p2pnet - rss feed: MTV and online music
Are online Korporate Musik sales viable, or aren’t they?
Sharman certainly thinks they are and, hoping people will be stupid enough to believe it cares about consumer interests as much as its profit margins, is desperately pulling all the plugs to be admitted to the Korporate Musik Klan.
A report from the UK says although the music industry is in a bad way, "the success of the new download services proves there is a viable market for legitimate digital sales". And Microsoft says it’ll build its own online music store.
Steve Jobs, on the other hand, thinks it’s all about getting people through the doors, real and virtual.
Actually, this plethora of online music announcements is a combination of sheer panic - They’re doing it, so we’d better - and the usual music industry ’shoot and hope we hit something’ approach. In this case, a music site goes up and its owners hope someone will buy something and if they don’t, it’s still good exposure and, ‘who knows what the future will bring?’
One of the latest to clamber on board is Viacom’s MTV which is planning a music download service next year, probably around spring time.
"Despite the hurdles" Jason Hirschhorn, MTV’s new senior vp for digital music and media, hopes the paid download market will thrive and that wholesale prices of single tracks will subsequently fall, writes Paul Festa in a CNET News report here.
"It is a tough profit margin in a la carte - (it’s) better in the subscription business," Hirschhorn is quoted as saying. "Prices are going to come down as the business gets bigger. I don’t worry about that, because the publishers know that there has to be room for profit and margin … There are a lot of smart people at the record labels, and they will get into this business at a rate they’re comfortable with."
Earlier in the story, "I look at us as serving our audience that we have built in from years of great programming in our channel brands," he says.
"Those are the people we’re aiming to get … a lot of people come to our Web sites and I think those will be users of our service going forward."
