Where Music Will Be Coming From
from the business-models-r-us dept
Maybe today is simply “business model discussion” day at Techdirt. Here’s a very good article by Kevin Kelly in the NY Times talking about what might be next in the world of music. He looks at the position we’re in now with Napster-like systems and sees it as just a step towards where music will be heading. The article suggests a number of different business models that the music industry might adopt in the future that takes into account the idea of sharing music with others. It also predicts that just like the simple camera turned millions of people into amateur photographers, and the web turned millions of people into amateur writers, new technology will turn millions of people into amateur musicians. Certainly worth reading.
Comments on “Where Music Will Be Coming From”
Mike, please explain this to me...
Seriously, please. I think that this is an interesting piece, but I really don’t understand how anything proposed here is new…or even that well though out, as far as a “new economy of content” goes. It all strikes me as here’s stuff that might happen and people might figure out a way to make money from one of them.
The article suggests a number of different business models that the music industry might adopt in the future that takes into account the idea of sharing music with others.
Possibilities from the article:
Possibility one: Songs are cheap; what’s expensive are the indexable, searchable, official lyrics.
Because no college kid with too much time on their hands can suck down the contents of a commercial database and make it available for free? This doesn’t work with Kelly’s “content that can’t be duplicated has value” premise.
Possibilities two, three, four: […]
Same problem. These are revenue-generating ideas that can easily be duplicated…where is the compelling reason to use the version that requires payment to the music industry?
Okay…I don’t want to rant at great length here (check jonesvery’s bitching on slashdot if you want access to that for some strange reason), but I’m a little frustrated; can you pass along what you see as compelling about this piece?
Re: Mike, please explain this to me...
Actually, I agree that a lot of the suggestions in the article are weak. However, some are creatively different in a way that will make people think about other options. That is something that no one else seems to be doing right now. Most people seem to be looking at it as an either/or situation. “Well, if everyone can trade music for free, no one will make money off of music, and the entire industry will die.”
I don’t believe that at all, and I’m trying to encourage other people to think about additional ways that musicians could make money – even with a distribution mechanism that can give away the music for free.
Re: Re: Mike, please explain this to me...
I don’t believe that at all, and I’m trying to encourage other people to think about additional ways that musicians could make money – even with a distribution mechanism that can give away the music for free.
Honest curiosity: I don’t see musicians’ income as being the central issue; as Kelly pointed out, until Big Content got into the act, professional musicians were right up there with actors and prostitutes on the social and economic scale. Under the current system, the artist receives only a very small percentage of the revenue generated by a recording. Some big names like [the artist formerly known as prince] tried to get around that by going directly to the millions of people who bought their recordings, only to find that the machinations of the evil Big Content played a very significant role in creating their record sales.
What’s most interesting to me about that is the (perhaps overlooked) idea that we may have to give up the economic benefits of Big Content. Consider the example that Kelly cites:
When John D. Smoot, an engineer for the European company Odeon, carted primitive recording equipment to the Indonesian archipelago in 1904 to record the gamelan orchestras, local musicians were perliexed. Why copy a performance? The popular local tunes that circulated in their villages had a half-life of a few weeks. Why would anyone want to listed to a stale rendition of an obsolete piece when it was so easy to get fresh music?”
Translated to contemporary econonic terms, this could mean something like “no one makes money off of music anyway, so what’s the big idea here?”
Sure, this breeds creativity in music, the “only your family is interested” sort of model that Kelly notes late in the piece, but it also means that it is significantly more difficult to make money from music: that many musicians who can currently afford to be professionals and create interesting music (at the recording-distribution-and-promotion-costs-paid-for-with-a-shiny-new-nickel-for each-band-member-level) will instead be working 39 hours a week at Wal-Mart.
I concede that indipendent music will always be around, but it’s important to remember that virtually all music was indie music a hundred years ago, which meant that the musicians just didn’t get paid, and didn’t get heard outside their hometowns.
I promise, I’ll go get a job soon and stop posting pointless comments…
Re: Re: Re: Mike, please explain this to me...
But musicians did get paid and did mae a living 100 years ago! All music was live and so there were people to play it. They toured as well. There were also lots of music teachers and instrument makers etc. etc. – I bet it was easier to make a living doing music then than it is now. I am not talking about making millions, just a living.