Last week, The Guardian covered a story that we’ve been banging on about for a few years now - that Bluetooth file sharing of music and ringtones is taking off.
In fact, it’s reaching epidemic proportions and is one reason why the income yield per page for mobile content advertising is declining so rapidly. But it’s equally easy to argue that Bluetooth file sharing really isn’t an issue at all, as a Bluetooth file share episode is completely untraceable and untrackable.
I can tell you than I have plenty of anecdotal evidence from kids I talk to that if you ask how much they pay for ringtones, they look at you as if you’re barking mad. Who pays for ringtones these days, apart from rich kids or those that don’t know better?
The fact that these sharing episodes are untraceable raises a very interesting point for those in the music industry who want to try to stuff this particular cat back into the bag. Unlike mobile’s online cousin, no ISP or operator can be bullied or sued to reveal culprits of this “crime”. The fact is, no one knows.
The only way you might be able to find kids who have shared files in this way is to impound their mobile phone, physically examine the content and demand proof of purchase or right of ownership. This seems a little extreme, both logistically and legally. I’m not a lawyer, but I can’t see the courts allowing the music industry to impound someone’s phone on the mere suspicion (or less) that they might have done something like this. Plus it would surely be up to the prosecutor to prove that the defendant had downloaded something illegally, not that the defendant would have to prove their innocence.
This means that the music industry is going to be forced to confront its demons and work out how they can make money in an age when digital music must be free - no other outcome is possible here.
The first move will be to cling to the DRM life raft, in the hope that it’ll keep them afloat in the sea of piracy. Unfortunately, DRM is fatally flawed and badly listing already. There never has been an uncrackable DRM system and there never will be, as no matter how foolproof any system purports to be, some geek somewhere will unlock it for fun. And once there’s just one unlocked copy, that’ll turn into two and four and….you get the picture. Just one geek is all it takes, every time.
Despite this clear and present danger, it’s interesting to see that EMI, for one, have decided to dive straight into the Bluetooth channel, by teaming up with Nokia. The bFree service has launched in Finland, offering free (for the time being) downloads of digital content, such as ringtones, logos and wallpapers.
Is this a sign that the record industry is finally coming to terms with the new paradigms? Or another that they don’t know what the hell they’re doing?
What do you think?
Actually, one way you track this stuff is by using watermarking. Watermark tracks with a unique ID when you sell them, then pick em off the network and you can see who’s been distributing your stuff. All the record labels need is a few high-profile cases to scare folks a bit.
Seems to make much more sense to me than DRM as watermarking doesn’t impact on law-abiding customers. It’s not uncrackable by any means if you’re determined enough - but hey, just make it *easier* to buy music than crack it in a foolproof fashion.
Not sure I’ll buy the Bluetooth filesharing tsunami until there’s some (non-anecdotal) evidence for it. A straw poll of friends children (aged 13-17) over the last few months showed up no knowledge of it.
EMI/Nokia means nothing for the industry at large - it’s just a trial. Hey, they sold the last Robbie Williams album on an SD card, but that means little for the future of music distribution.
Thanks for the comment, Tom.
Yes, rather lazily, I lumped watermarking in with DRM. Mainly because, as you point out, it can still be cracked and “clean” copies still circulated.
Maybe we’ll see File Sharing meets start up - kind of rave meets Pokemon swapping meets swingers’ session where you have to provide proof of the “health” (or non-tracability) of your content.
As far as the tsnunami, well, who knows and who can tell? I’ve spoken to three groups of kids from 3 different London schools in the past week. They all claimed to be doing it. They were in a South London public (ie private) school an East London multi-racial one and a North London posh comprehensive.
I’m sure these aren’t isolated incidents. But equally, I’m sure there’s loads of schools/kids who haven’t cottoned on.
They will though.
Russell
Hi chaps,
I wonder how much things like user awareness of bluetooth etc is dependent on the users location. I interviewed someone the other day who came from a direct to consumer background and he discussed the fact that the ‘outside london’ effect was well known. I wonder how much more savvy the London/Cosmopolitan mobile user is compared to his rural bethren?
Njar
Just wait until Ultra Wide Band becomes available in phones, pda, psp, and such.
