EMI's Ex-Google Merrill Clueless Out of Gate, Offers Platitudes, Panders to Pirates

Cayocosta

Piracy bad, file-sharing okay. The industry's fight against piracy just got harder now that EMI is on record stating that it all depends on how you look at it:

"I'm passionate about data," Merrill said during a phone interview Wednesday with CNET News.com. "For example, there's a set of data that shows that file sharing is actually good for artists. Not bad for artists. So maybe we shouldn't be stopping it all the time. I don't know...I am generally speaking (against suing fans). Obviously, there is piracy that is quite destructive but again I think the data shows that in some cases file sharing might be okay. What we need to do is understand when is it good, when it is not good...Suing fans doesn't feel like a winning strategy."

Try anything and see what sticks - never mind how long this is going to take to deploy (and quantify) and that we might run out of cash first:

More specifically, Merrill said he would see whether a Google ad model will work for music. But he's willing to try music subscriptions and even an ISP fee. Certainly, what came across about what strategies Merrill intends to use is that he's not married to any one idea.

We've already witnessed ten years of failed experimentation, with the looting worse now then ever - systemic and virtually unfettered - yet EMI is keen to embark on a costly super-complication of the distribution of otherwise free content:

"I think there is going to be a lot of different models," Merrill said. "Those are two (subscriptions and ISP fees) you can imagine. I'm not sure that either one of those will be the most dominant model. But they are both interesting. We should try them and see what the data says. Other options will be things like you can imagine supporting music through relevant targeted ads, the Google model. There is a dozen of other things...we should try them all. We should see what the data says and whatever it says, we should follow the data, and follow our users and let them help guide us. We should engage in a broad conversation about art."

Spoken like a true geek department; or, now might be a good time to study the history of Motown, Atlantic, etc.:

"I think it's important to figure out where can record labels add value," Merrill said. "I don't know the answer."

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