The music industry faced some criticism at its own international conference this week, with one speaker telling the audience to learn from the Internet's "dark side."
"There is innovation happening but it's coming from the dark side of the Internet, from pirates, from the underground," Michael Robertson, founder of MP3Tunes, said. "... You have to look underground, to see what people are doing and then give them commercial outlets that mirror that."
Robertson had to speak via video feed to the MidemNet audience in Cannes, France, because he is currently in the U.S. defending his company in a copyright infringement lawsuit. MP3Tunes allows users to store their music online and access it from any Web-enabled device, a service that EMI Group argues is unauthorized.
But Robertson wasn't the only big name to criticize the music industry. Google Vice President David Eun said music groups need to question how much they are innovating, and how much more innovation could be done. He also encouraged partnerships instead of attacks.
"Being partners means that you work together ... and you don't necessarily presume that the other person is trying to screw you frankly," Eun said.
At the same conference, it was revealed that illegally-downloaded songs account for 95 percent of all digital music downloads. That's 40 billion songs per year, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry estimated.
Despite this egregious statistic, sympathy for the music industry is hard to find. Only until recently, the Recording Industry Association of America's cornerstone of battling piracy entailed suing individual music sharers. Meanwhile, the industry continues to see yearly revenue declines, leading to the perception that it is fighting the digital age rather than embracing it.
