K. Lewis

Are New Digital Music Payments Enough?

I agree with Activision. The game play is the driver for the sale. You could easily substitute the music with indy songs and still have hit games. Just look at the model on television. CBS revived their label just to feed their shows. Cable stations bypass the high priced option altogether for independent music.

Activision is in such a position of power that they could probably start their own boutique label and have bands gladly jump at the opportunity. There's at least one move studio I know of that's looking to do just that in order to bypass paying labels for including their acts music in major motion pictures.

The labels must adapt or perish along with their antiquated business model.

Will Music Sales Be Profitable for Record Companies in Ten Years?

There's a major disconnect in perception here. The labels have a lot of room to squeeze profits out of their music products. They don't HAVE to spend so much on signing, recording, and promoting acts that it requires 500,000 sales to be profitable. The emerging so-called 360 deals are an attempt to do things differently but even they are front loading the bet against a proven talent that may or may not pay off. The cost model has to change to put the money where it counts instead of spraying cash hoping to hit the target. Put simply, the labels spend to much on the hope of a products potential rather than shifting that spending to a later point in the product life cycle to focus the spending on products that are actually performing.

The labels have access to big media outlets to promote their artist but do so inefficiently. They can profit just fine if they stop wasting so many marketing dollars. If my label can profit beginning at 1500 sales, why can't theirs? If I can ramp up marketing spending based on a products performance why can't they? Of course the scale is different but the math is simple. Spend smarter.

Music Downloads: You Can't Regulate One Industry and Leave Another Alone

The many forms of this problem and the attempted solutions are, to me, wildly entertaining to watch as a student of business and marketing in mass media. The only certainty I can predict is that the consumer will ultimately win. The content controllers who survive and prosper will be the ones smart enough to pan for gold in the stream rather trying to build dams and levies to fight a losing battle against nature. As a songwriter, musician, and independent label owner, I'll be spreading the net far and wide to be sure my content is available whenever and where ever people look for it. Sometimes the folks looking won't want to pay and I'm sure they'll find a way to partake without doing so. That's part of doing business in a changing digital landscape if you ask me. It's only my problem if the seeker who's willing to pay can't find my work. For the folks intent on theft, I'll leave that up to karma.

Will Today's Music Fans Buy What Nokia Is Selling?

This appears to be another attempt make money by selling something people aren't buying. Why is it so impossible for the media companies to just look at how people are consuming their products and build a paid, open alternative to the folks who'd rather not steal?

Access to an infinite, open, media library is ALREADY there if I want to illegally download the content. The big media companies simply need to build the store where the people already shop, so to speak.

MySpace to Launch New Music Joint Venture With Big Labels

Interesting to note how no independent labels were included despite much of MySpace's rise in popularity being due to independent bands embracing the platform. This deal effectively excludes the entire long tail.

Music Industry Downfall: The Rise of Social Streaming

The numbers don't lie but I have don't see streaming staying atop the heap without a factor of mobility. iPods allowing you to take your music library with you is the killer feature that keeps it ahead of the streaming sites. I stream internet radio constantly while I'm at a computer but once I'm on the go it's iPod and nothing else. The best bet to meet the demand for any song anywhere still appears to be on the device that allows streaming on the go. Cell phones are the closest to that prize and Apples a major player there as well. As for 25 cents per song, that seems low to me. Especially if it's the only option. I like Nine Inch Nails approach of a tiered offering of more content and supplemental content at a higher price. 25 cents for a simple raw mp3 download and nothing else, perhaps. For guys like me who like to hold a book of liner notes and see who wrote and produced each track, $1 per song with additional info doesn't seem too much to ask.

The Music Biz: Something Important Is On The Horizon

Here's the truth of the matter. There will be new choices for music consumers at some point in the future and people will not stop creating new music as the current business model continues to break down. Original music will continue to be created and someone will figure out how to charge those willing to pay. Out of the shuffle in the coming years there will emerge a small set of choices that'll represent exactly what the market will bear. Any person who's every encountered a persistent sales pro has heard the term "well how much you got to spend?" Soon enough the music and movie businesses will learn how to ask that question and collect whatever happens to be the answer. They'll collect at the delivery channel, or the hardware device and they'll collect from whatever form we choose to consume be it single, album, streamed, leased, or "owned." AND there'll still be people stealing content.