There have always been discussions about where the music industry should head for. Some voted for more effective and more widely acceptable DRM (Digital Right Management) system. Some other went for totally free market. In my opinion, the future would pretty much be toward to the free economy, and that is to say all kinds of music would be free for individuals to upload and download legally on the internet.
Let’s look at the current situation in the music market. Relatively speaking, Apple has been successful both in selling digital music and protecting the digital right for music record companies through iTunes and its related products. However, who is going to guarantee it will continue to be successful for a long time. Since peer-sharing and free downloading on the internet is pervasive, I highly doubt that the currently feasible way will not come to its end in a not faraway future. Ever since the advent of Internet, it has been such a fantastic and wonderful thing that made a lot of things possible. Why not add the possibility of free music for all the internet users? However, free music can never be absolutely free. In order to secure the benefit of the label companies, there will be some other way to work out the solution. One possible solution could be that the label companies should cooperate with ISP to indirectly charge the users for downloading the music. In this case, a fixed fee, which is included in the monthly payment for using the wideband, would be charged from the side of users. However, this part of revenue will be paid to these label companies in accordance with how many pieces of music they offered and how many of them have been downloaded.
On the side of label companies and music artists, they should understand that selling CDs is not the only way of generating revenues, and non-stop fighting for digital rights and the pervasive downloading can only create a lose-lose situation. On the other hand, they should create other opportunities for their potential customers to consume music, such as live concerts, which they have always been doing. From an article I read a few months ago, it ironically stated that it was actually those people who downloaded music most from the internet were most likely to consume music in a variety of ways, like buying the CDs of the artists they like and going to the concerts of their favorite singers.
With the development of technology in the music industry as well as of the internet, new business opportunities will emerge from time to time and the future actually becomes quite hard to predict. However, I still strongly believe that free music for individuals to download legally on the internet as well as the acceptance by the label companies and the artists will eventually become reality.
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4 comments:
“All kinds of music would be free for individuals to upload and download legally on the internet.” Definitely right. But the problem is that how can the musician and record companies gain profit from this free economics? Or do you mean that the future of music will become those like Youtube? Music turns to the behavior of individuals? I hope not(and it absolutely can not) or it will be not professional musician any more .
I really like the solution you mentioned in your article saying that the label companies should cooperate with ISP to indirectly charge the users for downloading the music. It’s a convinced way for users because they don’t need to go through all the troublesome progress to pay for songs. It’s much easier and less time cost. But in other words, the music which users can get is limited because they can only listen or download those musicians’ songs which have contract with the label companies. Especially there are numbers of label companies worldwide, the competition within themselves and the local ISP will raise the price of music unintended. Thus, maybe the model (pay per song) like iTunes nowadays is the best for each of side.
Pretty nice view of the future but we are ignoring here some fundamental factors and stakeholders. What will happen to the young and infamous artists? Beside the pirate groups and common consumers, a large number of artists are also arguing for their fair share which is not given to them in current royalty models. With the bit change of revenue collection model, things would remain same and big labels would continue exploiting the artists as they are doing now. So in this suggestive model, artists would remain on lower level of income and real benefit would be for recording companies. In the result this future picture would not be acceptable for many of the stakeholders.
On the other side, with the rapid progress, many new users are coming in internet circles from 3rd and 2nd world countries. These users are using pirated operating systems and software for daily usage and are not much intend to spend money for music. Antipiracy laws are not present at all or are so negligible that users don’t care about them. Because of the very reason, even iTune business model is not so popular in those countries. Any model where users have to pay more for internet facility will decrease usage of this media tremendously which eventually threaten many social and other websites in means of traffic decrease.
Well, I strongly agree with the opinion that “it was actually those people who downloaded music most from the internet were most likely to consume music in a variety of ways, like buying the CDs of the artists they like and going to the concerts of their favorite singers.” And in my essay, I also mentioned that the P2P technology should not be banned only due to the Digital Right Management. This kind of technology should be well regulated to be used.
Free is awesome! Everyone likes free stuffs. Consumers undoubtedly benefit from the free music economy business mode. However, whether this mode would successfully run? I would doubt the free economy mode for music industry from two perspectives. First of all, from the label companies’ perspective, they will be reluctant to adopt and resist implementing this mode since their profits cannot be guaranteed just through cooperating with ISP to indirectly charge the users for downloading the music. And this behavior can be definitely a kind of cannibalization act to shrink their most juicy market segment like selling the music directly. And from the consumers’ perspective, on one hand, they will feel like being cheated since you propaganda that these music are free, and in fact you say free music can never be absolutely free. They pay for the music indirectly. Once the consumers perceive that you are cheating, you will lose the market in terms of losing the consumer base. On the other hand, limited contracts with several music companies cannot fulfill the consumers’ diversified needs since the music market nowadays is the typically niche market.
I don’t think that iTunes can stay successful for a very long time either, still they have a huge amount of customer that is familiar with the product at present. I find the solution of label companies working together with ISPs interesting, however, it seem to be complicated and a kind of indirect way of presenting the idea to potential customers. And why should the ISP earn any revenue share? They are not content providers and I find it strange to support their existence by forming such an agreement – I think these are two different actors converging in a not satisfying way possibly increasing prices by including a new actor.
I strongly agree that label companies, instead of threatening people, should strive to create new opportunities and that this is something they have been very lazy in conducting – probably owing to their previous strong position in the music industry. They could try to invest in their relation to their customers, increasing loyalty by developing valuable add-on services, devoting themselves to the new medium they naively have rejected for such a long time. They have to get in touch with young consumers, otherwise their days in the industry will be counted. This could maybe be done by focusing on TV shows like “American Idol” etc.
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