Bluetooth is just scratching the surface.
http://www.intel.com/technology/comms/uwb/
I’m not sure watermarking would help that much here — there’s no network in this instance like the file-sharing networks where you can just pluck a file off and check its watermark.
Personally, I thought the Guardian article was a load of crap. I don’t disagree that kids are trading content via Bluetooth, but to cast it as a dangerous new frontier for the record industry to confront is disingenuous — but that’s what happens you rely solely on people in the music business for your sources.
Bluetooth file-sharing for music will remain a minor problem, for a variety of reasons. First off, Bluetooth isn’t all that fast, so swapping sizable amounts of MP3s is impractical. Second, it’s really not going to expand the sphere of file-sharers very much beyond those that are already doing it on PCs.
As Russell and Tom both said, the solution isn’t better DRM, or even DRM at all. It’s to quit worrying about file-sharing, either by focusing on other revenue streams than selling music, or by making it so cheap and easy to legitimately buy music that there’s little incentive to trade files.
I agree with Carlo: I don’t think BT file sharing is taking off.
To add a third reason why I think it won’t unleash an epidemic: unless there isn’t a nifty application, BT file sahring won’t have any remarkable network effects. It’s always sharing 1-to-1 and that never makes a tsunami.
And since mobile phones remain being a quite closed architecture the music industry won’t have to many problems impeding this kind of application.
Christian - thanks for the comment. Out of interest, why do you say 1-to-1 never makes a tsunami?
How about Skype, sms, email, Hotmail and Napster - weren’t they all examples of 1-to-1? Or have I missed the point you’re making here?
Russell
The difference is that each of those becomes more valuable as the network of users grows. This doesn’t really apply to Bluetooth in quite the same manner, since the number of users one can connect to at any given moment is still limited, by physical proximity if nothing else.
Hmmm, I’m not so sure that it doesn’t apply. What Bluetooth does is impose a physical limitation on file sharing ie I have to be within x metres (depending on version of Bluetooth) of you to share a file.
However, just because a network is local doesn’t necessarily make it less efficient. In some ways it makes it more powerful, as you can see who you’re sharing with and therefore you’re less likely to upload to a hostile source or download from one or an infected source, for that matter.
The key to the power of the network here is; can an individual obtain the files they really want from a local network? If yes, the location dimension is irrelevant. If no, then it’s a problem.
A further aspect of its power is that recruitment to the network is easier and more powerful as it relies purely on word of mouth. In other words, newbies can have it explained to them, even if they’re technically illiterate, as the person recruiting them is standing right next to them.
I don’t have any particular interest in promoting file sharing via Bluetooth, but it is happening in the UK and it’s also being promoted by Nokia - not just via the bFree experiment, but this is intrinsic to Sensor, for example.
Russell
Network effects don’t really have anything to do with efficiency (although I’d also argue that Bluetooth isn’t a particularly efficient way to share multi-megabyte music files
), it’s the idea that the value of the item or service grows as the number of people using it grows. With a phone network, or Skype, or a P2P program, it becomes more valuable as more people join the network — there are more people you can call, or more files available for download.
This isn’t really the case with Bluetooth because there’s no network, per se. If another person gets a Bluetooth phone, the value of Bluetooth for file-sharing doesn’t increase to me the same way another person getting on Kazaa and putting their music library on there does.
This is the reason why things like Sensor have such a hard time getting going. There are too many variables to let the network grow quickly and easily. I have to be near you, have a phone that can run the app, a phone that’s got Bluetooth, have Bluetooth turned on, have the app, have it running, etc etc. It’s the antithesis of something like Skype, where I just turn the app on and I’m plugged in to a whole network of people with whom I can communicate with.
As you say, it’s fairly irrelevant if people can get the files they want in spite of the limitations. And I also agree that this type of file-sharing does go on.
But, that said, I don’t think it’s going to be anywhere near as big a “problem” for the music industry as wired P2P. Not for quite a while, anyway.
Getting back to a point you made in the original point, Russell, this is just further evidence that the music business needs to evolve. This isn’t a new “problem”, it’s the same one, just via a different method. The real problem here — the music industry’s outmoded business models — hasn’t changed either.
Thanks Carlo for explaining and evoloving my point. You’ve nailed it down.
But to be clear: I neither want to ridicule BT file-sharing. I only think it won’t be as epidemic as “real” file-sharing.
