Guy Kawasaki brings the concept of “framing”, much used in politics, to the music industry debate over DRM & “piracy”:
My goal is to draw lessons from linguistics and apply them to business because it is a very useful marketing technique. For example, “a music-listeners revolt” would imply that record companies are unfairly ruling people who listen to music. This beats the heck out of “piracy,” and the company who provides “relief” for this oppression is logically a hero.
I’d love to see the term “music-listeners revolt” used for illegal downloading rather than piracy, because that’s exactly what it is.
If it was easier to buy music legally that they can listen to anywhere and the cost was closer to the perceived value, people would obtain music legally. In fact recent studies showed that illegal downloading has little or no effect on music sales. People aren’t buying music because most mainstream music sucks. How many different sound-alike singers do we need whose songs sound exactly the same?