It may have taken them ages to figure this one out, but figure it out they have. The music arm of both Sony and Universal have finally acknowledged that, delaying the ability for people to purchase music doesn't help when "Wait is not a word in the vocabulary of the current generation".
"It's out of date to think that you can build up demand for a song by playing it for several weeks on radio in advance, " said Universal Music's chief executive, David Joseph.
In the current system, songs are first released to radio for an exclusive 6 week period, before they're made available for sale. But stats show that the peak search period for new songs are sometimes right in the middle of the radio airplay period, before the songs are even available for legal purchase. This could then lead to people going down the piracy route, as the only way to obtain the music.
Now, both Sony and Universal will release music for sale at the same time as airplay stars on the radio.
Perhaps the same principle can be applied to other forms of media, and other forms of delay, such as the delay of airing new TV show episodes in different regions around the world.
Do you think it will help to reduce piracy is legal content is made available sooner and at the same time around the world? Post your opinion in our forum:
http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=94457