News - BT plans free music download service

[HEXUS]

In a bid to beat illegal filesharing.

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[[GSV]Myocardial]

And once established will we see introduction of charging and then a ramping up of that charging over time until the music industry are again pulling in vast amounts of money.

I laughed when I heard news reports about PRS indicating that royalties had fallen for the first time and then everyone linking it to illegal downloads. In the real world the rest of us are experiencing a recession. CD sales down and a lack in growth of online sales does not instantaneously mean that everyone is illegally downloading. Maybe people just don't value music above food, fuel and everything else that has increased in price as well as a fair few who have been or are under threat of redundancy.

Maybe if the record industry is having such hard times, the likes of PRS, PPL, RIAA and MPAA should all take a pay cut or stop charging any fees etc, or maybe hell will freeze over first. I mean 12% of £628m collected by PRS in 2009 is not to be sniffed at, but I wonder how much their pay rises were this year with falling revenues?