Jonathan Peterson briefly summarizes a new Forrester report on MP3s and the recording industry:

Forrester has a new report stating the obvious: the music industry needs to let customers decide when, where and how they listen to music. Unsurprisingly, Big Content isn’t listening:

The music label executives we spoke with are so sure piracy is destroying their business, that they seemed strangely uninterested in the truth. After citing statistics about the sales of recordable blank CDs and threatening technical interdictions that would force pirates to reboot their PCs, one averred that “Research is useless at this stage.”

Interestingly Forrester forecasts a $2.1Billion business in downloadable music, led by a reinvigorated pop single marketplace and big fans who are willing to snap up productized digital “bootlegs”, singles, and live versions of major acts.

Peercasting is completely beneath the Forrester radar at this point. They are predicting that the egregious CARP fees can be made up by the revenues generated by selling singles while listening. Unfortunately, no internet radio station has the deep financial pockets needed to build the

Fear makes people stupid. Unfortunately, we are all likely to suffer from the recording industry’s fear.

Categories: Uncategorized dw