The Fourth Estate

What's Next For Music?

The funny thing about the music industry these days is the growing influence of people you would least expect to be hanging backstage with the band. Mobile operators, handset manufacturers, broadband providers and even social networking geeks - Music is fast becoming the digital currency de jour for anyone who wants to engage with consumers online. But what does that mean for the value of music going forward?

Angelic Machines

I was walking around today through the chaotic streets of Hong Kong with Bloom, Brian Eno's generative iphone app providing a soothing soundscape. It's hard to quantify how much joy something so simple can give - not to mention something that only costs $3.99. Bloom uses algorithyms to create and evolve patterns of sounds, at once random and yet strangely structured.

Music Matters

 

There is a massive gap between traditional music industry economics and the rapidly evolving behavior of Asian media consumers. I spent a few days last week at the Music Matters conference in Hong Kong listening to some of the most senior record label executives dissect the complexities of their situation. Contradictions abound. Online piracy in China is rampant, and yet China Mobile made nearly US$1.7 billion last year selling caller ring back tones. Most of Baidu's traffic comes from its illicit MP3 search service, while authorised mobile download services in Japan are growing rapidly.

China Music Mayhem

 

They are at it again. The Record Labels in China are filing suit against Baidu and Sohu for their involvement in aiding piracy by linking to unlicensed music files. The WSJ has a useful summary of the less than successful attempts by the labels to force compliance in the past.

In some ways the situation in China may be a lead indicator of the future of the music industry in the west. Chinese artists derive only a tiny fraction of their income from CD sales, earning their keep instead from events and endorsements. Under that model, what you might call piracy, others might see as free marketing. The Labels probably know that too. Music downloading is such an integral part of the Chinese web experience, and a large proportion of the traffic to sites like Baidu - that I suspect that these law suits have more to do with gaining leverage in negotiations than forcing a change user behavior.

The Day The Music Started

My favourite CD shop when I was a kid was small and selectively stocked. Small handwritten comments adorned every cover, and the owner had a forensic ability to make music recommendations that bordered on precognition. Unfortunately his story ended on a familiar note. Run out of business by a chain store. Now there is the new generation of online recommendation networks chasing the Holy Grail of consumer preferences analysis. Namely – can you help people figure out what they like?

The Kazaa KO

The outcome of the Kazaa case in Australia is a win for the music industry's slash and burn approach to peer-to-peer file sharing networks. On the face of it, their objections seem reasonable. Content creators should be able to protect their intellectual property, otherwise it would be harder than it currently is to earn a living from singing, dancing or pretending to be able to do either. But there is more to it than that. What makes the record labels nervous is not copyright infringement per se, but any form of distribution that is not entirely within their control.

Perfectly Podcast

Stuffy members of the radio industry might be forgiven for thinking that the fuss over 'podcasting' is nothing more than a new kind of fly fishing technique. Geeks blogging on Slashdot is one thing - but when Business Week, the bible of conservative CEO aspirants calls it a "New Radio Revolution", the broadcast luddites had better take notice.

Caught Napping?

When word trickled out that the revived new economy bad boy Napster had wrapped up a $52 million equity raising - it seemed pretty clear they were raising a war chest to take the fight to Apple's iTunes.

And now they have finally played their hand with the announcement of a $15 a month subscription offer, which lets customers download an unlimited number of songs from a library of over a million tracks, and transfer these to compatible MP3 players. The songs are protected with Microsoft's Janus rights management software and are playable as long as the user has an active subscription. Burning them to CD costs a bit extra.