Piracy as a competitor.
[ Posted by Dan on May 30, 2002 | 1 Comments ]

Pirate copies of 'Attack of the Clones' are already on the street, but the movie is making gobs of cash in the movie theatres. Eminem's new record is showing up as the #2 record in Gracenote's CDDB (which is what Winamp and most other MP3 players use to look up record titles) and has caused the actual CD to be rushed to market...

Analysts caution, however, that the real result of the early piracy will be impossible to untangle, whether sales figures are high or low. The online versions and bootlegging could serve as a marketing vehicle, whetting fans' appetite for the real thing, noted P.J. McNealy, research director for GartnerG2, a division of the Gartner research firm. Or it may cut into sales.

What are the odds that it will make gobs of cash when it's actually released? I think the chances are very high and if so, it probably shows that good content (or more to the point, highly desired content) will drive sales in spite of piracy. The opposite affect will hit second rate content where piracy will canabalize sales based on the low perceived value of the content (so the pirated copy becomes 'good enough' and there's no perceived reason to buy the real thing). Hopefully this will drive content producers to create and publish content that is worth the pruchase price.

 

		I think the biggest reason that piracy will cut into sales is that the recording industry STILL does not sell their music direct-to-consumer as MP3 files. If, for $5, I could go download an album, I'd always do that rather than pirate OR go to the store to buy it. -Posted by Darrel on May 30, 2002 02:29 PM

Comment posting has been turned off because I don't have enough time and will to deal with the constant comment spamming. I'm very sorry and will fix this sometime soon (soon = before 2004 ends).