Future Of Music

Music Like Water…Reigning Down

Berkleemusic, the online extension school at Berklee College of Music, launches its first online professional music business
certificate program this week. The certificate program is currently
enrolling for the January 9th semester and offers practical, marketable
skills for those who aspire to work in, or start their own
music-related companies. The program of study utilizes the immediacy of
the online medium by addressing developments in the music industry as they happen. Students will focus on core areas of the music business such as setting up a music publishing company and record label , creating a business plan, administration of copyrights , marketing, music promotion
, distribution, product merchandising, touring, recording and
publishing legal agreements, as well as peer-to-peer, MP3 and digital
rights management issues.

"We have to really think about what kind of new products and services can be created in the 21st century for music , musicians, and fans in the age of digital music, Napster, iTunes, P2P and file sharing
," says instructor, Vice President of Berklee Media, and synthesizer
and electronic music pioneer, David Kusek. "What will be the new things
that will lead to a further expansion to the music and other media
industries? We believe that the way to discover these opportunities is
not to worry about protecting the past, but to think creatively and
uncover the future of music for yourself."

Whether it is beginning their own business, or a career at an independent record label , management, publishing, music distribution
or music production company, the certificate offers students and music
professionals a flexible option to study from anywhere in the world
with Berklee’s renowned faculty. There are six courses in the program:
Music Business 101, Legal Aspects of the Music Industry, Inside the
Record Industry, Music Publishing 101, The Future of Music and the
Music Business, and Music Industry Entrepreneurship.

Berklee
has been teaching music online for over three years to nearly 4000
students in 90 different countries around the world. Berkleemusic.com
offers over 60 individual online courses
in music production, songwriting, music business, arranging, music
theory, harmony and guitar and continues to add courses and programs
that help musicians and industry professionals reach their goals.

"There are too many people out there that make amazing music but
unfortunately in today’s world there’s so much going on that it’s hard
to know where to start," says online instructor George Howard, who has
years of experience as an A&R
man and as president of the record label Rykodisc. "This program guides
students as they come up with plans to cut through the clutter and get
their music heard.”

Berkleemusic.com is Berklee’s online music school
, delivering online access to world-renowned music faculty, educational
concepts and time-tested curriculum previously available only to
on-campus students. Berkleemusic.com is the first online music school
seamlessly combining education and career development to give
musicians, music educators and music industry professionals a one-stop
destination for all their learning, career and networking needs. For
more information visit http://www.berkleemusic.com/

There is an inherent difference between receiving information from some service like radio or television, and going out and acquiring information at a music store, video shop or filesharing network.  In the first instance, information is being ‘pushed’ at you by some programming network, and in the second instance, you are ‘pulling’ information to you.  The first is passive and the second is active.

There is little doubt as to the success and popularity of the push services.  Radio and TV have grown to be hugely profitable businesses reaching hundreds of millions of listeners and viewers all while pushing content to willing consumers.  People make the argument that these services became popular because they were free and did not cost anything.  This is not entirely true.  As consumers we are deluged with advertising from these services and we do pay for that advertising as part of the cost of goods that we purchase, often as a result of being influenced by the ads.  It is not really free.  And, you don’t own or store the programming.  It is either on or it is not on when you listen or view the service.

Cable TV began as a paid push service.  Millions of consumers pay a subscription fee for cable and endure the advertising on top of that.  Cable TV has since evolved into a paid push/pull service with the addition of Pay Per View and On-Demand.  You actually have to pay more to pull the programming to you than the basic push service costs.

There is a debate today over music subscription services (push) and paid download music services (pull) and whether one approach is better than the other.  Apple’s position with iTunes is that they don’t believe that people are interested in a subscription service - so you can only pay to download music.  BUT, they have also released a podcast service which allows you to ’subscribe’ to feeds - albeit for free at the moment.  Seems like a bit of a mixed message to me.

Services such as Napster 2, Rhapsody and Yahoo music all have a combination of push and pull services allowing you to stream music programmed for you, and letting you pay to download tracks.  This approach makes a lot more sense than simply a download service.  Many people argue that subscription services that provide tracks that play for you only as long as you continue to pay for the service are not what they want.  They claim instead that they want to "own" the music - like a CD - rather than "rent" the music.  The point that they are missing is that you never have really owned the music you purchased on CD, you simply licensed it from the labels for your personal use.

This debate will rage on in the years to come as digital music services try out different models and features to try and find the optimum mix and consumer satisfaction.  Look forward to seeing services that provide downloading, streaming, and file-sharing - and a whole lot more.

Here is a good article on this subject from the Hollywood Reporter special fall 2005 report on the future of entertainment.

A investigative report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation is available that describes the progress, or lack of progress that the RIAA is having in its "Rain of Fire" campaign of suing the file sharing public.

Over 15,000 individuals have been attacked to date by this trade organization in the name of copyright infringement.  The results have not stopped, or even slowed down, the widespread filesharing that continues to grow on P2P and other networks. 

