Music industry 'should have engaged with Napster'

The music industry should have engaged with Napster from the beginning‚ the head of the BPI has insisted.

Fighting against file-sharing website Napster was probably the wrong thing for the music industry to do, it has been claimed.

In a column written for the BBC, Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the British Phonographic Association, suggested the industry should have engaged with the service from the beginning.

Napster was first launched in 1999 and is known as the internet's first file-sharing website, allowing users to download digital music stored on the hard drives of others.

Mr Taylor said Napster started a "storm of change" in the music industry and argued that record companies should have recognised the internet's potential for the distribution of songs and albums long before they did.

"Many critics have argued that the music industry could have avoided some of the problems it faces today if we had embraced Napster rather than fighting it," he explained.

"That's probably true and I, for one, regret that we weren't faster in figuring out how to create a sustainable model for music on the internet."

But he pointed out that while the launch of Napster may have acted as a turning point for the music industry, with the internet now accounting for 13 per cent of the BPI's revenues, the revolution it created is also threatening music.

Indeed, Mr Taylor said that the numerous file-sharing websites that have emerged in recent years allow web users to download copyrighted material without paying any royalties to the record companies or the artists involved.

Explaining this dilemma, he said: "In 1999 Napster developed a great digital service, but did so at the expense of music, while the music business protected music at the expense of progressing online digital services."

Commenting on the intellectual property issue recently, Sean Adams, founder and editor of online music magazine Drowned in Sound, explained that although most consumers know that music piracy is wrong, they will continue to download illegally as long as it is easy to do so.