Monday, October 22, 2007

Selling Music On The Internet - Good Or Bad?

Gerd Leonhard is manager of Berklee Music, in the United States. He believes that the music industry and the recording industry will change radically over the adjacent few years. He believes that the new mass media will get rid of traditional companies of the recording industry.

Even though I hold that the manner music will be sold and distributed to the end user will endure changes, I believe that instrumentalists will travel more than anonymous instead of becoming family name calling and will endure financially in the long term.

If instrumentalists who believe recording companies are already abusing on the cashing in on their talent, they should wait for the cyberspace to go into full throttle!

The recording companies will go on recording and merchandising physical merchandises (like CDs) and at the same clip will have got these merchandises in digital formatting on the cyberspace (like Apple) with the same sound quality, MP3, Ogg Vorbis and any other type of musical archives that come ups along. This manner the companies will capture both markets, physical and digital.

Of course of study of study the companies will have got to cut down the figure of workers employed in the statistical distribution of the physical product.

Non recording companies today (CD Baby etc.), shop independent music on their waiters ready to be sold.

Of course with a platform the size of the cyberspace and specialised programs, raises the opportunity of anyone recording their ain compositions in their ain place on their computing machine and upload this music to the net.

So be quick! Because, while the figure of "musicians" is rising, the consumer marketplace is stable, or, at least is growing at a slower pace. The cyberspace will attain a permeation point where there will be more than music (and a batch of it bad) than the marketplace can hold.

If the figure of instrumentalists rises, the competition will lift also, but not for the resale companies! For each music they sell they have a percentage. If they sell my music, or your music, for the company it's not important, the companys' per centum is guaranteed. It's the instrumentalists that volition demand to split the bar into thinner pieces simply because of volume. They will also go less of import for the companies because of the overdone numbers. When the supply rises, the terms falls starting a good old barbarous circle.

Imagine if every cadmium recorded throughout the whole of clip were set into one store in your towns' high street. Think of the chaos of you searching for a good song in a certain musical style, so many names, so many songs and the bulk low pressure quality. Would you listen to all of the CDs in the shop? Would you really have got clip to make this?

An illustration that could demo this well is when you seek on Google. How many pages consequence from your search? Millions. How many pages would you visit? I conceive of two or three, or until you happen the specific information that you were looking for. How many pages will you ignore? Sure, the cyberspace will ease entree in bringing footing of an online purchase, but songs will have got to vie with millions of others within their niche, not to advert mainstream!

I believe that to keep their marketplace position, the major recording companies necessitate to offer nil more than than than than first-class quality in the production of digital music as their derived function and at the same clip do their people more accessible physically to the public to reenforce the trade name (the name of the artist).

In the human race of physical CDs, an creative person would suppress a physical country of the marketplace (Europe, United States etc.) and after expression for secondary marketplaces (those that wage less) using the selling of the recording company.

The recording companies necessitate to move faster because the marketplace is in changeless motion and is changing conform engineering tools like the internet.

In the hereafter with even more motion of the internet, the new creative person will be distanced even more from the consumer and will be more responsible for their communicating between their merchandise and the end user (the listener) through blogs, websites, forums and conference phone calls in a alone planetary market.

Will it be that this new human race will cut down the personality of the artist? Volition it be that with this new media, musicians will go a thing of the past? Volition it be that the consumer will act in a totally different manner than they make today?

Of course of study with new systems there will be casualties. History have shown who won (and who lost!) when new conceptions entered into the commercial market. Remember the different types of picture tapes (VHS vitamin E Beta Max), 8 path cartridges, 12" DVDs? Companies wish Upton Sinclair and Laker Airways are things of the past after they were audacious adequate to convey new conceptions and thoughts to the market.

Personally I would like to believe that the hearer still wishes to watch a good musical show with existent instruments and in the hereafter the consumer would still like to see their front-runner store in their town to purchase a music merchandise in the word form of a CD.

1 comment:

Gerd Leonhard said...

Hi, thanks for mentioning me here. You can read more details at www.mediafuturist.com or www.endofcontrol.com, my new book. Cheers Gerd