alt.tech

I watched the movie High Fidelity the other day. One of the main theme is the main character, Rob Gordon, creating top five lists. Mainly in the form of mixtapes. For Rob, the creation of mixtapes is a great art, and probably the one interest that fuels his burning music interest the most. And his interest in music is huge – he’s the owner of a record store, DJ and his apartment is filled with records, presumably legally purchased.

Now, even though High Fidelity is fiction, there is something very real behind the stereotype. Statistics has shown that the people filesharing music are also, on average, spending more money on cultural experiences (music, movies) than people not filesharing.

Creating mixtapes is still legal, unless you have to break some sort of DRM protection to make them, but giving them away is not in most countries, as in Sweden where I live. Apparently, the media industry seems to think it’s a good idea criminalizing a behavior that’s fueling some of their best customers interest in their products.

Anyone wondering what could possibly be the source of the record industry’s declining sales? Maybe their best customers don’t like being treated as criminals, and thus prefer not giving their money to the ones lobbying against them?