Filesharing is more popular than ever with billions of files being traded monthly.  Market research firm Big Champaign reports that the amount of traffic on P2P networks doubled between Setpember 2003 (when the lawsuits began) and June 2005.  The RIAA’s campaign is simply not working. 

People have discovered filesharing and like it very much.  They are not only trading files on P2P networks but also via instant messaging, a huge phenomenon that can’t even be measured.  When you combine social networking sites like myspace.com with instant messaging the number of files being traded explodes.  Why does this have to be bad for the music business?   Filesharing has been shown to be a key driver of music discovery.  Why can’t we harness this?   There has to be a better way.

"There is a better way. EFF has been advocating a voluntary collective licensing regime as a mechanism that would fairly compensate artists and rightsholders for P2P file sharing. The concept is simple: the music industry forms a collecting society, which then offers file-sharing music fans the opportunity to “get legit” in exchange for a reasonable regular payment, say $5 per month. So long as they pay, the fans are free to keep doing what they are going to do anyway—share the music they love using whatever software they like on whatever computer platform they prefer—without fear of lawsuits. The money collected gets divided among rights-holders based on the popularity of their music. In exchange, file-sharing music fans who pay (or have their ISP or software provider or other intermediary pay on their behalf) will be free to download whatever they like, using whatever software works best for them. The more people share, the more money goes to rights-holders. The more competition in P2P software, the more rapid the innovation and improvement. The more freedom to fans to publish what they care about, the deeper the catalog.

This has been successfully done before. For almost 100 years, collecting societies like ASCAP, BMI and SESAC have been collecting fees on song reproductions and performances, beginning with royalties for the publication of sheet music and expanding, as necessary to include new formats, such as broadcast radio, jukeboxes, TV, “elevator music,” and movies. Some lawsuits would still be necessary, the same way that spot checks on the subway are necessary in cities that rely on an “honor system” for mass transit. But the lawsuits will no longer be aimed at singling out music fans for multi-thousand dollar punishments in order to “make an example” of them. They will no longer be intended to drive fans into the arms of inferior, over-priced alternatives.

Instead, the system would reinforce the rule of law—by giving fans the chance to pay a small monthly fee for P2P file sharing, a voluntary collection system creates a way for fans to “do the right thing” along with a realistic chance that the majority will actually be able to live up to the letter of the law."

Read the full report ‘RIAA v. The People: Two Years Later’ here.

I have been traveling quite a bit this past year speaking about the Future of Music at industry conferences, tradeshows and other music related events.   The topic of music formats always comes up and I encourage people to think expansively and try and paint a picture of a future where digital music integrates even more closely into our lifestyles.  Here are a few examples of what I have been talking about, and things that are beginning to appear in the marketplace that points towards the "Music Like Water" future we describe in the book.

Fixed Media

There are other hard formats to compete with the CD such as Flash Memory.  Capacities these days of 500 MB - 1GB are commonplace at prices around $50 retail.  Why not buy some data along with that USB drive or SD card?

Now we see SanDisk, a huge player in personal storage and the #2 maker of MP3 players announcing the Gruvi Card containing the Rolling Stones album, A Bigger Bang. You can listen to the Stones on mobile phones, selected Palm, Windows Mobile or Pocket PC OS
devices.

The Barenaked Ladies also announced that they plan to release their next project on a USB flash drive, called Barenaked on a Stick, containing 29 songs, live tracks, album art, photos and videos. Look for a lot more of this to come.

Biometrics

In the "Music Like Water" scenario, your music is available to you anywhere, all the time.  To identify you and match your musical selections to you as an individual, some kind of authentication will be required, such as a login on a pc, or IP address, or some other means of identification.

VeriTouch a company providing
biometric hardware devices, algorithms and encryption technologies, has announced
MuViBOXX!, a new entertainment
company that
will introduce the world’s first legal P2P file-sharing network
in a consumer set-top TV box.  The device will use a thumbprint as part of it’s Digital Rights Management solution.

Lifestyle Digital Music Players

We are going to see a real explosion in digital music players that are tightly coupled to some marketeer’s vision of the way people want to incorporate music into their lifestyle.   If the iPod is a fashion accessory with it’s white earbuds symbolizing the solitude of the current digital music experience - we are going to be deluged with variations on that theme.  Expect to see some really bizzare products.  They are already starting to hit the market.

Oakley is into it’s second generation of digital music eyewear, Thump.  I am a proud owner of the first incarnation of this concept and they are great for skiing and running and hanging outdoors, so long as you don’t want to talk to anyone else.

It is one thing to identify a digital music player as a piece of
jewelry, and entirely another thing to actually pull it off.  It’s not
to say that that hunk of plastic hanging off your neck isn’t
attractive, it’s just that the execution of the concept could be better.  Here is an example of Sony trying really hard to be cool.  Not something I would enjoy having swinging from my ear…  but a clear indication of things to come.

And finally, my current favorite digital music lifestyle device, the PEZ MP3 player.  The only thing missing (unfortunately) is the candy…