Lose a bet if you have to. But lose it informed ;)
I am sending you this because in such a shift there should be great opportunities and you should be well informed about it!
Fom Reuters: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6152171.html
With global music sales down for a seventh straight year, the talk at an annual industry meeting in Cannes, France, has become heated over how to develop digital sales against competition from the dreaded F word--free
...
(and how record companies aren't waiting for legislation, but accepting the new situation and adapting creating new revenue channels...)
Warner Music Group is also looking at new ways to develop.
"As an industry we really need to innovate, and bring new products and services to the market," head of digital strategy Alex Zubillaga told reporters in London last week. "We at Warner have put out a series of premium products and ... we immediately doubled the amount of digital albums that we were selling by just attaching a video, attaching some special lyrics or a photo gallery.
another article
http://www.silentway.com/tony/articles/musicindustry.html
And now from
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/music/inside/future.html
:
Instant gratification favouring peer to peer
...Well, the public doesn't care about labels, they care about songs. They either like it or they don't like it. And if they like it they want to buy it at the most easy, accessible instant gratification way, and they can't. They want to buy what they want, and they can't. You hear a great song by the Beatles, and you want to buy that song. You can't buy that song. You have to buy the whole album. And you can't get it quickly, because it's not accessible.
The incremental involvement of the musicians in marketing:
...Those are skill sets. Those skill sets are still going to be needed. The question is can the artist do some of that, more of that, themselves? Will it be a manager who does more of that themselves? Will there be independent companies that will be doing more of that that used to be done by the majors? Or will the majors adapt and create different types of companies that are staffed differently to provide different services that are more attuned? I think the answer is a little bit of all the above, but it'll be very different.
Yes. music will be free to share, send and copy. You can't limit the choices of people, keep them in the dark and overcharge them in a globalized world where they can access these products anytime, anywhere.
Music will be "free". And the other media will follow.
Regards
