The pirate's dilemma

Matt Mason gave an interesting talk at the RSA yesterday, promoting his new book The Pirate’s Dilemma. I’m gutted that I was on a lunch break because I would have liked to stop and chat to him more about the book.

I think he’s framed the piracy discussion very intelligently.  The gist was piracy occurs when there is a gap that is not being serviced by the mainstream, and then the pirates fill it - rightly or wrongly. ‘Good piracy’, i.e. the sort of piracy that begets trends, starts  a debate and crucially, gets the support of the people. Bad piracy, like fake toothpaste which happens to be toxic, needs to be shut down – but brands that don’t take lessons from good piracy are ignoring the wants of their consumers. 

 The crux of the pirates dilemma is ‘to compete or not to compete’ (remixing Hamlet, nice) – do you fight in the courts of compete in the marketplace? ‘If pirates are giving something away for free, sell something else' - he gave the examples of iTunes legitimising music downloads (convenience) and Nike just trying to outdo Bapestas rather than sue them for nicking the AF1 design. 

 For someone like me, Mason’s work seems quite obvious,  but then that’s just how my generation thinks. There was a guy in the audience who asked some very defensive questions, making me realise that – jeez – there are people that still don’t get it. Audience man brought up the point that music companies have to shoulder the cost of development and paying the artists which the pirates don’t have. What he failed to realise is that blaming piracy is failing to see the real issue – that the model that has worked for X years is not viable anymore. Look for new revenue streams Mr! Mason made the point in his presentation that record labels aren’t really in the music industry, but the CD industry because that’s where they make their money. They should be changing contracts to get a slice of the merch, tours, and everything else.

I think the talk is going to be made available on RSA vision at some point, definitely worth checking out.

UPDATE: A bit of a lunchtime RSS catchup reveals that Grumblemouse has some interesting things to say on the talk. Read 'em here.

 

Comments

[grumblemouse]

ugh the guy asking the defensive questions was such a douche and to make it worse I hear that he used to be head of Warners and also pretty high up in the BMI!!!1

With attitudes like that so high up in the industry its no wonder they're running around like headless chickens. I thought the lamest thing he said was how 'the music industry supports and nurtures talent' - yeah right - the only people actually supporting and nurturing talent and not dropping them as soon as they have a sales dip are the indies who have integrated themselves into the digital sphere with a lot less fuss.