Microsoft Offering Music Downloads In Europe
from the still-missing-the-point dept
I don't think this is a huge surprise, but there has been a ton of press coverage this morning about a Microsoft-branded music download service in Europe. It's another "me too" music download service that charges per song and comes bundled with restrictive DRM. I still don't see what the big deal is about the new generation of music download services. The big "innovation" is to charge per song, rather than have a subscription fee. All of these still miss out on the real power of music sharing where people get to find out about new music from others and bandwidth and storage costs are distributed.
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No Subject Given
How would the following model appeal to you:
You can download any song, complete, no degradation of audio quality, etc from a provider (read website or itunes like service). The catch hear is you can download it, free, sample the music, the artist, any and all cuts, HOWEVER, the free down load has strict DRM on it such that it can't be copied from the harddrive/system it's downloaded to. If you decide you like the song, they you can download an unrestricted version. Catch here is that the version you download is somehow tagged as belonging to you. Thus if the unstricted copy makes it out into 'the wild' the music company/site can track it back to it's origin (ie you) and decide if they want to take legal action against you based on what they find.
This would allow anyone to freely sample new artists without the 'sharing' and then allow you to actually own the music should you decide you like it.
There's a few catchs in there obviously, the one hard spot being what happens when someone writes a virus which uploads your songs for you but I believe this answers your want for having music freely available for sampling as well as letting the music companies control and get revenue from the products that actually are worth buying.
Most of us don't want to be tethered to a computer to listen to our music so we'd pay for what we like.
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Re: No Subject Given
By the way, my "hangup" isn't about sharing music, but the fact that P2P systems are out there and aren't going away. If I were in the music business, I'd be looking for a way to embrace them, and move on from there. Offering weaker alternatives doesn't do much good. Looking at how to take what file sharing is good at, and then figuring out a way to make money off of that seems to make a lot more sense to me.
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Re: No Subject Given
While I believe you are correct in that if they could find a viable way to exploit the file sharing for profit, they'd be all over it. But until that method is obvious, the companies have way too much invested in the making and distribution of the media of the music.
What is or will be more interesting is artists who suddenly realize they really no longer need music companies to get their music too the people and make money themselves. Course they'll still need the equivalent of an 'agent/distributor' to get their product out there so somewhere someone is going to be making money in this.
P2P isn't going to go away but until the/us capitalist figure out how we can make money on it, it's going to be prosecuted all along the way. I would not be surprised to see either the government or the music companies in cahoots with the government find some way to 'tax' files that are sent via P2P networks (say 1 cent per 1Meg ? ). Don't laugh. They (say government) couldn't find a way to stop tobacco or alcohol so they decided to capitalize on it by taxing the hell out of it. And still we smoke and we drink.
hmmmmm, tax shared files by bandwidth. Might work if you can figure out how to get the money back to the copyrighted materials owners.
Regards, RJD.
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Re: No Subject Given
Anyway, I agree that the new methods of making money might seem more difficult for the record labels at first, but I strongly believe they'll open up more opportunities to make money in the long run.
Still, the more important point is this: yes, the record labels might not want to shift to this sort of world, believing it will harm their business. That doesn't matter, however. This isn't a question of what we all "hope" is going to happen - but what actually *is* happening due to file sharing. Thus, the market conditions have changed, and a smart business learns to look at those new market conditions and figure out the best way to deal with them and make a profit. The bad business person complains that the market is changing and tries (unsuccessfully) to prevent it from changing.
Thus, if your options are between embracing the new method of music distribution and making some money and suffering a painful death where all your customers hate you... which would you choose?
The established music industry seems to have chosen the latter. Of course, this doesn't matter, because others will come in and fill in the space they've left behind when they're gone.
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Re: No Subject Given
You are 100% correct about how businesses react to a change in the landscape. However, if you're entire business is driven but some very concrete concepts, in this case media distribution and copyright control, and you've spent literally 100s of millions to put this in place, you cannot quickly turn this model into something new. This is a problem all big businesses face and if they smart they diversify and collect revenue from other streams while changing the existing model to conform to the evolving market place. One of my favorite examples of industry/companies that didn't change and just went away where the wagon and wagon wheel makers when the auto mobile came along. None of them became the Ford, GM, etc of our current era. A good example of a company that learned to survive and thrive through change and diversification is General Electric whose businesses today hardly resemble their business of yester year.
One way that music companies currently have leverage in their market place is they control the infrastructure for creating and distributing music. File sharing would be no where for music if the music was initially created at these studio's. Think I'm not to far out on a limb by saying that if the music company did not provide these assets to new artists, that there would be very few new artists. The more powerful the home computer is becoming, the easier it is for musicians to create and produce their own sounds but even at that, if still takes a fair amount of $$$$ to create a studio / production environment that's going to put out a decend sounding work. Remember, the music companies have the contacts and contracts with most of the studios that can create the necessary 'sound' that a viable musician is going to need. You haven't heard bad until you've heard ArrowSmith in the Raw.
Where am I going with this ??? Not sure. Seems to me that the music companies could easily put a dagger in the file sharing thing simply but putting DRM onto the CDs here and now (DRM that works would be helpful) or simply quit distributing music in hard format. They might be able to prolong that 'long death' for a long long time that way.
I guess I keep looking at your choices for the music companies (slow Death versus embracing the new method) and can't help noticing that if a music company embraces the new method, they are basically flinging themselves on a sword and hoping it doesn't hit a critical organ.
One last thing. You indicated that you wanted to be able to send a person a song (instead of using my website idea). What's wrong with sending a hyper link to the song ? I'm not a fan or large attachments and more than a few folks are still on modems and probably wouldn't like having to download Mbs of songs their friends are sharing with them.
Should be interesting to see who or what fills the void which might be left by music companies should they not be able to adapt. I'd almost rather see option 3 happen ... what's option 3 ? Have the companies provide another format which enhances the music experience soooooo much that file sharing (as we know it currently) would no longer be acceptable quality. Not sure how old you are Mike but I remember the first time I heard a CD played after listening to tapes and albums for years. I never bought another album/tape after that. The jump in quality was so astounding I wouldn't consider listening to hiss of a tape or scratch of an album ever again. I know the music companies are trying some new format which are in fact better, but they have yet to make that magitude of difference like tape to CD did. Once they can do that, they don't need to worry about MP3s.
Damn, I'm a wordy, not always coherent, guy.
Look forward to future posts.
RJD
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