Here in Israel I can’t get Pandora. I can’t get Spotify. I can’t get iTunes.
I’m learning about the blacked out world of music where millions, if not billions, of people are not able to buy music because it simply is not available.
What does this cause?
Well, here in Kinneret, Israel, I’m sitting with Ayelet Yagil, who runs the music section of ynet.co.il the news site most popular in Israel with about a million daily readers.
“I want to give my $.99 to the music company but I can’t. There is no legal way for me to get new music. So I go to Soulseek [a file sharing site] and take the song.”
Attempts to do an Israeli version with only Israeli songs failed. “That always fell through because of differences between the record companies,” Yagil says.
The interesting thing is the music industry HAS figured out how to work with mobile carriers in the Middle East and downloading of music onto your mobile phone is huge, but the music labels, Yagil says, can’t get along long enough to figure out a business model to open up to the Web.
So, we all remain in the dark and the music industry leaves hundreds of millions of dollars on the table and forces those in the blacked-out-world of music to steal.
That’s criminal.