Continuations: SoundCtrl Speech: Change in Music Industry
Kavan Ravi
· 6 months ago
Another Outsider perspective:
A great post.
There is now more than one convenient way to listen to music on the web. I use Last.fm to discover new music and later buy new music on i-tunes. It has become a habit.
Do you think wireless broadband will be ubiquitous soon enough? To allow your music to follow you? In that case streaming would be viable alternative to downloads.
The rise of the independents is an interesting prospect. Would be interesting if the model shifts in the general direction of discovery-like/share-buy. Wonder who will emerge as facilitator(s) for discovering, sharing and buying music. Wouldn't that add a little more momentum to revenues for music as compared to news papers online?
albert
· 6 months ago
I definitely think that betweem 3G and wifi coverage streaming is rapidly becoming viable for on-the-go.
As for the facilitators, places like MOG and TheSixtyOne are high on my list.
Kavan Ravi
· 6 months ago
Will check out MOG and TheSixtyOne.
albert
· 6 months ago
Should have linked -- wrote this as a speech.
Kavan Ravi
· 6 months ago
No that is cool,I really liked http://thesixtyone.com. I put it up on my blog. Instant play clicks. Thank you for pointing me to it.
Q dub
· 6 months ago
I find that a lot of technological innovation is about doing away with outdated physical metaphors. Google is trying to kill the snail mail metaphor with Wave, and hopefully somebody (like Lala) killing the disk/tape metaphor for streaming services.
albert
· 6 months ago
Agree. But old metaphors die hard.
Mark Schoneveld
· 6 months ago
Oh man, I wish I could be at the event! Sounds like fun. Thanks for your thoughts on the industry, too. They're right on.
albert
· 6 months ago
Thanks. I figured that the overlap between folks reading the blog and coming tonight might be relatively small which is why I decided to post ahead of the event.
Ryan Catbird
· 6 months ago
As someone who's been observing this stuff from a waist-deep perspective for years now, I have to say that for an "outsider," you certainly talk a lot of perfect sense and insight!
Sadly, it looks like they're not letting any more people in for this event tonight, so do a favor for those of us that can't attend: keep blogging about music here on continuations. :-)
(Between you and Fred, it's starting to look like USV must be one of the most music-intelligent and -saavy VC firms out there-- which makes it all the more unfortunate that no music ventures seem to have a good solid plan for revenue as yet)
albert
· 6 months ago
Definitely will keep blogging about it. I am pretty sure that we will see great businesses come out of all of this -- whether or not venture funded.
ravisohal
· 6 months ago
Garageband, Reason, Digital Performer, Logic, and a host of supporting software have helped change production costs by many orders of magnitude over the last 10 years. I have a rack with sound modules, amps/limiters, patch bays and a "snakes den" of cables and power cords which cost me over $50K in 1999. It's been replaced by 1 software program with a couple of plugins, sitting on my Mac. Internet bandwidth lets me collaborate a lot easier too. I can zip, ftp, or stream music and have my co-producers or artists give me quick feedback. Maybe this is #0 :)
albert
· 6 months ago
Excellent point! This too contributes to the increasing supply and demand "imbalance" and is a factor in reducing the total size (in dollar terms, not in terms of listening) of the industry.
Ian Hogarth
· 6 months ago
Albert - thanks for including us in your list of independents, and in such great company. I'll drop you an invitation to our new private beta. Will be curious to see what you make of it.
I think another big trend to consider is that many components of the music industry have lagged recorded music in moving online - for example merchandise (starting to happen with Zazzle, but still hard to find that classic Pavement T-Shirt from '92) and live (event ticketing is now really well established online but there's no real home for live music on the web yet).
albert
· 6 months ago
Ian - completely agree. There are interesting opportunities there. I was talking to someone from a major and who argued they would have to build some of those services themselves which struck me as wrong. Look forward to the invite.
kidmercury
· 6 months ago
great post albert.
