Here is Clear Channel using data on music downloading to sell to to radio stations to build up their listener base so that they can charge more for advertisers. Mcbride, Sarah. 2007. "Pirated Music Helps Radio Develop Playlists." (12 July): p. B 1. "Earlier this year, Clear Channel Communications Inc.'s Premiere Radio Networks unit began marketing data on the most popular downloads from illegal file-sharing networks to help radio stations shape their playlists. The theory is that the songs attracting the most downloads online will also win the most listeners on the radio, helping stations sell more advertising. In turn, the service may even help the record labels, because radio airplay is still the biggest factor influencing record sales. Premiere's Mediabase market-research unit is working on the venture with the file-sharing research service BigChampagne LLC. BigChampagne collects the data while a Premiere sales force of about 10 people pitches the information to radio companies and stations. Premiere declined to disclose how much it charges." "Joe Fleischer, BigChampagne's vice president for sales and marketing, adds that the legality of grabbing music is a separate issue from the insight into peoples' taste the downloads offer." "Mediabase has cut deals with stations at sister company Clear Channel Radio, as well as group-wide deals with Radio One Inc. and Emmis. According to BigChampagne's Mr. Fleischer, the partnership has already surpassed its target of signing up 100 radio stations this year."

(via Jeff Ely) An absolutely hilarious article on CNN about the musician formerly known as Prince giving away his new CD as part of a newspaper promotion. Are you surprised that the industry - whose business model can only be described as threatened by this - is furious?

This is my favorite part of the article:

Also fueling retailers' ire is what they see as a traitorous move by one of their own. After initially harshly criticizing Prince and the deal, music and books retailer HMV, which doesn't normally sell newspapers, decided to sell the Mail on Sunday in its 400-plus stores across the country.

"Like it or not, selling the newspaper is the only way to make the Prince album available to our customers," HMV said.

Rival retailers were outraged.

"We're stunned that HMV has decided to take what appears to be a complete U-turn on their stance," said Simon Douglas, managing director of retail at Virgin Megastores. "It's not only retailers that suffer; the public will suffer in the long term by restricting choice on the high street."

"Is Intellectual Property the Key to Success?" by Jeffrey Tucker is posted at the Ludwig von Mises Institute website. A sample:

Merchants are free to attempt to create artificial scarcity, and that is what happens when a company keeps it codes private or photographers put watermarks on their images online. Proprietary and "open-source" products can live and prosper side-by-side, as we learn from any drug store that offers both branded and generic goods inches apart on the shelves.

But what you are not permitted to do in a free market is use violence in the attempt to create an artificial scarcity, which is all that IP legislation really does. Benjamin Tucker said in the 19th century that if you want your invention to yourself, the only way is to keep it off the market. That remains true today.

So consider a world without trademark, copyright, or patents. It would still be a world with innovation perhaps far more of it. And yes, there would still be profits due to those who are entrepreneurial. Perhaps there would be a bit less profit for litigators and IP lawyers but is this a bad thing?

Lawrence Lessig has a nice op-ed in the Washington Post today (link here) on what you might be tempted to call corporate piracy: they are allowing Eyespot, an internet site that provides technology for video remixing, to make clips from the Star Wars movies available to its users for their remix projects. The catch? Under the provisions of copyright law relating to derivative works, Lucasfilms will own any remixes that incorporate their clips, and any additional material or images that the remix includes. Lucasfilms will, of course, be entitled to use these without compensating the remix artist. Lessig's characterization of this as digital sharecropping seems apt.

In 2000 pre-recorded music accounted for two-thirds of musicians' income; concert tickets and paraphenalia sales earned the rest. Now, in "A Change of Tune" the percentages are reversed.

The record labels aren't happy. Pre-recorded music has become a marketing tool for live performances and T-shirt sales. (No wonder the Grateful Dead, which no longer tours but still has its name emblazoned on T-shirts, is suing Wolfgang's Vault. John Perry Barlow, if you're reading this, call off your attack dog lawyers, if you haven't already.)

The labels have invented a new business model, the 360 degree contract, encompassing live performances and other income sources, which are important in places where "piracy" reigns.

Artists are less receptive to the new model, recognizing that they could be better served by management agencies.

Artists are giving away their music as a promotional vehicle. Prince will give away his new album in England July 15.

The Economist shows why the pharmaceutical industry is gradually overthrowing its blockbuster model in "Beyond the Blockbuster".

As many of Big Pharma's drugs go off patent, it is becoming increasingly difficult for drug firms to replace their lost revenues and earnings, let alone to meet the market's growth expectations. In 2006 $18 billion in revenues from these drugs disappeared.

That's why they are turning toward targeted therapies that are an important part of personalized medicine. Sales from specialty drugs have doubled since 2000, and were two-thirds of new revenue growth in 2006. Meanwhile only 25 per cent of new drugs treat chronic diseases, which seems to indicate that they are producing more specialty drugs.

A group of institutional investors produced a report questioning the viability of the blockbuster model, and expressing doubt that Big Pharma's business model can produce targeted drugs. Change is in the air.

There is a nice blog Recording Industry Versus the People tracking the RIAA's warfare against their customers. It is sad reading. Most interesting is that a few people are starting to strike back by countersuing. Based on their complaints, it appears that the RIAA feels that the law is only for other people, not for themselves. Perhaps the courts will begin to function as they are intended, rather than as the long arm of the "music police."

Pirate Bay, the well known site that allows you to exchange music, movies, games, and software regardless of copyright, has now opened a new service, BayImg, allowing you to upload images under Swedish law with similar freedom from copyright law and censorship link here. It has also announced it will be hosting videos which will offer a real challenge to YouTube. It will be interesting to see how many users respond and how much competition this offers since YouTube has adopted a policy of working with copyright holders to take down such material when requested.

Dan Mitchell reports in the New York Times that Lawrence Lessig is shifting his focus to combat the influence of money on politics, which yields bad laws and not just the bad laws governing intellectual property link here. Lessig himself is in print link here and he has a YouTube posted link here . "Politicians are starved for the resources concentrated interests can provide," he wrote in his blog. "In the United States, listening to money is the only way to secure re-election. And so an economy of influence bends public policy away from sense, always to dollars."

Steven Shapin writes entertainingly in the New Yorker about our futuristic vision of innovation on which we impose several layers of mistakes link here. He goes on to consider how much we depend on old technology. A striking example was that we went to war on the ground in Afghanistan on horseback, following up on B-52 bombing runs, after being highly dependent on horses and mules in World War II. He draws heavily on "The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900" (Oxford; $26), by David Edgerton, a well-known British historian of modern military and industrial technology. New or old , the defining characteristic of current technology is whether it is useful.

He then calls our attention to "technological palimpsests," old technology that gets reshaped and refurbished to perform new uses and how dependent we are on it and how important the role of maintenance is in keeping our economy running.

This is a clever off-beat view of innovation, entailing a re-evaluation of what is really important in how we live our lives, fundamentally questioning how important innovation really is, and indirectly, the cult of intellectual property. Read it and change your mindset.