So, the UK Top 40 is probably going to start including listens using streaming services like Last.fm, Napster, iMeem and We7, meaning that streaming services are starting to account for a significant proportion of UK music consumption.
And the record labels have finally reached a decent compromise deal with the online radio services such as Pandora and Spotify, meaning that Pandora should finally become available again outside the US, but more than that means that the labels are effectively legitimising the model.
And Pirate Bay have been bought out and are going legit, which means that they too can see which way the wind’s blowing and realise they need to make p2p consumer-friendly.
And truly disruptive 21st century business models like slicethepie and soundcloud seem to be doing ok too and they also don’t rely on physical file downloads.
I don’t know about you, but to me it all smells a bit like the music piracy war is effectively over and the only questions that remain are who can bring truly ubiquitous streaming (i.e. home, remote and in-car) with a proper user interface that allows you to both search huge catalogues of tracks as well as manage your relationship to a subset of those tracks - i.e. your ‘collection’. Whoever manages that will likely win out pretty much whatever their business model is, in my opinion.
So, could it be that the record industry has finally realised one of the tenets of the smart growth manifesto, namely that had they succeeded in stopping piracy, they would have priced the next generation of artists out of being music literate enough to sustain the industry by forcing them to actually buy huge back-catalogues of music?
Maybe.
The acid test will be whether they drop the multi-million dollar damages they’ve hounded Jammie Thomas for since 2007…
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The war might be over but battles are still being fought, it feels like the music giants are like the apocryphal soldier fighting on in the jungle long after the peace treaties have been signed.
As long as lawyers can sniff the money then they will still try to fight the battles, it’s time for a change in copyright law, and let the owner of the media truly own what they have bought, this means giving them the right to do with it what they will.
It’s a funny thing isn’t it? Up until recently, it was everyone copying everyone elses mp3 collections onto their portable harddrives. But since Spotify can deliver lots of music on demand - thus saving acres of disk space on things you’ll never actually ever listen to, where’s the incentive to copy it?
I would argue the same about films frankly. I would like to download the latest films to my house and would actually pay for an HD version. But can I? No.
You can always stream films from LoveFilm: http://www.lovefilm.com/browse/film.html?facet-1=catalog|video&facet-2=media|digital
And I’m sure there are pay-for services on Boxee.
And on the music front, the RIAA seem at least happy with the fact that there’s no DRM on music downloads any more: http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/drm/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218501454
I hope so. There have been rumours on TechCrunch for a while that the music companies knew the game was up and that they were suing users only until they found a way to screw their artists in a whole new way by owning their own streaming channel. Hence the Spotify experiment where record co’s take an equity stake (not for the first time in a digital distribution firm - