On Twitter, former Warner Music CTO Ethan Kaplan greets the "surprising" news that file sharing of pre-release albums drives demand with acerbic and admirable sarcasm: "Let me simplify this answer: YES IT LEADS TO MORE SALES. DEMAND = DEMAND W/ $$$$$$ IF PRODUCT GOOD."

Simplified further: MUSIC BUSINESS (RECORDED): your product isn't diamonds mined from a secret mythical land.
And beyond broadband/napster/whatever, what hurt you the most is PEOPLE FIGURED THAT OUT. Cynicism caught up with you.

Ethan's one of the good'uns.

Former Record Label Exec Ethan Kaplan: Duh, Of Course More File Sharing Leads To More Sales

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I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Business • Copyfight • file sharing • music

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Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

http://www.fagerland.org tofagerl

Friday someone posted Gorillaz – DARE (Live) on Reddit. No idea where it came from, cause it was from the Glastonbury set which has never been released.
Long story short: 48 hours later I own three of their albums and have ordered the live DVD. That’s a lot of money I never intended to spend on music until someone “stole” their copyright and then linked it to me.
Andrew Singleton

Most of what entertainment I have (including books) started out as me either pirating, youtubing, or downloading a badly OCR’d pdf. Lot of it is stuff I never would have considered if i had to shell money out BEFORE getting my mitts on it.

Since then it’s been mostly a process of making legal the things I’ve enjoyed and junking the stuff I found lacking because it’s taking up drive space.
- Fnordius
  
  This.
  
  A million times this.
  
  Even playwrights have gotten performance royalties they wouldn’t have otherwise gotten due to making free PDF’s available, and being smart enough to include contact info. (In my case it was for an amateur production where I was able to contact the author, ask for his permission and directly negotiate performance rights).
cymk

I agree with you tofagerl, half the music I’ve bought is from bands I would have never heard of without file sharing. Though I’ve found some pretty wretched bands via file sharing.
- Anon_Mahna
  
  I credit youtube for my ever expanding collection of folk metal and metal bands from europe. Also I would have likely never heard one of the most epic songs ever..
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reOLeLX0Q9U
  
  Now I’m just waiting until this week’s paycheque hits the bank to order several Heidvolk cds
  - cymk
    
    If you dig Heidvolk, give Turisas and Tyr a listen.
johng

The RIAA will go down as the biggest consortium of stupid greedy baboons that has ever walked the face of the earth.
noah django

(￣▽￣)ノ＿彡☆バンバン！!

Former Warner Music CTO: Of course leaked albums drive sales!

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