Toluu : The Pirate's Dilemma

The Pirate's Dilemma

How Youth Culture is Reinventing Capitalism

In 2008 piracy helped…January 6

ghosts

The Nine Inch Nails

Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts I-IV was Amazon’s best-selling album of the year despite also being released for free under a Creative Commons license. Now that there are great mp3 stores like Amazon’s which offer a better experience than the pirates do, people are flocking to them. The problem in music wasn’t pirates, it was a lack of good legitimate alternatives.

The Vinyl Business

Vinyl sales doubled, and not because it sounds better. It’s because vinyl feels better. In 2008, 1.88 million vinyl albums were purchased, more than in any other year since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking LP sales in 1991. Why? The same reason some NIN fans paid $300+ for the super-deluxe autographed editions of Ghost I-IV. Records are like books – they are souvenirs of ideas. The digital idea is everywhere and easily communicated, but the physical souvenir still has value. There is a lesson there for anyone in the ideas business.

The Movie Industry

In the US the domestic box office pulled down an estimated

One way to take on piracy…December 16 2008

USB OVERDRIVE X

Is to make it personal, but be nice about it. It’s awesome when companies behave like real people, and this message is a good example of how to do it. It might make a few people think twice about taking your product without paying and earn you a new fan or two - I grabbed this from the front page of reddit, which tells you this example has at the very least generated a nice piece of PR for USB Overdrive X. If you sue your fans into the ground they will turn on you, and they will win, or worse, they will walk away. But if you treat them like adults, you never know, they might surprise you.