This week saw the end of the trial against the 4 swedish Pirate Bay owners, or at least the end for now.. Because you can be sure that they’re going to appeal, especially since many (about half) of the charges were dropped on the second day of trial because of lack of evidence.. a fact that lead many to believe, that the outcome would have been very different… Well it wasn’t!

Now depending on the outcome… well no let me start again, no matter the outcome of the appeal, there is no doubt that a whole lot of new “bays” will shoot up on the web. It’s an easy comparison to my own hometown of Copenhagen, where cops are now battling violent drug gang fights all over town, because politicians decided to close the part of Christiania, where drugs (the kind you smoke more or less organically) were sold openly, and under controlled circumstances..

By doing that they lost control, and opened up a can of worms they, for years now, haven’t been able to close again. The same will happen on the web with torrent sites, or grow even bigger than it already is i should rather say. But that is, believe it or not, the least of the record labels problems..

The reason they should start thinking about their situation hard is the next line of big names they have been signing the last 2-3 years, the last year in particular. Because it has become a rule with up and coming artist, and genre is not an issue here, that you build your rep with mixtapes. Now there’s nothing new about that, what has changed is that now artist put the first many out there for download, free of charge. At the moment most of the next big guns like Kid Cudi, Chester French, Asher Roth and so forth, have been consistantly putting hot free mixtapes out.

It’s not like the labels don’t know about this, how do you think they hear about them. The best example right now is rock/pop/rap duo Chester French, that got signed by Pharrell. Lucky for them, because he knows what is going on, and allows them to continue to build on the online buzz. But like we told you the other day, the majors start with restrictions, when they sign artist. Showing once more that they have no idea how their customers live.

Of course i’m not suggesting that downloading and surpassing the fee for artists and labels, is the right way to do it. But let’s be real it’s part of life now, and has been for some time. So that means it’s up to the artists and labels to figure out how to use it to their advantage. The artist, are pretty much on top of it… If the labels are to survive, they will have to be as well. And frantic attempts to try to control, or constantly being the bad villain, in lawsuits against companies like The Pirate Bay is not the anwer!

Ooh… and download the Chester French mixtape here, it’s completely legal, and who knows, it may make you want to buy the album when it drops..

Streetbeat