Jun 30
Rolling Stone speculates on the future of selling music
How will music be profitable in the future? In the recent Rolling Stone article, “The Fall of the Record Business: What Next?” five music industry pros theorize on possible scenarios.
Theory 1: Ad-Supported Music
Yahoo! Music General Manager Ian Rogers says all music will be free - paid for by ads - and any song by any artist will be accessible from anywhere in the world.
“I can imagine a future where you just consume a hell of a lot of music - just hit ‘play’ on any player, and hear music. There’s an ad experience there, and we’ll pay the labels a percentage of that ad revenue. All devices will be connected to a network and we can find anything we want and hit ‘play’ without connecting our device to our computer and dragging a physical file over. People are going to have the expectation that they can get to anything whenever they want to.”
There is already evidence to support this idea in companies like We7 and the number of media sites integrating the model of ad revenue sharing. Another theory in the article speculates labels will change their stripes and take on more management and publishing roles. A solution that makes sense, but not likely to see this in the near future. Terry McBride, who I am usually a big fan of, presents the idea that consumers might become retailers. I see that as a logistical nightmare. Read the other four theories here.
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[...] Record companies bring two vital services to the table, marketing and distribution. These are really the two points in question when talking about the record label business model, not recording. As for the future business model and what it will look like…that is anyone’s guess at this point. In a recent Rolling Stone article, “The Fall of the Record Business: What Next?” 5 prominent music professionals were interviewed and produced five totally different perspectives on how music will be profitable in the future. When the article was published I was in agreement with Ian Rodgers of Yahoo Music. He speculated that ad-supported music was the wave of the future. Today, after investigating many distribution options for an ebook I’m writing, I am starting to think that Nettwerk President, Terry McBride was onto something when he speculated that consumers will act as retailers. This is still a far off idea, but one that we might consider given the growing popularity of Long Tail filters like referrals and recommendations and the power of those filters in a social network community. If I like an artist I can post their music on my site for my friends to buy. I’ll make money and the artist will still make more off the sale than they would have through any other means than selling it themselves. 3. How will bands profit from the music they make? [...]