Here is an industry in which the consumer good has an infinite shelf life, is readily replicated in the home with no loss of quality, is produced in massive quantities for public consumption, and has been dominating American pop culture for over 50 years. Here is an industry where a day or a week of creative effort can be spun into years of reoccurring revenue. Here is an industry where the sheer volume of readily available finished goods already produced is so great, that any one consumer would never have time in their lifetime to listen to it all, even if they wanted to. The only reason this commodity product has any value at all is because of the copyright laws, the ability of the industry to continue to produce original and sometimes fresh material, and their ability to keep a young and somewhat credulous public interested in buying.
I think the CD itself has still got a chance to survive, but many would be online music services will not. The CD will survive because many people will want to own hard copy masters of their music collections. The music industry itself is the music services' biggest problem. The old methods of marketing will not work anymore. Radio has lost its compass for what the public likes, and requires too many commercials. No one likes to get hooked into a CD of the month - 3 weeks auto ship unless I send the card back - deal. And very few people are going to buy a whole CD just to get one song anymore either. Most people by now know that the labels are not being fair with the artists, so they are not particularly interested in being fair with the labels. The labels want copy protection. The consumers want openly available product use. With the new paradigm, new CD sales will go to the established artists with a reputation for delivering on a quality product. People will buy their CDs because they expect a polished complete performance. From new artists they expect just a single hit song with the rest as filler. Single track sales will get picked up across the Internet.
This means that the labels will no longer be able to afford to invest heavily in marginal talent and then saturate the airwaves with the products of their "shoot from the hip" studio sessions. Making money from one hit wonders will become increasingly difficult.
People are usually willing to pay for value, however it is difficult to perceive of value in a highly commoditized product that has been in production for over 50 years with an infinite shelf life. After a person has collected more music that could possibly be listened to recreationally in five years, it is very difficult to perceive of the value in collecting more CDs at $10 each from the ever growing list of offerings.
The shift is away from collecting hundreds of CDs with their great, good, bad and indifferent tracks into trying to make sense of it all. People want their music. But, they want a way to take the work out of trying to enjoy that music. Radio delivers music interrupted by commercials, and CDs deliver a closed loop of a preformed program that is altogether too short for most social situations. It requires active selection and ongoing attention by the host user in order to keep the music playing. Ergo, people are turning to their computers with their massive hard drives to relieve some of the stress in programming your own air time. By having all the music in one place, the end user can separate the wheat from the chaff and then, with confidence and as desired, let the equipment program the air time. It's radio without the commercials and without the chaff.
The fact that file sharing over the Internet is happening at the same time is purely incidental. What people want is control.
I believe that it is the failure of the industry to recognize that shift in paradigm that is hurting the industry the most. The RIAA is so caught up in trying to inhibit the fair use of their product, that they are destroying the market itself. People turn to mp3s, not because they are better, but because they are easier. If one downloads an mp3 and they don't like it, the delete key is right there. Those bad tracks on those CDs are forever. How many times will someone pay $6 to $10 for a CD, only to find that, at most, a mere two or three songs are worth the time, before they quit buying. How much personal airtime will people continue to give to radio when the tracks worth paying attention to are so few and far between, and one can just as easily let the computer fill the air with music from a huge combed list of selections.
If you want to figure out the survivors in this war of the retailers, look for the ones who address these issues. Look for the ones that give the end user the control they are looking for and the record labels the advertising medium for their output. Deep catalogs are a must, because 50 plus years of music is a strong draw to consumers. But, any online service that unnecessarily restricts the fair use of the downloaded music is doomed to failure.
HerbVic |
