Dear Mr. Panay – I’m sure you and other consumers would have liked free tickets for your Virgin airplane ride just like many of your readers may enjoy getting free Virgin music on Pirate Bay. Fortunately for the betterment of Virgin employees, the world economy, and your own safety, there were fees that covered all those things. I’m sure consumers would prefer that everything offered on Sonicbids would be free and that you would fore-go any salary or income. The lack of serious credibility in that statement is the same lack of seriousness inherent in your suggesting that it is all the fault of Labels refusing to accept their intellectual property being given away for free by Napster, Kazaa, Pirate Bay and the rest. Stop the Pirate sites and everything else will fall into place. The consistent technology campaign to solely blame “Labels,” which you have joined in your blog titled A Lesson For Record Companies, actually suggests overthrow of Paragraph 8 of the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing an Authors Rights to control copies, and is no less than taking away Constitutional Rights such as voting. Your last comment about doing the right thing should be applied to those people who lack a personal moral compass, as the new administration has been pointing out was rampant during the past 8-years. The world noted it was time for a “Change” and may I humbly suggest you change to being a leader in this new moral world and stop inferring that it’s all the copyright owners fault for enforcing the law as written. Technology has no morals, and the law was written to address each users own legal use. Those that use it illegally deserve to be so judged as much as people who may similarly counterfeit illegal airplane tickets and facilitate their distribution for an illegal profit.

Dave Bean
Monterey, CA

SOunds like a good service. So ofcourse, why should it not be free.
I live in a country where customer service is non existent, so it sounds wild to me!!!
Ganga – Downbeat / Chill Out Music

This is interesting.

Im particularly interested by the use of the word CUSTOMER.

Surely a “Customer” would be someone who pays for a service?

The record companies in question are suffering from intellectual THEFT – they are NOT suing customers – but the people who are illegally downloading music. Thats protecting their business before they go out of business. Guess what – no business, no music to illegally download. Well – no quality music that is. Theres quite enough rubbish out there to fill the airwaves for years to come. But good music requires investment and careful production.

Quite obviously Panos lives in a world where everything should be free. So in that case how do companies survive?

He wants his wifi to be free? Is he aware of HOW he gets Wifi??? And the costs involved??

Its this naive, young, unreal attitude and unawareness of the youth of today, perpetrated by the freedom of the net, that has allowed people to grow an attitude of expecting everything for free. It cant continue for long.

Yours..

Scrooge.

Being a music pirate and being a music customer aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact a recent study found that “those who downloaded “free” music – whether from lawful or seedy sources – were also 10 times more likely to pay for music. This would make music pirates the industry’s largest audience for digital sales.” You can read the full article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/21/study-finds-pirates-buy-more-music

Thanks for the comments. I love the debate. No, I do not believe that everything should be free. If I did so, then I would certainly be disingenuous given that Sonicbids is one of the few sites out there that charges for its services. As a matter of fact, I have real skepticism about this philosophy that everything will one day be somehow free and ad-supported. I do believe however, that one should listen to their customers and anticipate the future – not fight it. I also believe that labels saw themselves as being in the business of CD sales, not in the business of connecting audiences with music. Had they paid attention to their customer base (and by that I mean the music listening, not necessarily music buying public) then we would be having a very different industry landscape.