One of the most common criticisms against the music industry when it comes to piracy, is that the gatekeepers* of the pre-Napster era failed and continue to do so when it comes to modern business models.

When Napster launched, record companies had recently ceased to sell singles (one-song CDs, often accompanied by one or two bonus tracks and usually costing between U$2-4), forcing consumers to buy whole albums for U$10-20 for the sake of one or two songs. Suddenly, the development of the P2P (peer-to-peer) network allowed users to download all the songs they wanted. For FREE.

Rather than trying to build on the momentum and develop a new business model, labels spent a lot of time and money on lawsuits against a handful (compared to the total number!) of users who were using the file-sharing platform.

And then came Apple and the iTunes Store, turning MP3s into millions of iPods sold.

Although it’s somewhat outdated as technological developments have been advancing fast, here is a short essay I wrote a few years ago about The Copyright Industries and the challenges of protecting Intellectual Property in the digital age commenting on some of the ways different countries, artists, tech companies and music executives used to try and tackle the issue of piracy.

*major labels: the companies that used to rule the music industry. In the words of artist manager Simon Napier-Bell, “the club they [major labels] guarded was the most desirable one in all of show business. But the internet has opened it to all-comers and there’s nothing they can do about it.” (from his latest book “Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay: The Dodgy Business of Popular Music”)