We've all read about the struggles of the music industry for sometime now, each year there’s a steady decline in CD sales. Many believe that the technology has created the demand for instant access, increasing P2P pirating and threatening future profits for the record labels as a whole. But sympathy for the Industry wanes each year as we hear about
RIAA litigation settlements targeted towards teens who either don’t know better and/or aren’t properly supervised. The need to protect creative copyrights is important but is litigation an effective deterrent ?
Today the industry consists of four international conglomerate holding companies. These music groups control 70% of the world music market and 80% of the U.S. music market. Small and specialty record labels have either been absorbed or just withered away due to staggering competition. There’s no wonder the industry remains in a slump when the landscape is in a chokehold. Consumers feel the loss too, when access to diverse artists and musical styles, that don’t necessarily fit into the mega sales model, become so far and few in between, purchasing naturally slows up.
Fortunately some artists and entrepreneurs are testing new business and distribution models. Many artists have begun selling their music directly to consumers on the internet and bypassing record labels for their own survival. It’s an attempt to align themselves with the way consumers are searching for music to download.
Apple's iTunes has sold over four billion songs since 2001, but many companies with online music models have not been as successful. It seems as one new player emerges another folds, just recently Yahoo announced it would close its subscription service and migrate its customers to Rhapsody subscription service.
With the enormous appeal of MySpace and Facebook, music lovers have gravitated to sites like Last.fm or iLike, to create communities to discuss and share their music tastes. I like the idea of discovering new music based on my collection. But it can be hit or miss. But if you enjoy the social aspect, it does have it's appeal.
Imeem and Last.fm are riding a new trend of ad-supported, online music streaming. With agreements from the record labels, users create playlists, from music already tied to the site, and share them in a community. But these site agreement may not contain the complete catalog of an artist’s work. There may only be access to certain tracks. Further investigation of some ad-sponsored sites reveals there are limits to how many times you can listen to a free track. Well I can't say I didn't see that one coming. But for a monthly fee you can avoid advertisements (which usually play at the beginning of the track), and download the track at a higher bitrate. Is it me or have we just gone 360 with this "new" business model ? This sounds like your everyday mp3 music download service.
There’s little argument that the labels have been slow to embrace the rapidly changing landscape. The technology is forcing this shift and I expect we’ll see more business models introduced and fail before someone else gets it right, like Apple does.
I don’t think I’m asking for much, just give me intuitive and elegant software (or web interface), an extensive music catalog and a good user experience. That’s what I call value and good branding. That’s what keeps this music lover in a purchase mode.
