Music Think Tank

Can you say stuck in the past? According to the news, the new U2 album has been downloaded illegally over 400,000 times since it was released. While this isn’t a number to sneeze at, it reminds me of the mulletheads that put hood scoops and air blowers over their carbureted engines in the early 1980s. When the rest of the world switched over to fuel injection, the mullet-powered Camaro became a thing of the past.

Someone click over to Torrent Freak and tell darkshare, labeldeath and redfilephantom to garage the Camaro and trim the mullet; fuel injection has arrived. Sorry angry dudes, the cost of acquiring a music collection is approaching zero, while the cost of listening to whatever you want is no more than a 30 second ad spot for every sixty minutes of music. Look at the Google search trends for Free Music, Free MP3s and File Sharing. Sharing volume may be up, but the four-year search trend is down. Smart people are finding better ways to consume music.

I agree with Rhodri, songwriters that don’t want to perform are taking it on the chin for now, but what about the poor file sharers that tossed a semester of college to amass a terabyte of music? I guess they could always collect Hummels…

Update on April 1, 2009 by

Bruce Warila

Anyone questioning the value of Google Trends, should read the research attached to this link.

Anyone still doubting the trend should look at the latest NPD Group music consumption annual report. Here's a quote:

Downloads from peer-to-peer networks fell 6 percent in 2008, NPD said. Meanwhile, 52 percent of teens said they listened to online radio in 2008, up from 34 percent from 2007. Almost half of teens, 46 percent, used social-networking sites to download or stream music, an increase from 26 percent in 2007, NPD said.