Future Of Music

The labels should be far more concerned over the lack of revenue generated by digital music sales than is reflected in the article below.  Creating a tiered pricing system is not going to move the needle for them.  They have to take a good look at the deal they have with their partner Apple.  Why not take a piece of iPod sales as well?

"After dominating the online music service business for over two years, Apple’s seminal iTunes Music Store service is about to face it’s biggest challenge yet. Unexpectedly, that challenge is not coming from Microsoft or its partners, but rather from the music industry that provided Apple with the contracts it needed to offer digital music to consumers. Apparently, the music industry is tired of Apple’s pricing schemes and they’d like to see consumers pay more for newer songs, and less for older songs. Apple is resisting, for now. But the outcome of this battle will likely determine how quickly digital music sales grow in the near future."

Read more here.

A scheme that would shift the cost of digital music from users to Internet service providers is gaining international support.

"William “Terry” Fisher, a Harvard law professor and director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a key advocate of revising the process by which copyright holders get paid. His group is working on a project called the Digital Media Exchange, to be built next year. The Exchange would compensate artists by dividing customers’ subscription fees based on how many times a work is played.

Mr. Fisher said his preference would be for governments to impose a tax on ISPs to collect revenue and make all works available to consumers. He says that China, some countries in Eastern Europe, and Brazil seem as if they might be open to this possibility."

Read the Red Herring Article Here.

The BBC has published an interview with Brad Duea, president of Napster. A few interesting sound bites:

Online music will become an ”exploding multi-billion dollar space in the next two years.”

”A lot of time people think of ownership as this ultimate thing with music. Has owning cassettes in the past really benefited people?”

”I do not think the argument about ownership is such a wonderful thing. What do you really want as a music fan? It’s to access music and listening to music.”

Music to our ears.  Read more here.

PlayLouder is an MSP, or ‘Music Service Provider’ that provides unlimited music downloading as part of its broadband Internet Service.  The files contain no DRM and even MP3s can be swapped among PlayLouder subscribers without restrictions.  Fabulous.

"Playlouder is offering
the first legal alternative with a comparable experience to the "peer
to peer" file sharing sites often used to swap pirated tracks.  Subscribers
will be charged £26 a month for a high speed broadband internet
connection, similar to the price charged by BT, with the added
attraction of being able to share as much music as they want with other
subscribers at no extra cost.  Because
there will be no restrictions on the format in which the traded music
is encoded, users will be free to transfer songs to any type of digital
music player, including the market leading Apple iPod, or burn them to
CD.  However,
not only will consumers have to pay for music which they currently
acquire free, albeit illegally, but they will also have to change their
internet provider."

Available in the UK.   Read more in the Guardian here.

This just in from last weeks National Association of Recording Merchandisers connference in San Diego.  More finger pointing and denial from the music industry.  "We have lost a generation."  Wow.  No wonder they are still suing each other over the original Napster debacle.  Very disappointing that they can’t seem to find their way out of the current situation.

"Yet, while digitally delivered music-on-demand
is clearly the wave of the future and the present, record companies and
retailers seem unable to agree on what they can do to make such
technology their ally, not their enemy.

Bainwol believes the main challenge is to
educate young music consumers and their parents that downloading and
file-sharing without paying is not only illegal, but "morally wrong."
He said that suing young offenders, and their parents, as the RIAA has
done, is an effective tool.

"But we have lost a generation," Bainwol said.
"Kids 18 to 25 fell in love with computers at a time when there were no
rules, and they are very hard for us to talk to. The next generation knows there are rules."

How out of touch can you be…

Read all about it here.

Sony has announced a new series of flash-based digital music players designed to give the iPod Shuffle a run for the money.  The new Walkman Beans sport a built-in FM tuner and are available in 512 MB and 1 GB versions.  The units play both MP3 and ATRAC3 music files, in addition to supporting WMA and WAV formats. They are compatible with Sony Connect but not the iTunes music store (uurgh).  The players have a pop-up USB jack that connects directly to a PC for charging and transferring music.   Available in October  512 MB for about $130 and 1 GB for about $180. 

Imagine being able to broadcast and receive digital information from your Wi-Fi enabled car, cell phone, handheld computer or MP3 player as you move around your environment.  Everyone participates in a dynamic, decentralized network of individuals sharing information with anyone within a 30 mile radius.  Sound far fetched?  Not so. 

"Roadcasting is collaborative, mobile radio.

It is a system, currently in prototype state, that allows anyone to have their own radio station, broadcasted among wirelessly capable devices, some in cars, in an ad-hoc wireless network. The system can become aware of individual preferences and is able to choose songs and podcasts that people want to hear, on their own devices and car stereos and in devices and car stereos around them.

Roadcasting provides a set of methods to transform radio into a community-driven interactive medium. Using collaborative filtering technologies, it enables rich passive and interactive experiences for ‘DJs’ and listeners in a way that has not previously been possible. Roadcasting matches you to radio stations that play the content that you want to hear.

With Roadcasting, it becomes incredibly easy to have your own radio station heard by others in their cars, homes, and offices within the reach of your ad-hoc network, determined by the wireless technology used."

Check out roadcasting.org for a glimpse into the future of P2P.

In the past, Sony with it’s Walkman brand, dominated the personal electronics market for music.  Today it is Apple and it’s iPod that dominates the market.

Many
Wall Street analysis publicly stated that they didn’t feel Apple could
sustain its growth in the iPod market, but last weeks quarterly results
demonstrated that Apple’s high-water mark may have not been reached.
Apple sold 6.2 million iPods last quarter. Six million! Their revenue hit $3.52 billion up from $2.01 billion the year before, exceeding
predictions and buoying the stock.

 Sony still has serious work to do to consolidate its battling divisions, and integrate its hardware players with
Sony’s Connect Music Service. With the 50 year old culture of internal one-upmanship instead of teamwork, this is not going to be an overnight affair.

Read the whole story here.