Eric Garland Quotations

Three to five years from now, we'll be looking at a system where you buy a digital file, and it plays on any digital device.

The Fab Four have always been among the very most popular bands online even though they're technically -- or legitimately -- unavailable online. My easy prediction is that the Beatles sell a lot of songs online, even though seemingly everybody who has access to them has their songs already.

Most people, most of the time, get their music free. And that's not a marketplace. In fact, it directly threatens the concept of the music marketplace.

None of these companies are essential in the mix. They're afterthoughts.

My easy prediction is that The Beatles will sell a lot of songs online, even though seemingly everybody who has access to them has their songs already.

Per capita, there's been a decline in song sales.

I think this just opens more doors and asks more questions than it answers, ... We're going to see a whole of litigation because there's still no clear standard.

I think that television and Hollywood film will have a much easier time of working with this phenomenon as opposed to battling it.

People are getting more free music on mp3s than they're getting on CDs. And nearly all those mp3s are illegally downloaded.

People are getting more free music on mp3s than they're getting on CDs, ... And nearly all those mp3s are illegally downloaded.

The ability to spend a million dollars on a video, maybe a million on radio promotion-- that's all dependent on people buying a $17 expression of the product. If people spend 1/17 of that, then all of these shoulda-been multi-platinum records are underwater. And that's what's happening.

Unlike downloading a Hollywood film, which I think everyone intuitively knows is a clear violation of the copyright, people do not have that sharp line, that distinction, in their minds when they download free TV.

File sharing has never been more popular than it is now, ... People have heard all the legal threats and admonitions, but that's not enough. They don't believe it.

The open-source community will continue to build new, uncensored versions.

Even bands with deep catalogs have hits, and then they have superstar hits. There may be 20 songs from Queen that people know, but really we're talking about two or three that are more popular by orders of magnitude. They're cultural staples. If I had the option to buy 9 songs instead of 12 songs on 'Meet the Beatles,' I might have done that.

Practically speaking, ... I don't know that it makes any difference to the kid in the dorm room. That genie is already out of the bottle.

There's always going to be a need for gatekeepers who perform the service that record labels do now. Otherwise, it's just noise, pure cacophony. Most people who are not A&R (Artist & Repertoire) executives don't want to sort through tens of thousands of contenders to find 50 things that sound great.

It's just like if Sony went out of business. Your Sony television would still function.

It's an existential question. To answer it, you'd have to get between the ears of everyone who downloads for free, every time they download something.

These Web sites and these businesses were shut down but it doesn't shut down the software, it doesn't shut down the (file-sharing) networks. The open-source community will continue to build new, uncensored versions.

But in the cases where people were downloading four or five or six songs from one work, 10 times out of 10 that album became a big seller at traditional retail. People still sometimes see the CD as a good investment.

If consumers feel it meets the standard of P2P, they'll be willing to try it, ... Otherwise, they won't care.

And 10 billion songs per year is a very conservative estimate.

The entertainment industry really needed this to be about the technology. What they didn't get was a decision that said 'tools that allow people to exchange files freely on the Internet, without permission, are illegal,'