Social Networks
Social Networks have obviously innovated the Music Industry. Millions of artists are currently on Facebook, Myspace, and YouTube, and social network sites specific to music such as SellABand, thesixtyone, and bandcamp. People are all over Twitter following their favorite artists and tweeting them. What is interesting about the industry today is that so many artists can develop a following on the internet, something that was never possible before. At age 12, Justin Bieber started posting videos of himself on youTube and was immediately noticed by a few music industry giants. Usher and Justin Timberlake ended up fighting over Bieber and Bieber ended up signing with Usher at Def Jam Records. Although a large part of Bieber's success was through luck, IT in the music industry made it possible for him to be discovered. Millions of artists are now chasing the dream and searching for the one in a lifetime chance Bieber got. YouTube is a popular gathering for these new artists, but nothing close to Myspace. Myspace has over 8 million bands and is the premier social networking site for media., it too being a means of discovery for new artists, like Sean Kingston. Record companys are also all over Myspace as well as event booking agencies, sound engineers, and literally everyone else involved. Facebook's insight into the music industry is still somewhat in its early stages compared to Myspace, but with all of it's music pages and “likes”, it is still on the rise. Years ago, individuals somewhat made the switch to Facebook for their personal pages, and it is very possible for this to happen to music artists. The networks attract all of these new artists, but the problem remains the same, artists need to be discovered. In the old days, producers would receive word about a upcoming band, go to one of their concerts, and speak with them afterwards. Nowadays, it is a lot more efficient to do a majority of the process electronically.
Piracy
The following is an excerpt from a New York Times article:
Worldwide sales of recorded music fell by about 10 percent in 2009, as revenue growth from digital services was insufficient to compensate for a continuing fall in sales of compact discs.
The group, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, used the publication of the figures as an opportunity to renew its calls for a tougher crackdown on digital piracy, which it blames for a 30 percent decline in global music sales from 2004 to 2009.
“We’re all fed up with talking about piracy,” said John Kennedy, chief executive of the trade group. “It’s boring talking about piracy, but it is the problem and we can’t avoid it.”
Critics say music companies have been too slow to embrace new online business models that are attractive enough to lure music fans away from pirate sites.
Over the past year, however, Internet streaming services like Spotify, which offer free listening, supported by advertising or subscriptions, have gained a growing following. Revenue from streaming is accelerating as growth in sales of digital downloads from services like Apple’s iTunes slows.
Global sales via the Internet, mobile phones and other digital methods rose 12 percent last year to $4.2 billion. Digital sources accounted for 27 percent of recording industry revenue, up from 21 percent a year earlier, the trade group said.
But sales of CDs fell by about 16 percent worldwide, causing overall industry revenue to decline to about $15.8 billion in 2009 from about $17.5 billion a year earlier, in figures adjusted for swings in exchange rates.
“Sadly, today we are not at the turning point,” Mr. Kennedy said. “I still hope that in a few years’ time, that point will come.” He said that the industry slump, which has persisted since a 2001 peak in revenue, was hurting the development of local music in a number of markets hit hard by piracy, as record labels have less money to invest in new artists.
In France, for example, the number of albums released by domestic artists has fallen by 60 percent, he said.
In Spain, where music sales have collapsed, there were no albums by domestic artists among the top 50 sellers last year, compared with 10 as recently as 2003, the music federation said. In a report, it blamed what it called a “culture of state-tolerated apathy toward illegal file-sharing.”
Worldwide, the industry federation says, 95 percent of the music downloaded via the Internet is pirated, a percentage that has not changed over the past year.
In recent months, governments in South Korea, Taiwan and France have enacted tough laws aimed at curbing unauthorized copying by authorizing the cutoff of persistent pirates’ Internet connections. Music executives want other governments to adopt such measures, which have encountered fierce resistance from civil liberties groups.
“It’s not enough for us to be proactive with our business partners,” said Eric Daugan, a senior vice president at Warner Music International. “We also need our governments to help.”
Recommendation Systems
Pandora and Grooveshark are two of the Music Industry's biggest recommendation systems. Both of these systems have a similar “Radio” application that generates a random playlist of songs based upon a initial song selected by the user. After the song finishes, the system plays a new song and gives the user the option to “like” it or “dislike it”. The user then selects his/her preference and the system promises to play more songs with similar characteristics to songs the user likes, and less songs with the opposite. These two applications differ in the way that Pandora is more of a radio and requires the user to listen to a number of songs without being able to skip. Grooveshark, however, is more personal, and is more used for querying a large database of songs and then developing playlists, but it does utilize the same model of recommendation systems, with a few differences. Amazon and iTunes are also all over this model, which you all have clearly seen whenever you've visited their websites.
Google Landing
Google landing refers to the many different consumer aspects of the music industry. Instruments, retailers, equipment, software, merchandise, tickets; the list goes on and on, but the internet has transformed shopping for all of these goods in the same way online shopping has transformed shopping for non-music specific goods. It is so easy for musicians to compare different instruments and all other sorts of equipment through website ratings, user ratings, and user reviews, all of which are somewhat accurate. Before all of this was available, word of mouth carried the most significance in influencing particular strengths and weaknesses of products. In the old days, people would need to buy vinyl records of their favorite bands or listen to the radio all day to get a chance to hear them. In the following decades, means of listening to music evolved from cassettes to more clearer CD's, and all of this music was portable through walkmans and other devices. As we all know, iPods and other mp3 players changed everything and now people even have thousands of songs on their phones. Furthermore, these devices and almost every song ever produced are available at the click of a button.
Long Tail
“Consider the music section in your local Walmart. There is a limited amount of physical space available to stock CD’s. To make a profit, those CD’s need to sell a certain number of copies each month. It’s a classic supply and demand economic scenario. So how does Walmart decide which CDs to stock? It’s simple really; they just sell the biggest hits in the broadest music genres: Pop, Rock, Country, Jazz. You aren’t going to find many Punk Rock or Cuban Jazz albums at your local Walmart. In fact, 99% of the albums on the market today aren’t sold at your local Walmart. On the other hand, you will find over 65 Cuban Jazz albums on iTunes. Unlike Walmart and physical retailers, electronic retailers like iTunes, Netflix, and Amazon sell digital assets. They have unlimited shelf-space. They can “stock” as much as Cuban Jazz as they want. More importantly, research shows that it will sell.In every year since iTunes began, they have sold at least one copy of every single title they offer. Moreover, these one or two unit sales across millions of “less popular” items add up to millions and millions of sales. A quarter of Amazon’s book sales come from outside its top 100,000 titles. By contrast, the same top 100,000 titles are the full extent of the sales offering at your local Borders bookstore. It’s the Walmart music section on a broader scale – a larger set of offerings, but still heavily dependent on physical space and high sales per item.”
Sources
1. Wilkins, David. “E-Learnings Long Tail Leaving Walmart to Buy From Amazon”. Learning Solutions Magazine.
2. Pfanner, Eric. “Music Industry Counts the Cost of Piracy”. New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/business/global/22music.html
No comments:
Post a Comment