Oink Memorial
So today we learned another lesson about emotional attachments to brands. When the IFPI and BPI initiated the raid on Oink headquarters, which turned out to be a 24-year-old living with his father in a middle class UK neighborhood, the people of the Internet, predictably, sounded out against the record industry and for the “little guy.”
So what is it about downloading music that makes people feel entitled to do it? Is it because many bands benefit from the exposure and the few that are hurt have already profited from their art? Is it because the music industry has evolved to a point where musicians very rarely make a decent living unless they’re licensing their songs?
I think it’s more simple than that. The fact is that people don’t want CDs. The music industry is selling a product that isn’t in high demand. Digital distribution is in a similar state. People who bought DRM crippled music in the early days of iTunes are now finding that their music can’t be transferred to their new computers or new iPods. It’s a broken product.
Oink gave people an opportunity to explore new music at a level of quality that was unavailable to them anywhere else. The site sustained itself through the use of innovative technology (torrents) and the idea that people will voluntarily pay (donate) for a service they can’t get elsewhere. There will be another Oink, probably within the week, simply because there are 180,000 music lovers that want it to exist.