i do, however, have to hate on the vast majority of the music industry, including the digital underdogs. do the digital people really believe that charging for music is a viable model? perhaps more importantly, do they not see the value creation opportunities in socializing music via free distribution? i think free music is inevitable from a disruptive paradigm, yet i dont see many models embracing it. perhaps a problem with the mentality of songwriters, as ultimately they must consent. but i have a tough time seeing much progress and the musical renaissance we know can happen without companies dedicated to finding business models that can finance free music. in fact, i get the impression most companies are trying to avoid the copyright conversation, just like artists try to avoid it as well, because they know the futility and foolishness of waging war with their fans. i would argue, though, that trying to sell music online will prove to be increasingly futile over time.
albert
· 6 months ago
I would agree that traditional notions of selling one song at a time will not work. But I do believe that there is room for a flow of money whether in the form of subscriptions, patronage or virtual goods.
kidmercury
· 6 months ago
no doubt. in particular i think there are tons of opportunities for digital media publishers to create subscription-based revenue streams.
bildungsroman
· 6 months ago
Great article overall, but I have one major reservation with your second point. It does not take one basic factor into account: quality. And the idea that people will pay more for something of quality, that not all content is created equally - nor should it be charged for equally.
albert
· 6 months ago
I believe that quality differences can be best addressed by giving people more flexibility in how much they pay. I have posted in the past on pricing for digital goods and think there is lots of room for innovation.
bildungsroman
· 6 months ago
The problem with this is that the average listener will pay the absolute minimum for a digital file, regardless of quality (especially if the listener already has other means of getting the file, whether illegally or through streaming).
The reason musicians price their albums (and this primarily goes for independent musicians, as bit labels have control over all album pricing decisions for their bands) is because only the musician can appreciate the true cost of an album - and by this I don't mean studio time, recording equipment, etc., but rather the hours of work spent on minute details of a recording, the endless practice sessions to get the songs ready for recording, the struggles with labels and licenses and everything else that has a significant effect on an album, but will never be known to the average listener who decides that $1 is the right price for their work.
All Comments
A great post.
There is now more than one convenient way to listen to music on the web. I use Last.fm to discover new music and later buy new music on i-tunes. It has become a habit.
Do you think wireless broadband will be ubiquitous soon enough? To allow your music to follow you? In that case streaming would be viable alternative to downloads.
The rise of the independents is an interesting prospect. Would be interesting if the model shifts in the general direction of discovery-like/share-buy. Wonder who will emerge as facilitator(s) for discovering, sharing and buying music. Wouldn't that add a little more momentum to revenues for music as compared to news papers online?
As for the facilitators, places like MOG and TheSixtyOne are high on my list.
my blog. Instant play clicks. Thank you for pointing me to it.
Sadly, it looks like they're not letting any more people in for this event tonight, so do a favor for those of us that can't attend: keep blogging about music here on continuations. :-)
(Between you and Fred, it's starting to look like USV must be one of the most music-intelligent and -saavy VC firms out there-- which makes it all the more unfortunate that no music ventures seem to have a good solid plan for revenue as yet)
I think another big trend to consider is that many components of the music industry have lagged recorded music in moving online - for example merchandise (starting to happen with Zazzle, but still hard to find that classic Pavement T-Shirt from '92) and live (event ticketing is now really well established online but there's no real home for live music on the web yet).
i do, however, have to hate on the vast majority of the music industry, including the digital underdogs. do the digital people really believe that charging for music is a viable model? perhaps more importantly, do they not see the value creation opportunities in socializing music via free distribution? i think free music is inevitable from a disruptive paradigm, yet i dont see many models embracing it. perhaps a problem with the mentality of songwriters, as ultimately they must consent. but i have a tough time seeing much progress and the musical renaissance we know can happen without companies dedicated to finding business models that can finance free music. in fact, i get the impression most companies are trying to avoid the copyright conversation, just like artists try to avoid it as well, because they know the futility and foolishness of waging war with their fans. i would argue, though, that trying to sell music online will prove to be increasingly futile over time.
The reason musicians price their albums (and this primarily goes for independent musicians, as bit labels have control over all album pricing decisions for their bands) is because only the musician can appreciate the true cost of an album - and by this I don't mean studio time, recording equipment, etc., but rather the hours of work spent on minute details of a recording, the endless practice sessions to get the songs ready for recording, the struggles with labels and licenses and everything else that has a significant effect on an album, but will never be known to the average listener who decides that $1 is the right price for their work.