Category: strategy
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To Get Paid We Should Set Music Free
Digital music, having started out as a tied product with iTunes and Windows Media locking the files to devices and software players, achieved a certain freedom as DRM came off, but is now migrating fast back to proprietary encrypted formats. These locks benefit only their owners and operators. Switching from Spotify to Rdio, or Rdio…
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YouTube Sends a Depressing Message About Music
This month (May 2104) saw the surfacing of another argument between the organised independent record companies and a wholesale customer, in this case YouTube. The accusation, that YouTube had given the major labels better terms then they were offering indies, was wearyingly familiar; as was YouTube’s reported response, to offer ‘take it leave it’ deal terms…
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Downloads versus Access? Follow the Science AND the Money!
One of the big debates in music is whether the download is dead, killed by ubiquitous connectivity and streaming services. Certainly the expensive (>$0.5) download seems to have plateaued, and streaming revenue is growing strongly tempting new entrants who bring with them investment in better consumer experiences. The end game, goes the argument, is that…
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What the Future Used to Look Like, in 2006
A new feature in iOS 7 reminded me that the sky, which was supposed to be falling eight years ago, has remained inexplicably buoyant. The feature is called the ‘Multipeer Connectivity Framework’ and it provides a simple way for devices to connect to each other over bluetooth in order to exchange files or messages. Eight…
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Record Companies Should Give Up a Hard Won Right. Here’s Why.
When the recording industry was young there was a genuine concern that it might be strangled at birth by owners of popular songs, who might naturally wish to protect their sheet music sales and public performance fees from competition from the new no-effort and high quality music experience offered by the phonogram. As it was,…
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Preserving the Open Internet the Easy Way
No regulation is easy of course, so to start, here’s an apology for the misleading title. Sorry. But it need not be as difficult as it might seem to make the few small adjustments needed to ensure that the next decade does not see the effective end of the open and public internet which promises…
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Leapfrog or Lag? Music Tech in Developing Markets
We have been conditioned to think that developing nations are somehow privileged to have the opportunity to skip whole generations of technologies, moving straight to what we in developed economies are embracing because of its promise for the future. Here’s the Economist, writing in 2008: The mobile phone is also a wonderful example of a…
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Networks or Services – Who is Music’s Better Partner?
When I formed the idea for a new business bundling broadband with music, in 2003, my thinking was guided by two simple principles. The first was that customers already saw music and broadband as a natural bundle. And the second was that making ISP networks able to manage and account for music services was a…
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Floating on a Sea of Demand for Music
Tin Cheuk Leung at the Chinese University of Hong Kong published in 2009 a paper entitled, ‘Should the Music Industry Sue Its Own Customers? Impacts of Music Piracy and Policy Suggestions.’ The updated version is available here. Parts of Leung’s paper need special training to understand (which I do not have) but some of it is…
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Don’t Give Up On The Music Market Just Yet
The huge and growing catalogue of music digitally available through an expanding choice of retailers and services might suggest that any supply side problems are well on the way to being solved. Look a bit closer however, and something is missing. There might be more songs, but the hits are coming from an ever smaller…