How do you want music?
An article posted on businessweek.com following “discussions” during the SxSW festival in Austin, Texas cover various ideas of how music could or should be available to us - the mere mortals who actually care about music! Unlike those who are simply looking at avenues to continue profiting from music!
The kind of ideas are ad-linking where you get the music for “free” when you buy the product it is advertising! Sorry but unless I’ve missed the point with this one, why would I want to buy a piece of junk simply because I like the music that advertises it? I’d rather just buy the music! This “radical” idea though just encourages piracy. Only so many people will actually want the product associated with the music yet probably more would want the music so what happens? Doesn’t take much to work that out!
And how about the so called “subscription” service where you pay weekly or monthly and get to download as much music as you want. These subscriptions are then distributed (after of course a hefty chunk taken by the provider!) to the artists creating the music in the first place! Sounds great doesn’t it but how are the funds to be distributed? Equally amongst all song writers/artists or proportionately by number of downloads per track? If the former then where does the incentive remain to produce great music but then again if the latter, what happens to the “little guy”, the independant currently producing great material but unfortunately gets lost in amongst all the “teeny pop” that will no doubt flood these subscribtion services!
Maybe I’m a rare breed these days but I buy music because I like the music! Simple! I don’t want to have to buy a bottle of juice just so I can listen to my current favourite track and I don’t want to subscribe to a service that gives me unlimited rubbish with the odd few good tracks thrown in! I am happy how I choose my music now thank you - if I like, I buy! If not, I don’t!
Without wanting to repeat myself too much, what this industry really needs to wake up to is what product to offer consumers - not how to push whatever they want onto consumers! Not every body wants to listen to some 15 year old singing about jumping up and down on a pink or blue mp3 player! Some of us still enjoy listening to, watching and reading about artists and their music! And in my opinion, all of this can be achieved with CD or DVD far BETTER than any downloaded file or pre-loaded flash pen!