I simply burst out laughing reading the Detroit News‘ article regarding Madonna’s sharply falling record sales. Her latest release MDNA debuted at #1 last week after selling 359,000 copies according to Nielsen SoundScan. Yet as the article indicated: Madonna set to make the wrong kind of chart history. Clearly author Adam Graham (@grahamorama) has no idea how torrents have simply crushed the music industry. If he does understand — it was not mentioned in his article.
Riddle me this: How does Nielsen, Billboard or any other entertainment resource accurately reflect the impact of torrents on sales? Ah….they can’t. The fact that Nielsen/Billboard still lists “traditional chart history” tells me another analog business is choking to death on the globalized internet.
I have come to accept that illegal downloads are no different than drugs, ebooks, guns or music. All are in heavy demand. The only difference: ebooks and music use the internet. Supply and demand. Nothing more.
Its been a long standing issue for me to see mainstream media really show how inept they are when it relates to the globalization of the internet. So what exactly did Adam Graham miss?
If you really want to understand the way the world works…
In a single word: Globalization. Today a very large number of illegal P2P servers are hosted outside the United States. Existing American copyright laws do not apply beyond our borders. The globalized internet will not enforce for example the Sonny Bono Copyright Act.
Within hours tens of thousands of users around the globe began illegally downloading MDNA before it was even lunch at your favorite old record store, big box retailer or even iTunes or Amazon. Once P2P sites download any new material its going to be replicated, shared and/or bartered … globally.
Pick a country — any country on the planet and today you will find a plethora of P2P servers. Its the nature of the beast and has been for many years. Yes the RIAA is trying to extend their reach across the globe but its slow in coming.
Didn’t realize torrents could be “offshored” as Tom Friedman wrote in his bestseller The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century? If you want a more focused view I suggest reading Hot Property: The Stealing of Ideas in an Age of Globalization by Pat Choate and Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tappscott.
Today just about all movies and music content is produced digitally. To the surprise of many MTV reported MDNA had actually been leaked to sharing sites two weeks before the official release date. Remember the last Star Wars movie was leaked to P2p sites …. way back in 2005?
Yea the internet had file sharing problems before 2005. Still does. Again — its the nature of the beast.
Regrettably Google makes stealing too simple:
1. Search ‘madonna mdna’ and look how Google auto-fills the results as you type:
2. Google ‘madonna mdna torrent’ and see how Google lists torrent sites with MDNA:
3. Take a closer look at the above yellow highlighted torrent site in Google’s results. This search result states: “come and download madonna mdna absolutely for free.”
For many that’s too hard to pass up.
4. Simply copy/pasting the Google search result (kat.ph/search/madonna%20mdna/) into any browser
5. View the multiple listings for torrenting MDNA:
Hint: plenty to choose from — and this site is not the largest torrent site on the internet.
And finally:
5. Click a torrent icon and start downloading….Again thanks to Google for showing anyone how this process is so simple.
But who the heck is “KickassTorrents” anyway? Lets go down the rabbit hole:
Open a terminal application on your computer and type the following: $ whois kickasstorrents.com
Domain Name: KICKASSTORRENTS.COM Registrar: BIZCN.COM, INC. Whois Server: whois.bizcn.com Referral URL: http://www.bizcn.com Name Server: NS1.KICKASSTORRENTS.COM Name Server: NS2.KICKASSTORRENTS.COM Status: clientDeleteProhibited Status: clientTransferProhibited Updated Date: 27-sep-2011 Creation Date: 25-sep-2004 Expiration Date: 25-sep-2016 Last update of whois database: Fri, 13 Apr 2012 17:18:34 UTC Registration Service Provided By: Bizcn.com Website: http://www.cnobin.com Whois Server: whois.bizcn.com Domain name: kickasstorrents.com Registrant Contact: Privacy-Protect.cn Henry Nguyen Gong contact@privacy-protect.cn +33.0466583875 fax: +33.0466583875 26 Rue Jean Reboul Nimes Languedoc-Roussillon 30900 fr Administrative Contact: Henry Nguyen Gong contact@privacy-protect.cn +33.0466583875 fax: +33.0466583875 26 Rue Jean Reboul Nimes Languedoc-Roussillon 30900 fr Technical Contact: Henry Nguyen Gong contact@privacy-protect.cn +33.0466583875 fax: +33.0466583875 26 Rue Jean Reboul Nimes Languedoc-Roussillon 30900 fr Billing Contact: Henry Nguyen Gong contact@privacy-protect.cn +33.0466583875 fax: +33.0466583875 26 Rue Jean Reboul Nimes Languedoc-Roussillon 30900 fr DNS: ns2.kickasstorrents.com ns1.kickasstorrents.com Created: 2004-09-25 Expires: 2016-09-25
So it seems there are points of contact all over the globe:
1. The vanity URL is assigned to a business address in Nimes Languedoc-Roussillon France
2. The kickasstorrent email contacts are assigned to a Canadian ISP.
3. The website host currently redirects to www.kat.ph — an address assigned in The Phillipeans.
These global points of contact reflect how torrent servers have to shut down and move their around the globe to avoid law enforcement.
Again kickasstorrents is just one of thousands of P2P servers. Google can have you downloading MDNA within minutes. Depending upon your ISP’s download speed a perfect digital copy of MDNA will be yours in less time than it takes to read this post. This happens every minute of every day — 24 hours a day. Adam Graham’s article projected only 46,000 sales for MDNA in its second week. I believe over 150,000 illegal downloads of MDNA have already occurred globally.
BTW the future of online piracy is magnet links. With fast internet connections the process is not only getting faster — pirates are getting smarter.
One reply on “MDNA: sales vs. torrents”
So you are saying that her epic fail in sales can be boiled down to illegal downloads??? LOL, hysterical. I guess Adele’s “21” cannot be uploaded or many other mega sellers in the past 17 or so years these sites have been around. Give me a break. The reason this album is doing so bad is A. content and B. lack of promotion C. M is out of touch with her audience and D. MARKETING-Distribution. I think what you mean to say is that people only buy what they really love, the rest they download for free. So although the charts may not truly predict how many have the album, it does show how popular the album is. As a pop-artist I think M would be very concerned with these sales vs her concert sales. Fewer people in America will download the free CD (with ticket sales) than will shell out 90 to 350 for a ticket to her concert. That’s a major wakeup call. They don’t care about you new experiment with music styles that have been around forever. They either want a nod to who you were or something that they can all identify with… If if you can’t do those two things, wow the f’out of them with spectacle and saturation ah-lah excessive promotion and marketing.
I wish people would stop making excuses for M and starting searching for solutions. Take the heat or get out of the kitchen. I personally don’t care about her celebrity or ‘new’ music anymore. This is due to her (and her managements) inabilities to market, not illegal downloading. Just get on stage M and perform your old stuff. Enough with everything else.