As I write that I ponder if the present kind of BT file-sharing might even not be a “network”. It rather alway constitutes a 1-1 connection ad hoc. And this doesn’t only depend on the physical limitation of BT. It is rather the same why IM file sharing never really take off (or has it?). The point is that - if there is no special application - you can only send each other files. You don’t really “share” your library, hence you can’t search etc… It is like giving you a copy as cassettte of my Vinyl except that is doesn’t cost 30 cents and the copy is perfect.
Has anyone tried Nokia’s Sensor? As well as MoSoSo, it’s meant to make file sharing on BT much easier.
I also think there’s an opportunity for an app that makes exploring someone’s library and sharing it easier. Not sure what the biz model would be though.
Nokia is giving Sensor away free, at least for the moment.
Russell
what if people become the network instead of 1-1 filesharing as it is at the moment? Create a “surrounding” network using a mesh like technology/topolgy (there is more possible than the ad-hoc typology) Besides bluetooth 2.0 is a lot faster than the earlier bluetooth versions most phones are supporting at this moment and some are commenting about…and in 2007 WiFi (with speeds above 54Mbps) will become mainstream in all mobile phones. We can all become a node! And what if we connect these dynamic networks to other networks connected to the internet? I don’t think that this will make any operator very happy.
Whatever the joys of mobile technology, the real issue will be for the record labels to add value to their products, an issue born of digital music pretty much from the beginning.
We’ve already seen that a physical compact disk has a certain value but that the convenience of mp3 downloads out weighs a cool album sleeve.
Ofcourse with mobile technology i believe there is a kind of convenience race that IP owners have to play against users’ friends. Can they reach a user, and sell them something, before that user is given the same product free by a friend.
If a kid could have as much fun with a mobile portal as they could interacting with a friend’s phone there could be less of a line between buying and swapping. i’m sure this is only scratching the surface of retailing strategy in a digitally connected market.
For me and my development aspirations it’s down to a protocal called JSR75, something which allows j2me applications to access a handsets contents. This protocal in many handsets, coupled with broadband style mobile data packages, should bring some healthy HTTP sharing and all kinds of other great things…
If operators and content providers learn to use things like the DLNA to develop applications that make social sharing & recommendations easy, followed up with reasonably priced easy downloads, you get the social aspect paired with legal downloads . . .
I think that as devices get WiFi, the providers must learn to appropriately price and allow for sharing of content else they will fall into the illegal trap you mention. Creating apps that improve the browsing of my buddies contents . . . allow streaming, but prevent copying and send me a link to a $.25 download, I’d pull down the songs that I enjoyed - wouldnt you?
Sorry for late response;)
Hi all,
Here is my contribution to this interesting discussion:
- Exchanging MP3 files by Bluetooth is easy and fast enough. I think Bluetooth is even faster than 3G most of the time.
- Bluetooth file sharing is not a worldwide Tsunami yet. Bluetooth Awareness is very different from country to country. In number of users, the UK is the #1 country for Bluetooth messaging (File sharing, Bluejacking, Toothing…). And the Middle East is #1 for adoption rate and the density of users. If you have the opportunity to go to a mall in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait for example… you could be surprised by the intense Bluetooth messaging activity!
- Bluetooth file sharing will not allow you to find a specific ringtone in your vicinity. It is more a new way to socialize (like asking for a cigarette before). In Real Life, this is the most common scenario: Tom is talking with a group of friends at school when his phone rings. His phone plays “Goodbye my lover” from James Blunt! Everybody is surprised and envious. All the girls are asking Tom: “Send it to me! Please!”. What a dream
Other scenario: Linda is having an ice cream at Haagen Dasz with her friends. Her Nokia on the table in front of her beeps and asks “Accept a Bluetooth message from BradPit?”! Of course! After a few seconds her phone plays the latest Shakira hit. Several boys at a nearby table are looking to her and smiling…
- In order to send an MP3 file by Bluetooth to another phone you don’t need any specific application. The file transfer is using the standard OBEX (Object Exchange) Bluetooth protocol supported by 95% of Bluetooth phones. For example, if you are using MobiLuck on your phone you can send sounds to other Bluetooth phones very easily, even if they don’t have MobiLuck. 27% of MobiLuck users think that “File sharing” is one of the best benefits of the application.
Olivier