Data from Privated Songs Helps Media Providers

According to the Economist online article, Thanks, me hearties, the the information of user illegal downloads could benefit the music industry. In 2007, recorded music sales declined by 8%. Roughly 70% of this decline has been contributed to illegal download from file-sharing sites on the internet.

The article outlines how the music industry or promoters of the individuals artist could use the data collected from these downloads to their advantage. BigChampagne is a company that tracks the downloading of music, movies, video games, and other entertainment  online.   They track all by monitoring streaming feeds and the content users download through peer-to-peer networks.

The information obtain can be used for marketing purposes.  One way to use this information to your advantage is booking of live shows.  You can look up which areas had the highest or lowest download of an artist, and then adjust the seating capacity  for  each  local  area.

Or if a new video game is being released, but only a limited supply is produced.  The online data can be used to help determine which cities will receive the bulk of the inventory based on online interest.

So while the music industry can not completely stop the privacy of music online, they can at least use the trends and download data to their advantage.