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The topic of online filesharing has again been pretty prominent on the news agenda this week, with the Featured Artists Coalition (which includes names such as Lilly Allen and George Michael) issuing a new statement on their position regarding the disconnection of downloaders. Basically they agree to a 'three strikes and you're out' type policy, whereby the 'out' would actually represent more of a crippling bandwidth throttling (thus making filesharing unfeasable) instead of outright disconnection: e-mail for example will still be accessible.

Now, my view on introducing any kind of policy which actually threatens to decrease the general level of web access and connectedness in this country is pretty simple: it's stupid, from most perspectives - including the economic one that supposedly justifies it ('we must protect the creative industry' etc).

Firstly since the 'creative industry' basically means recording companies - who themselves don't really 'look after' artists as much as their own profits, we are not really discussing depriving a penniless singer-songwriter of a few quid, but the record labels who typically pass on only a few pence from each CD sold to him/her. Hence maybe if the labels actually shared profits a little more fairly with artists, they wouldn't be so vulnerable - even when considered fairly successful after a few albums.

Secondly, we all know that more people online is good for the economy as a whole - in every sense (more ad spend, more marketable job skills, etc): therefore to sacrifice wider general aspects such as this for the sake of protecting the profits of one particular set of industry players is bewildering to say the least (for more on this see our previous blog post on the 'disconnection' topic).

But ultimately what it boils down to for me is that, while Lilly Allen, George Michael and co. all cling to some impossible and repressive solution to this problem, there are others out there whose thinking reveals a far more evolved level of understanding of the internet, technology, music fans' habits - and indeed the wider issue as a whole.

Take for example the people behind the immensely successful Spotify service, which allows users to listen to music on demand on the web for free (and have a few short ads in between tunes every now and then) or to pay for the premium, ad-less version. The basic tenets behind this concept are what Lilly Allen and others should really try to understand:

1. Music fans don't actually care about 'possessing' the files required to listen to a track they like (in fact most of us would prefer not to have to constantly expand hard disk space to accommodate music libraries). Instead all users want is the ability to be able to listen to what they want - when they want it. Previously only downloading files made this possible (or buying them on CD) - but now broadband connectivity has rendered on-demand streaming perfectly feasable.

2.  Most music fans who download tracks ALSO spend money that finds its way to artists/record companies. In fact the whole model of calculating losses from downloading is slightly flawed (x, y, z downloaded 3 million times - therefore cost of piracy=3m times cost-of-cd-album).

The fact is that without downloading (i.e. trying for free) an album - we'd often never take the risk to find out if we might like a band in the first place: who's gonna pay £8 or £9 for an album by a band they've never heard, simply out of curiosity? It is important hence to have a means of testing if one might like a particular artist, without having to pay for the privilege. Whatsmore - every third, or fourth (depends on how picky you are) times someone downloads an album they'll discover a new favourite band - and then go see them live, buy a t-shirt etc and basically spend money on things other than the music itself.

3. Moreover, since broadband connectivity is ever-increasing, there will soon be a time when everyone who listens to music on a pc - will have the means to use Spotify. Similarly with the increase in iPhone style music and phone/internet handheld devices, we can say the same of people who predominantly listen to music on the move.

Therefore - and this is crucial - in five or ten years time (in the UK at least) - there'll be very few people who actually want to download music. Instead we'll be using on-demand services like Spotify, while Lilly Allen and Metallica sit and wonder what happened, and how they could've misunderstood the whole issue to such an extent in the first place.

Finally, as someone who has downloaded music in the past, I have recently noticed that since Spotify was launched (and while i've been using it) - I haven't downloaded a single album via torrent at all. What all the moaning artists and record chiefs couldn't ever do, clever tech types like the Spotify gang have single-handedly made a reality. It wouldn't be a bad idea for the FAC gang to hop on board that bandwagon somehow rather than continuing to pursue their short-sighted campaigns...

Dejan Levi

(P.S. It's not fair that Lilly Allen should take all the stick for flawed ideas on the issue - she is simply one of many who hold such a view, but unfortunately she also chooses to very vocally promote her position leading to a few embarrassing episodes already. See Techdirt here, and here, for more on this).