state51

Category: markets

  • Streaming versus Downloads? The Fight is Far From Won

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    The recent decline in the music download market, coupled with an acceleration in the streaming revenue numbers, has led many to predict the kind of transition that saw the end of the cassette tape, or indeed the cart and horse. There are a few reasons, some a bit less obvious, why this might not be such…

  • The World Is Singing A New Song

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    We live in an age of everyday activism, with every purchase an expression of values as well as needs. Ideas about fairness go far beyond the impact of certified fair trading schemes; they permeate consumer marketing. Social media drives a radical transparency in supply chains, with no exploitation tacitly excused. Alongside fairness we have discovered a new appreciation…

  • Two Ideas for a Bigger, Better Music Industry

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    We have come a long way in the music industry since the first faltering attempts to sell music online in the mid 1990s. A couple of personal anecdotes (names withheld to protect the guilty) from those years illustrate just how much music industry attitudes have changed. A top UK band manager raged in one meeting, ‘get [my…

  • It’s a Playlist World. Time to Break the Lock-in!

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    Playlists are moving to the front and centre of music discovery and consumption. They alter the balance of power in the industry in some obvious, and some less obvious ways. So who is winning in a playlist world, and how can we make sure the power of the playlist is used for the benefit of…

  • Fairness and Advantage in Future Music Markets

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    A debate is being conducted by the stakeholders in the future of the music industry, about who should get paid, how much, and by whom. So much devilish detail is being left out that an intelligent observer would get a very distorted view of the present, and that is no basis on which to build…

  • Europe’s Digital Single Market is Good for Music

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    Accustomed as music companies are to territorial licensing, pricing, windowing, and marketing it is understandable that there should be at least scepticism if not outright hostility to the European Union’s Digital Single Market strategy. Swedes with an average GDP (PPP) per capita of $45,000 can afford more music than Bulgarians with $15,000. It doesn’t take…

  • Three Reasons Why Indie Music Will Thrive

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    There’s a professional and independent music industry, sandwiched in between the largest corporate and VC funded businesses, and the hobbyist and part time music makers. It is vitally important as a repository of skills and cultural memory, as the guardian of meaningful values in music, and as an engine of innovation for the future. And I think…

  • Spotify Cannibalises iTunes; Universal Cannibalises Music

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    Universal Music has been turning in some very unimpressive numbers for parent Vivendi over the last few years. Traditionally record companies blame everyone other than themselves for their failures (I did a brief survey some years ago here). Now in the frame is Spotify, which relies heavily on drawing users in on its free offering, from…

  • Listen to the Music, not the Audio Nihilists

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    The trade offs that made digital music possible, when storage and bandwidth were scarce, are no longer quite so necessary through much of the developed world. Some brave services are trying to take advantage of this technological advance by offering higher quality music on demand. They face considerable obstacles, and oddly, a chorus of voices…

  • A Global Release Day is the Wrong Kind of Globalisation

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    Big record labels are gearing up to move their release scheduling so that all new records come out on a Friday at a minute past midnight. They argue that everyone knows anyway through social media when a record is released; that record stores for those buying physical products need to know what day to rotate their displays…