow it up to 10 times its size and thats what loomed over you as you got out of the elevator. We were told they regularly get lent out to places like the National museum, although I'm not quite sure what they'd want with it.
The whole place is covered in floor to ceiling pictures of the Brits, the biggest one being of Robbie Williams collecting an award, however, the room we got to film in wasnt covered in pictures, it was plain white... thanks for that Adam.
The interview went really well though and Adam knew his stuff, and by the end we were very clear on how BPI feel about music piracy.
He told us that he believes there is absolutely no excuse for illegally downloading music nowadays. We are in a digital age wherein you can gain access to music either for free or so cheap that there can be no justification for pirating music.
Currently there is a Bill trying to be passed called 'The digital economy bill', which will allow record companies (the ones with enough money to do so) to monitor users of sites such as 'Limewire' and 'Bearshare'. If you are seen to be sharing their content without the correct license then the record companies can send out a letter confirming you have been caught illegally downloading their music and that you are now being monitored.
Keep in mind that p2p networking sites are public forums and thus are open to anyone that wants to see who's using them. There's no way to hide if you're sharing illegal content.
Adam admitted; record companies and music industry professionals don't believe they can ever really stop music piracy, but their main aim is to persuade consumers to seek alternative legal methods of accessing music.
For example, did you know that 19/20 tracks which are downloaded are done so without the permission from the record label, ie pirated.
From a music listeners perspective, the loss of money to a record label isn't the issue, its the variety of music being released in the future that we need to worry about. Music piracy will force record companies into taking less risk when signing new acts and God help us if the future of music is Amy Winehouse.
At the end of all that we knew what had to be done... No, not fill a bath with liquid jelly and lay in it until it sets, that's crazy. We needed to speak to consumers and find out why they download illegally.
After numerous attempts to steal a Brit award we left, and the hunt the Lilly continues...
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