Music Ally

So there was no big announcement from Virgin Media at the Telco 2.0 conference after all, though there are still rumours of some kind of development before the end of the month. The opening panel of day two of the London-based Telco 2.0 conference featured both Virgin Media’s head of broadband Jon James and Universal’s Francis Keeling, so it was hardly surprising that rumours began to fly. But it will be even more interesting now, given James’ comments at the event that Virgin was determined to do something “genuinely ground-breaking” to see whether Virgin really does end up with an unlimited MP3 offering or if it settles on a set number of downloads each month (alongside its streaming offering) as a way of getting more labels on board.

Still, the atmosphere at the event between ISPs and rightsowners did seem a lot more positive than it has been in the past. The reminder from BT Wholesale’s Cameron Rejali that ISPs had a clear vested interest in cleaning up their networks from bandwidth hungry torrents echoed the earlier call from UK Music’s Feargal Sharkey for greater co-operation. Sharkey strived as hard as he could to play down the dreaded “d” word (disconnection), underlining many times that this was only a measure of last resort and that new business models were the most important solution as well as playing down the evident internal tensions between artists and rightsowners over what to do about file-sharing. But, underneath the apparent harmony, it’s pretty apparent that this debate is far from over, and not just between ISPs and rightsowners.

But while some (including some of us at Music Ally) may dispute just how much impact the threat of disconnections might exert on the levels of legal purchasing and the overall level of unlicensed sharing of music, Sharkey made a very valid point when discussing the potential negative impact that the perceived threat of piracy can exert on the business environment. Sharkey cited HMV boss Simon Fox’s comments that the supposed improved likelihood of action being taken against file sharers made him feel more confident about investing in 7 Digital.  It’s a valid point that the perceived greater co-operation between rightsowners and ISPs and the potential to at least be “seen” to be doing something against piracy is likely to impact on levels of investment in the digital music space, which as Francis Keeling reminded us, are not what they once were. Though Keeling did also highlight that there are no magic solutions in this game, suggesting that it was now all too clear that the economics of pureplay ad-funded models simply “do not stack up” and that the only viable ad-funded solutions are the “freemium” models offered by the likes of Spotify.

So it was a mixture of hardnosed commercial opportunities combined with a real sense of optimism that ISPs and rightsowners can co-operate that perhaps was the ultimate conclusion of the panel. And ultimately who cares if this apparent bonhomie is in fact only skin deep? If it makes the cheque book holders happier then that can only be a good thing.

Tags: piracy levels, sporify, telco, universal

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 6:51 pm and is filed under Digital Music News, Digital Music Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.