I believe we already have a hunch about what the music industry will look like in ten years. The music system that Spotify is developing right now I believe is a part out of what the future music system solution will look like. I think streaming music is the future. There are several reasons for this and I can divide them into three categories; legality / payment solution, group influence and mobility.
The payment solution that Spotify offers today is divided into three levels which I think would work well in the future. The first level is free and funded by advertising. The second level is a day pass-solution for the people who normally accept advertising or that listens very rarely and for a limited time wants the service free from advertising. The third level is for those who want the service permanently ad-free, and therefore pays for the service each month or year. This makes the solution simple and with a possibility of no cost which makes piracy a worse alternative.
When it comes to group influence and to share music with others there is even here a solution which Spotify have developed. Albums, Playlists and even tracks does have their own separate link that makes it easy to send it to a friend or post in a database with other users recommendations or playlists. You can also choose to make your playlist editable for others and thus create shared lists with your friends. I have already three different playlists shared and editable with my friends and I also have three locked auto updating playlists with music. When I like a song I can drag it from those lists to my own.
Music is also something we want to be mobile when you travel or isn’t near a computer. Since the streamed music is not stored at the computer it does not require copying of files to get the music to your mobile device, which currently is a requirement for most of the current mobile devices like iPhone or other various MP3 player. The music that Spotify streams can already be sent thru the mobile network without problems and even if unlimited bandwidth with turbo3g today costs a lot of money each month, it is a cost which will be much lower in 10 years.
To summarize I think a smart solution would be a service with streaming music, built for multiple types of platforms. Besides a computer-based solution, which does not necessarily have to be a software application but can be a web-based solution, it also can be a device that I would describe as a new kind of music player and which is actually a combination of three of today’s technologies. My solution would be an iPhone with support for mobile broadband and with an application to receive streaming music and the account's settings and playlists.
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4 comments:
I agree with you on the opinion that the music will exist on network rather than selling through physical disc. However, I think the payment solution of Spotify designs well but not practical, which means not profitable enough. Because the level of payment is separated by ads, rather than the accessibility of music sources. I believe nowadays many people think it’s nature thing that the music is free online. Thus, once the first level is set for free, I don’t think there will be many other users that want to purchase for songs if what they gain is the same. I think it’s an idealized business model for future but we need other rules to procure it. Different kind of payment can be set by different ability of users to access songs. For example,20 euro for all the music, 10 euro for HIT and local songs, 5 euro for only the HIT.
Streaming is really a good way to diffuse music but if so, we will need internet all the time and hopefully, the speed is stable enough. Moreover, when it comes to a song we really like, we usually want to keep it and click it to broadcast whenever. We don’t want to go to that webpage again, login and repeat these kinds of things in order to hear a song. Maybe like what you said, there will be some kind of platforms, it can memory what we broadcast last week and we only need to click the names of songs, it will automatically search that page and broadcast the songs. But then, the storage will be another problem?
The streaming music is a nice point of view. And the three-level-payment solution seems reasonable. However, I would like to raise a question that is compared with the mode of selling the music source directly, whether the ad-supportive mode is so profitable that can fulfill the composers’, singers’, label companies’, as well as the bandwidth providers interests at the same time . Personally speaking, I will say no.
And from the psychological perspective, consumers would not like to spend money just with listening to the music online. They would like to physically take it in terms of downloading the music into their computers or some other portable equipment like cell phones and MP3 players. When the streaming service is free with the ads, consumers would accept it. However, when the consumers are charged money with the streaming service without ads, they will probably not to par for it.
Finally, whether the streaming solution could be successful in a global level is not sure. In many developing countries, consumers would not like to spend money even on the physically buying the music. They have their channels to download the music for free. As we know the business model of IPhone and ITune is very successful in European and American market, however in the Asian market it sucks.
I agree that Spotify gives us a hunch about how the future music system solution will look like, streaming seem to be the most relevant way to proceed. I believe that people are looking for a legal way to consume music but that there has not been any viable way to do that over the last couple of years. The same is relevant for the movie industry. However, people are willing to pay for their consumption and this is important, of course the money will not be as big as it was in the analogue era of CDs. However, most of that money also went to big record labels that are not as important in present and future business models. So, maybe the artists will not be losing that much money after all if people convert to legal digital solutions like Spotify. The artists will instead gain in marketing options and possibilities to distribute their music worldwide while at the same time being more in charge of what is happening (if it is of any interest to them). I also think that when streaming services are available to a large extent on mobile devices they will become the main music system in the future.
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