Got a Digital Music Library? Hoarder! Pirate!

By Jon Newton
TechNewsWorld
12/20/05 6:00 AM PT


Guess what? Your digital music library is not actually a library. It's considered "hoarding."

The entertainment cartels have already pirated the word "pirate" to replace "counterfeit" and/or "duplicate" and/or "share." It's so much more PR-friendly -- more emotive and evocative.

And it works so well in a sound-bite or a headline.

Now the Organized Music family, Sony (NYSE: SNE) Latest News about Sony BMG, Vivendi Universal, Warner Music and EMI, plan to do the same with "collection" and/or "library" when applied to file sharing, and they've chosen the shadowy NPD Group to deliver the message via a "study."

Spinning the Facts

The statement "Study finds many U.S. homes hoarding downloaded music" looks so nicely underhanded, almost criminal, doesn't it? Much better than "Many U.S. homes have large digital music collections."

"Most American homes have at least one digital music file on their computer, more evidence that Internet Get Linux or Windows Managed Hosting Services with Industry Leading Fanatical Support. music piracy is widespread, according to a study released this week," says the Gannett News Service, quoting an NPD report.

When I first came across the NPD Group in late 2003, adidas International, International Flavors & Fragrance and Wrigley typified its client base, but it was nonetheless churning out "studies" bolstering entertainment cartel party lines. The mainstream media immediately began quoting these studies as authoritative sources.

I e-mailed NPD wondering how many years' experience it had in the music research field and asked about the team of expert interviewers/statisticians I thought it must boast given the nature and number of its outpourings.

I never did hear back, and when I visited the NPD site, I wasn't able to find a single music, or other entertainment industry, client, although since then, the company has added movies, music, video, TV, etc., to the list it professes to be expert in.
Getting a Grip

More recently, NPD was touting iTunes as a "formidable competitor against free peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing services," an assertion which is, of course, ludicrous.

iTunes also "tied with LimeWire as the second-most-popular digital music service in March, 2005," claimed NPD. Not even in your dreams.

The corporate online music business so far exists only in the minds of the media and those trying to promote it, and iTunes' sales of some US$600 million since it started in September, 2003, don't even merit a statistical blip against what's happening in the real world of online music.

There, the P2P applications and networks rule, and iTunes is a joke.

Meanwhile, "More than two out of three U.S. households with Internet access had a least one digital music file on their computer while more than half had at least 50 songs," said NPD Group.

And you know what that means: Piracy! Hoarding!

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Jon Newton, a TechNewsWorld columnist, founded and runs p2pnet.net, based in Canada, a daily peer-to-peer and digital media news site focused on issues surrounding file sharing, the entertainment industry and distributed computing.

This is funny, just the other day I was on a message board where we were talking about CD's we have given away or traded in. I stated that I don't get rid of any of my music, like it or not. Even if it's downloaded MP3's, I save them to CD-R or DVD-R no matter how good or bad to my ears. I figure someone may want to hear it someday, so why not save it.

We all decided that this behavior was an addiction, and we called it Music Hoarding.

Hi, I am Raiders757, and I am a music hoarder.

The more they can push this "hoarding" music as being a bad thing, the more they will try to push for a music "rental" mindset in their customers. They would love nothing more than to get people to believe they should be paying a monthly fee for what they used to own outright. They went from vinyl to 8-tracks to cassettes to CDs and now that they don't have much of a chance of convincing their customers to go much further with repurchasing the music they already own, they have come up with the "Have everything! Own nothing!" campaign in a last ditch effort to preserve their outdated business model.

Good for you Raiders757! Never throw anything away...that's my motto! You should see my attic. I've got crap up there that I've had for 30 years. I'll probabaly never need most of it...but you never know....

Hoard? Heh - I have well over a terabyte now. Not much music though. Its largely anime.

I think I have about 200 CDs. Coupled with the nearly 900 MP3s I have on my computer I have probably 5000 individual tracks of music. Guess that makes me a hoarder.

Guess that also means I'll have a ready made entertainment collection the day the RIAA/MPAA/BSA/CIA/FBI, et al convince everyone else to switch to the "Own Nothing, Have Everything" daily subscription model (no, not a typo, eventually it WILL be a daily subscription model, probably even an hourly model if the RIAA ever gets their "popularity pricing" BS implemented).

Damn, I must be one of those "hoarders" that the content industry is worried about. I have close to 300 Gig (I know, just a small collection) of music (no DRM - I don't want DRM music), CDs from back in the day when CDs were CDs, a bunch of VHS tapes, some DVDs, and a ton of books.

If the RIAA wants to demonize "hoarders" then I say more power to them. The more restrictions that they put on their product, the less likely I will be to want to purchase it. It seems like Boycotting the RIAA is easier each day, instead of becoming a burden. It still amazes me how an industry can willfully self-destruct. They are so bent on controlling everything that they just don't care if they are calling their best customers thieves and hoarders, then cry when sales drop. Call me what you want RIAA, just don't expect to see my cash.

The only way a subsription model for digital music would work is if customers could download as many non-DRM'd tracks as they wanted to for a reasonable monthly fee. Predictably, the RIAA wants the consumer to be able to download only a limited number of DRM-hobbled tracks for a monthly fee, probably with the restriction that the license on those tracks would expire after a set period of time. In view of the easy availability of non-DRM'd free music via P2P and CD copying, as well as independent music alternatives, the RIAA's subscription model will never gain acceptance. The RIAA has squandered their opportunity to develop new business models which reflect the reality of modern technology. As a result, they're in a death spiral.

Yo ho, blow th' man down. Fifteen mile' on a dead man's chest, yo, ho, ho, an' a bottle o' rum! Gots to loves me music booty.

Move over, Fahrenheit 451. It won't be long before they come to your door, to confiscate all the CDs you legally purchased, because they don't want anyone to play ANY music without paying a monthly fee AND begging for permission to do so.

Wow, going from calling them filesharers, to downloaders, to pirates, to hoarders. They've called them everything but "customers".

Well, they soon won't be able to even call them customers, because no one will be buying anything.

Personally, I think they're all going stark, raving mad. This is just crazy.

IFeelFree, naturally the RIAA wants to limit what you listen too, unless you discover that a song sung by one of todays lip synchers was actually written and produced much better back in the 1960's.

Pirate? Hoarder? Oh, dear.
My wife just wants to be referred to as an opportunistic music collector.

Music Hoarding is 300 gigs of what they call hoarding. na na na I'm a hoarder oh yes I am. And ninety percent from my own cd's. Ten percent from DMusic and others. Just bought another 250 gig for more music. For my lps.

Music hoarder? Am I held in such low regards by the corporate "man"? Well, I guess I am what they call me. So I will call them what they are. . .MusicNazis