What Happens After Facebook?

As creator of Bebo, Michael Birch surfed the social networking zeitgiest long before anyone had heard of Facebook. Much sought after as a web guru, his pronouncements on the future of music on the net are sure to have the big players sitting up and paying attention.

Valerie Flynn, 01 Sep 2010

Michael Birch, the creator of Bebo, is in expansive mood. And his subject for today is the future of music.

“I don’t want to buy a…CD and then put it on my computer,” he says. “I want to click a button and listen to something there and then. I want to be able to listen to anything, and they never allowed that to happen.” 

You don’t have to be a genius to know who he means by ‘they’. It is the same old story, but with a different twist: the 39-year-old web guru accepts that musicians and other copyright holders should be paid for their product. But how much?

“I do believe in protecting copyright for those who want to protect it,” he says. “But the problem in the past was the record labels. They’d stall the file sharing networks – and in fact I can understand why they did that – but then they wouldn’t provide an alternative. So it was like, ‘You can buy our CDs for 20 quid in the store’. That was the only option – but it’s not convenient. So I think the problem stems from the fact that copyright owners are not reasonable enough to provide a fair and affordable way for people to distribute music.”  

Others would disagree vehemently – and besides, the fact is that there has recently been significant progress in the battle against illegal file-sharing. Earlier this year, Ireland became the first country in the world to adopt a ‘graduated response’. Eircom and the Irish Music Rights Association (of which the ‘big four’ – EMI, Universal, Sony and Warner – are members) have agreed a three-strikes-and-you’re-out strategy. Serial downloaders will end up with their broadband cut off. For any artist who has suffered badly at the hands of illegal downloaders, it is an important victory which could represent a global breakthrough if it is replicated elsewhere. That might just be the future or at least part of it... 

Birch counters that convenience for the customer, rather than coercion, will be the key to any successful strategy for making money out of music online.

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