When I got my personality it included a desire to analyze everything. My mom has told of how when I was younger I would sit and play with a single toy for hours on end. I am sure the time I spent seemed much longer around my older brother who at the time never sat still. This analytical perspective of mine translated in a less pleasant way later in my life. I have often analyzed the imperfect details of someone’s actions or words only to lose sight of the broader picture. This has in past lead to prolonged arguments that did not produce the desired results of any participant.
As time has passed I have found a much more effective way to come to conclusions includes paying attention more to the other persons motives and desires than what they are actually saying. I often see conflicts arise around me where all parties are making arguments that really just distract from the issue. I recently read of one example of this.
With the advent of Napster, and the following of many other file sharing applications, budget conscious music listeners turned to this new alternative to get music. The only problem was that those who where sharing their music had not been given permission to do so by the intellectual property owners. Naturally many of those property owners went to the courts to penalize those sharing the content. This turned into a publicity nightmare for the music industry with stories spreading such as that of a young girl who had made her music available on her computer and was fined millions of dollars. Even with the many legal battles that sought to make example a handful of those sharing their files there was little affect on the illegal distribution of music.
Moving forward a few years we have the New York Times reporting the trend finally reversing and the reason has little to do with legalities:
In June, two British research agencies, MusicAlly and The Leading Question, generated a wave of headlines in the tech press after reporting that the percentage of 14- to 18-year-olds using file-sharing services at least once a month dropped to 26 percent in January 2009 from 42 percent in December 2007.
Similarly, a survey by the NPD Group in the United States this spring found that teenagers aged 13 to 17 illegally downloaded 6 percent fewer tracks in 2008 than in 2007, while more than half said they were now listening to legal online radio services like Pandora, up from 34 percent the year before.
The reason is that now there are alternatives that meet what the consumers wanted in the first place. We now have ad supported online music services like Pandora and slacker radio that let you tell them exactly what you do and do not want to hear. These services often provide what people want better than the download networks and they are legal.
What the music companies were hearing before from downloader’s was “I am taking your music, because I can” but if they would have listened a little more carefully they would have heard “I want to get music quick and free over the internet and I really don’t mind ads on web pages if that is what it takes.” My point here is that the music industry could have simply listened to what the consumers actual desires were and come to a solution in a much less painful way.
This is similar to what I eventually realized as a missionary about what some people were saying to me. We would often me dismissed for reasons that defied all sensible thinking. After some experience I found what they actually were saying was often “I have gone to the same church my entire life, I may not agree with everything that goes on there but all of my family and friends go there and that is all I care about.” This certainly elicited a different response on my behalf.
