I’ve posted before about where I think the music industry is going… and it appears that Apple are looking to further expand their efforts to set music free.
There are rumors going around (published by none other than the Financial Times!) that Apple are close to signing a deal that will allow unlimited access ‘for free’ to the entire iTunes library. Of course, this would mean that Apple would charge a premium for their device (iPod/iPhone) but essentially, you can have as much music as you want for the life of your device.
Now, batteries in iPods do eventually give out, so it isn’t really for free; but it’s close enough.
This is just another example of how the music industry is facing a game-changing development in their industry. This (among other developments) means different things for different participants in the recorded music industry:
- If you were an artist, and all the effort that you go to in order to create music was essentially given away for free what would you do?
- If you are a music fan, and you could get all of your favourite artists tunes for free, what would you do?
- If you are a record company and you sink lots of dollars into an artist to establish and promote them, what would you do?
As you can see, the answers to these three questions are probably not going to line up in a nice, neat, business-as-we-know-it, manner. In fact, the answers are probably not even going to be facing in the same direction. So what is the answer?
Put the music fan at the centre of the business model.
The artist makes the music that they want to. Specific music. Not music that is ‘influenced’ by ROI required by Music Industry BigWigs.
The music fan needs a way to interact with the artist directly. Just counting the number of downloads doesn’t cut it. If the music is ‘free’ – then I’m going to download as much of it as I can; that makes me anonymous and not a member of a community. Just because I downloaded your song, doesn’t mean I like it.
What about coming up with a way of broadcasting a ‘number of times listened to’ chart rather than a ‘most downloaded’ chart? Go and have a look in your iTunes program: There’s already a playlist called “Top 25 Most Played”.
Well, free this information – make it available back to iTunes Store as a metric that everyone can see. Make it available to the record companies. Make it available to everyone! The beauty of this is that once you have the information and you know a little about the people who are submitting the info, then you can create sub-charts. Want to get specific about your music? Look on the chart of most-played-by -category-of-my-choice to find out what the zeitgeist is in your specific area of musical interest. Want to know what is the hottest tune in Japan listened to by males from Tokyo who are between the ages of 45 and 49? There should be a chart for that. With some basic user information (age, location, sex, whatever), some serious servers and database program (iTunes) and a creative mind – this shouldn’t be too hard.
Now, I know that people are still worried about sending their information over the Internet, privacy and all that. I’m not advocating sending seriously specific information over the Internet, just stuff that will help you to get the best musical experience that you can. Of course, you should be able to opt out of the whole thing, but if I know that I could absolutely get a top ten chart of the most popular songs in MY PERSONALLY DEFINED CATEGORY, then I’m not going to worry about clagging up my hard-drive with music that I am not interested in I’m only going to listen to stuff that I like.
Count me in!
So how can the music industry help? Well, stop being general for one. Get specific. Promote artists using targeted marketing, not broadcasting. Every artist should have a web-site. The record company’s job is to get people to sign up to that website. Get the music fans’ permission to be contacted about stuff like, oh I don’t know, maybe:
- Concerts at $100 per ticket, not songs at $0.99
- Memorabilia at $30 per t-shirt, not digital photos for $0.00
- Subscriber services for ’special’ events, experiences, involvement opportunities for $premium$.
People pay for that feeling of connectedness. The record companies should be providing that – not worrying about how the genie has been let out of the bottle with free digital downloads…
(The original image used in this post can be found here. It is used under a creative commons licence – for free. Thank you!)
