Ex Music industry chief wants £1 albums: piracy beater?

You might not know the name, but Rob Dickins used to run Warner Brothers music in the UK and he is also a former chairman of the BPI. In a recent music conference in Manchester he told the assembled crowd that he believes downloaded music albums should cost £1 or less.

While this is not going to be a popular statement within the music industry in some ways it does make perfect sense. Piracy is rife, with people not wanting to pay £10 for new albums on iTunes and other online stores. The industry is losing a fortune with bitorrent and newsgroups offering hundreds of thousands of albums for nothing.

Dickins has said that he feels the iTunes model is the way forward, but that prices are far too high. He said that if the price was lower that over 200 million downloads of top albums would be a possibility. After all £7-10 is a purchase we would think about, but £1 would certainly be a more ‘casual, spur of the moment' spend.

Of course you could always pose the counter debate that it doesn't matter if it was 50p or £10, people who download their music will never buy anything anyway, but at KitGuru we aren't sure we agree. If the price is right people will buy things.

KitGuru says: Would you buy more music if it was available for £1 an album or would you still download it illegally for nothing anyway? please share your views

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