In a survey of over 200 record label managers, PR agents, producers, artists and promo companies, UK website, DanceTrasmission.co.uk reports that 74.3% of all respondents surveyed cited downloading as having a negative affect on their business. While this is expected, this report uncovers sentiments from a segment of the industry that is rarely polled.

77.6% of respondents said that piracy is hurting dance music more today than it was 5-years ago, with 18% responding that they are not sending out promos in the hopes to stem piracy of their releases. 17.4% and 16.1% use methods like voice overs and low bit rate promos to limit the effects of file sharing and only 18% employ secondary companies to issue take down notices.

Over 65.8% generally take action against sites by issuing take down notices, with 65.5% reporting those efforts are effective some of the time. 65% of respondents surveyed believe that Google should block torrent and pirate sites, but 61.4% said they don’t know how to file a copyright infringement claim with the company. Google’s copyright infringement policy is listed on their web site here: http://www.google.co.uk/dmca.html. Google also owns YouTube, which has a different infringement policy page listed on their web site here: http://www.youtube.com/t/dmca_policy. Both websites state that you must send a written communication of your infringement claim. For legal and process reasons, they don’t offer web forms. If they did, it would be easier for some to make false infringement claims or duplicate claims. At the end of the day, issuing take down notices is labor intensive and only effective half the time. How effective is difficult to measure, because once you issue a take down that to a site, your music can pop up somewhere else. 34% said they take no action, which implies that they either don’t have the resources to deal with the issue or they let it go with the knowledge they are getting some promotional value out of piracy.

62.8% think the UK government should target ISP’s and download sites in an attempt to limit piracty, while only 5.1% think they should target users. But, users are not off the hook. 50.6% think that the UK government should implement a “3-strikes” rule for those who are caught file sharing. What that would look like, we can’t say. The question is then, how much file sharing constitutes one strike? Is it 10 files on one-day or 100 files an hour? It is very difficult to define a law prohibiting file sharing by users, because it’s hard to agree on when to take action.

Sending out promos to blogs and music journalists has always been an important tool to get the word out about new releases. 65.6% say they allow blogs to post their files, but 49.3% report it’s harder to get reviews from links to downloads than from physical copies. 37.5% report it made no difference, but the fact that a majority find it harder can possibly be attributed to the level of email spam. It’s much harder to differentiate spam than it is a physical CD which arrives at your door. At Netmix, we get a ton of digital promos via email, but rarely open or listen to them, mainly because some PR companies and labels send promos through services like MediaFire, which ask you to pay for faster download speeds, or YouSendIt.com, who’s links expire after a few days.. While those services are excellent for tracking open rates, journalists can’t subscribe to all of them for obvious reasons. SoundCloud.com provides a much better solution, and we see the industry moving in that direction.

57.4% saying the no longer send out CD promos. For most independents, it’s not cost effective to invest in CD promos. It’s much easier to use SoundCloud and forward links, but what we see lacking is aggressive follow up. We get a ton of email, but rarely do we get anyone following up with us to see if we posted their music. The reports states that 37.8% of respondents in the survey cited expense as the underlying factor in not using promotion services. In this era of do-it-yourself (DIY), many label upstarts don’t see the benefit if independent dance promotion services. But, it could mean the difference between a hit record or something that falls on deaf ears.

We’d love to get your feedback. Leave us a comment.

To view the poll, please visit http://www.dancetransmission.co.uk.

Peter Kafka on Tech Ticker

Everyone seems to have an opinion on what ails the music industry. In this Yahoo! Finance Tech Ticker video interview, Silicon Insider managing editor, Peter Kafka proposes that labels drop supporting new music and focus on their valuable catalogs. Doing so would leave the door open to independent labels to figure out how to sell music in a digital era.

Then again, if things continue the way they are, major labels will end up getting dropped from the stock exchanges anyway, once their stock drops below a buck for a few quarters. Once that happens, they could feasibly take themselves private and go back to the way things used to be. Cultivating artists instead of churning out pop crap to see if it sticks to the wall.

On the other side, Sony Music Entertainment, the new entity born out of BMG’s desire to extract itself from the music business, may know something we don’t. Or, they may be doing exactly what Kafka thinks is going to happen, control the masters of all those hits over the last 50 + years and/or simply control the music in a convergence strategy tied to their original video content.

We’ll keep watching and waiting for the music giants to figure it all out, while the digital era continues to chip away at their profits.

In this video interview with Portfolio Magazine, Korean music executive Jin-Young Park discusses broadband penetration in South Korea and how that has affected music sales and what he believes is the death of the album as we know it. He sees a future in singles sales and the band as a brand, it’s name plastered over phone cards, devices, merchandise and a host of other marketable products.

What may be great for the pop-star isn’t as appealing to musicians who are cautious about selling out. The jury is still out on how those artists are going to survive in a music business that could ultimately be even more damaged by aligning itself with corporations than actually being about the music and the fan first. If music fans are willing to accept the double-edged trade off, then take the check and cash it.

Former Talking Head’s frontman gives his take on how emerging artists should look at the music industry situation.

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