Not sure whether you noticed but yesterday the Swedish authorities attempted to take down The Pirate Bay. I don’t want to go into details of what happened – you can read all about it here, here and here (actually on most of the internet) – suffice to say the page was back up in 3 hours due to the fact the TPB crew was ready for a move like this.

Today I don’t want to talk about whether pirating music/movies is morally ok or not.

What I want to talk about is the fact that the music labels and studios still don’t get their own customer.  Why do people pirate music/movies? The RIAA and MPAA would like you to believe that it’s because it’s easier to pirate than to buy CDs and DVDs. And you know what? They are RIGHT.

But it’s not easier because pirating enables you to get music/movies for free but because the user experience is much better when pirating.  Imagine until the arrival of the Apple iTunes store and later the Amazon MP3 store the only legal option to get media was to buy it on a CD/DVD. If you heard a great tune somewhere on the radio there was no way for you to get it immediately. You had to jump in your car, drive to a mall and get a CD. Same goes for movies.

The arrival of iTunes a few years back should have been a wake-up call. On every Apple keynote (WWDC or Macworld) Steve Jobs reminded everyone how well the music store was doing. With each passing keynote we saw the rise iTunes on the list of top sellers of music in the US. Did the labels/studios get it? No way. They put pressure on Apple to have all the music DRMed just so none of that music would get pirated. They got the chance to get it again when iTunes introduced movies or when Amazon started it’s own MP3 store but they still didn’t get it. The final straw came when iTunes became the top seller of music in the US.

Pirating is the best competition for the distributors of CDs/DVDs – the user experience is much better. You think of a song and in minutes you can have it with little effort and free.

So why is iTunes successful?

Because the user experience is much better than to go and buy a CD or to pirate music. It’s just that simple. If you think pirating music is easier than to buy stuff of the iTunes store just try it. You have to install a torrent download application. Find the right file that is not compromised by a virus and that contains what you want, you have to hope you got enough seeds for you to download at a reasonable speed and you have the thought in the back of your mind that you are doing something illegal.  Yes you are getting the song/album for free but is it worth the effort compared to the 5-10 $ you would pay for the high quality song/album from iTunes? I don’t think so. 

My point is the RIAA and MPAA should treat TPB as a competitor to the distributors of music. They should step-up their effort in online distribution and try to create space in the online music/movie retail market for an iTunes/Amazon competitor. They should help Apple and Amazon setup licensing of music/movies in Europe so that these companies can make their services available in more countries. I understand that a better service will never kill pirating – there will always be pirates – but the music/movie industry can go a long way of getting a much bigger piece of the music/movies downloads pie and even get paid for it. Isn’t it all about money in the end?

Blogmaverick has a great article about Hulu.com and Youtube.com. Even in Slovakia (small country by any and all measures) I see people attempting to use video on their websites in hopes of monetizing it in the future. Some even say video is the future of the internet.

Well this excellent write-up puts the whole thing in to perspective. Youtube works the Web2.0 way – first gather the audience and then think about monetizing it. But compared to other services online video requires massive storage that amounts to costs for storage/cooling and therefore earning money from this is quite difficult. ‘Till now Youtube didn’t find a way how to really monetize it’s massive audience. On the other hand Hulu.com seems to have gotten it right from the beginning – getting important partnerships and licesnsing agreements for it’s videos even if possibly paying a lot beforehand. This means even if their audience is nothing compared to youtube’s they still will be able to get more revenue.

Read the article for the whole story.