Musicians split when it comes ot Piracy...?

Recently the British Government have released plans on how they plan to deal with the piracy problem at large.

Persistent file-sharers could have their internet accounts suspended in an attempt to crack down on piracy

It is about time that the government stepped in to deal with the problem, but like the FAC (Featured Artists' Coalition), British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors and the Music Producers Guild I think this is in fact an over reaction. Not a heavy sledgehammer as the 3 musical bodies put it, but rather an atomic bomb.

"It's going to start a war which they'll never win."-- Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien

I myself am a small time pirate. I've spent time downloading music before going out and buying it due to having a very select taste. I also know that the chances of the government, even if ISPs (Internet Service Providers e.g. BT) stepped in to help, that catching and recording illegal downloading will be nigh impossible. That's without taking into account the difficulty of telling the difference between legal file sharing and illegal.

This is all before the fact that by doing this many people will most likely be put off music altogether and go for alternative types of entertainment as mentioned by the Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien.

[ Information from the BBC ]

However, 11 days after this statement Lily Allen stepped forward to rally stars against piracy. Taio Cruz, James Blunt and Tim Rice-Oxley all put forward their support to Lily as well as congratulating her for stepping up.

"File-sharing has had a very, very negative effect on my career, as it has on many others" -- Taio Cruz

Taio Cruz is a prime example of how music piracy can be damaging, by having his debut album being leaked almost 3 months before the scheduled release date he and his music label were not sure whether to continue. The amount of money lost for both was most likely huge with many people hearing, downloading and listening to the song for months before it came out.

Also like in the article it states that due to the label losing out on money it will also mean that they will have less to spend on supporting new artists, which while I don't feel it is damaging them the artists themselves do.

[ Information from the BBC ]

My own opinion on this situation is that Piracy is a bad thing, however they need to sort it out by moving forward in technology and time. Sites such as Spotify and Me7 are the starting point, however for a student such as myself who wants to listen to music on the move the chances of me actually wanting to listen to hugely long adverts is small. Spotify premuim is also a rip off in my opinion, £9.99 a month equating to £119.88 a year is to much for those who only listen to the odd song from an odd album.

Itunes is my current favourite legal way to obtain music, due to being cheap and enabling me to buy a single song off an album and not all those fillers. It will be interesting over the next couple of years to see what other unique ideas and concepts appear.