Monetize the music !
p2pnet.net news:- “We’re running out of time,” warned Ted Cohen, managing director of a music consulting firm, talking to 200 people at yesterday’s Digital Music Forum East conference. “We need to get money flowing from consumers and get them used to paying for music again.”
Cohen was moderating a State of the Digital Union panel and his words came, “as the music industry suffers through one of the worst slumps in its history,” says CNET News, going on:
“CD sales fell 23 percent worldwide between 2000 and 2006. Legal sales of digital songs aren’t making up the difference either. Last year saw a 131 percent jump in digital sales, but overall the industry still saw about a 4 percent decline in revenue.”
Apparently, the creation of the new consumer base with a marked aversion for anything to do with Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG didn’t come up.
The Big 4 labels are currently engaged in a world-wide effort to sue their customers, put off by high music industry prices, indifferent product and severely limited catalogues, into abandoning the free p2p networks and independent sales and music sites they now favour online.
And some panel members “lashed out” at Steve Jobs calling his recent Thoughts on Music diatribe, “perceived by many in the music industry as a 180-degree shift in direction,” and in which he blamed the majors for DRM consumer control, “insincere” and a “red herring,” says the story, stating:
“The view expressed at the conference is that Apple has maintained a stranglehold on the digital music industry by locking up iTunes music with DRM.”
CNET says most of the panel, which included Thomas Gewecke, Sony BMG senior vp, and Gabriel Levy, general manager of RealNetworks Europe, still believed in DRM (Digital Restrictions Management).
But Greg Scholl, ceo of independent music label The Orchard, flatly said DRM doesn’t work, declaring, “The idea that DRM gives us choice isn’t right.”He also stated, “The economics of the business are over for good and aren’t ever going to be the way they were before.”
But, according to the story, Gewecke argued against criticism that the music industry, “has its head in the sand and just doesn’t understand the Digital Age”.
Sony BMG is working with technologists and retailers, and is constantly is looking for technological solutions to some of the industry’s problems, he promised.
However, the company is still reeling under the spyware PR disaster which ensued after it was discovered it’d been hiding self-installing spyware DRM with the potential to damage computers on its music CDs,
Meanwhile, “there’s more music being listened to now than ever before,” he said. “There’s more opportunities to monetize the music. We want to be out there looking for new ideas and companies.”
Also See:
CNET News – Music executives lament state of industry, February 27, 2007
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
February 28th, 2007 at 10:10 am
“We need to get money flowing from consumers and get them used to paying for music again.”
- Sure if the price is set at a reasonable level, not as in the past where music was a cash cow. The music must also be available to the customer (not the consumer) as they want it.
The customer also wants the music industry to stop its parasitic practices and to stop preying on artists.
-”CD sales fell 23 percent worldwide between 2000 and 2006. Legal sales of digital songs aren’t making up the difference either. Last year saw a 131 percent jump in digital sales, but overall the industry still saw about a 4 percent decline in revenue.”
Hmmm, couldnââ¬â¢t be that at this point most people have finished purchasing the CD’s for the cassettes and records they already owned? That now that the customers have filled their own ‘back catalogueââ¬â¢ of music they are now looking at the newly available music and not necessarily liking what they see? Can it be that DVD sales and video game sales have an effect on the amount of $ spent on music? Obviously not in the industries eyes, their still too filled with $ signs.
“The view expressed at the conference is that Apple has maintained a stranglehold on the digital music industry by locking up iTunes music with DRM.”
-Let me guess, the industry thinks by putting M$ against Apple they will be in control. Silly suits! You’ll never be in control if you insist on using DRM. You will be in the same predicament that you yourself had the artists in for so long. We know you like to deny it, but by controlling the means of distribution and airplay, you felt you had the right to take the giants share of the $, and treat our artists like crap, and YES you DID, so stop trying to deny it. Well now the DRM companies will control your means of distribution, and once youââ¬â¢re caught up it you’ll be the sheep controlled by the DRM companies.
“Sony BMG is working with technologists and retailers, and is constantly is looking for technological solutions to some of the industry’s problems, he promised”
- You mean new ways to screw the customer and the artists? Well, the customers arenââ¬â¢t particularly happy with your solutions, remember, that’s why they turned to file sharing in the first place.
February 28th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
I love how they blame the scapegoat of ‘piracy’ for lost sales. If they would just look around them (I know it’s hard to do, but at least try), they would see that there are tons of other places where people are spending “entertainment” dollars, from video games, to movies, etc. It would help if major labels stop promoting sh!t bands. The bands that care make music for the music, not for the money, though money does help musicians to keep making music that they love.
February 28th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
I’ve got a much better idea of what the muzakbigbiz should be spending time and money trying to figure out.
What other industry they should all become a part of, as the muzak industry is already more than halfway through the S-bend. Just a little longer and it’ll get all the way there, and we’ll never have to worry about it again.
Just think of the fun we’ll have trying to convince our grandkids that such an industry actually existed, actually behaved in these ways, and for a while at least was actually commercially viable! Of course they’ll never believe us. I mean, who would?
March 1st, 2007 at 2:03 am
I’ll start buying music the day Sony BMG go bankrupt… And the other 3 companies too. But no sooner!