Prescription For The Music Industry
Research claims that the music industry needs to rapidly change its business model to survive. It claims that the percentage of music buyers purchasing from legal sources has fallen though music fans do pay on average for 3.22 legal downloads each months whilst 51% of the average digital music collection is derived from CD’s (presumably purchased or ‘borrowed’).
In the UK the competition to the market leader in legal download, iTunes is slight with Tesco re-launching its digital downloads service still featuring the highly unpopular digital rights management (at the insistence of the music labels) and like many sites still tied to the Windows platform whilst Amazon is yet to launch a DRM free mp3 service in the UK and Europe ,rumoured to launch in the Autumn of 2008, leaving legal subscription service emusic and the advert supported we7 (currently propped up by a cash injection from Peter Gabriel).
Meanwhile Last.fm, now a part of CBS allows users to listen to much of their streaming music on limited demand whilst pointing to the legal sources to purchase a track that may take the listeners fancy.
The research by The Leading Question and Music Ally urges the music industry to experiment with bundling music with other value added products, trying new release schedules and formats and above all to realise that free music can still generate revenues from other complimentary sources.
Nice observation, thanks. I don’t visit your blog every day, but when I
visit your blog I enjoy browsing through your old posts and try to catch up
what I have missed since my last visit.
You make some good points here. It’s clear that digi distribution has replaced the CD has the “normal” way to distribute music. But, as a result of digitalization, there are now more people making and distributing music than ever before. So, Artists today have to compete with many more artists than before for the consumer’s eyeballs/ears (barriers to entry of recording/distributing music have been erased by digitalization). Plus, many consumers can get the music for free through their illegal download method of choice.
So, Artists have to create “value adds” to their music, such as through extra rich media content that lets the fan further experience the artist. If artists want fans to pay for music, they have find a way to better immerse the fan in the music. Personally, I think remix contests are the best way to do this. As a musician, I would buy the song if I can get it in stem form and remix it.