Every Song You Take, They’ll Be Market-Researching You
It always seemed a little weird for the proudly amoral record industry to be condemning listeners for their slutty file-sharin’ behavior, like your creepy uncle tsk-tsking the shortness of your skirt. And guess what? A mere eight years too late, the labels have found a way to make MP3 piracy work for them!
The music industry has long blamed illegal file sharing for the slump in music sales. But now, a key part of the industry is trying to harness file sharing to boost its own bottom line.
Earlier this year, Clear Channel Communications Inc.’s Premiere Radio Networks unit began marketing data on the most popular downloads from illegal file-sharing networks to help radio stations shape their playlists.
Jack White will not be pleased! The info comes through industry powerhouse Mediabase, which in turn gets it from a company called BigChampagne. A little history: a few years back, companies started offering labels various services in connection with P2P networks. Some concentrated on disrupting Napster and its descendants by flooding the tubes with bogus or bad-quality copies, others by tracing files found on P2P networks back to their original owners, and some tried to track what was being downloaded and how often. Guess who won?
The Huey song “Pop, Lock and Drop It” was in light rotation in April at Power 106, a big Emmis Communications Corp.-owned hip-hop station in Los Angeles, and listeners weren’t requesting it much. The station’s own research on the best music mix to play indicated the song wasn’t catching on with listeners. But data from BigChampagne showed the song was hot on file-sharing networks, including in Los Angeles. Emmanuel “E-man” Coquia, the station’s music director, decided to stick with it. Now, three months later, “Pop, Lock and Drop It” is prominent on the station’s playlist.
This all sounds a bit fishy (radio stations playing a song because people want to hear it? Since when?) but it’s also proving useful to labels:
Universal Music Group, the record company that distributes Shop Boyz, also looks at file-sharing data, largely for help figuring out which songs are working best or what to pitch to radio. But executives have mixed feelings about the information. “It’s troubling that there is so much activity [that] it’s useful” for research, says Larry Kenswil, executive vice president for business strategy.
Troubling? Larry, I think you mean “ironic.”
