Petteri Pyyny
17 Aug 2004 14:11
Music Managers Forum, an organization that represents 650 British music industry managers, have publicly announced that they oppose the rapidly growing trend of bundling free music CDs with (especially British) newspapers and tabloids.
Apparently their reasoning behind the statement is that by giving the music "free" with a newspaper issue, consumers get the idea of music itself being free or extremely cheap -- undermining the recording industry's mantra about music being extremely valuable intellectual property that should be compensated well. Also, MMF is worried that by giving out the most popular tracks of the album in a "free" CD ("free" being slightly misleading, as the newspaper pays for that music and charges it in higher retail prices from buyers anyway), the habit discourages people from buying artists' albums. Then again, we could argue that ever since legal online music stores that offer single-track purchases arrived, the value of a full album has plummeted anyway, as most consumers really just want to have the tracks that they hear on radio and TV and not the rest.
Anyway, now some labels have already stopped from allowing their tracks to be used in newspaper promotions, but some still consider it to be an easy, additional way to monetize from artist's music.
Source: BBC