Success Stories From The Music Commerce Frontier

from the things-are-working dept

To hear some in the industry tell it, the music industry is falling apart. Except, we're not seeing that at all. What we have seen is that sales of one particular element of the industry have come under much needed competitive pressure, and that's caused a few companies who relied too heavily on that area of business to finally start to recognize the inefficiencies in their business model -- which they're falsely blaming on "piracy." However, the rest of the industry is thriving. A couple weeks ago, I presented at the National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM) event, held in San Diego, about "success stories from the music commerce frontier," highlighting both artists and companies that were finding success, despite the "woe is me" complaints from both the big record labels and certain music retailers. Parts of the presentation come from older presentations, but about 2/3 of it is entirely new material, including the opening bit, built off of Clay Shirky's wonderful analysis of what comes next for the newspaper industry -- but applied to the music industry. The presentation itself runs about half an hour and you can watch it below (if you're in an RSS reader, click through to the page to see it):

NARM 2009 State Of The Industry: Michael Masnick from NARM on Vimeo.

Filed Under: business models, economics, music, stories, success
Companies: narm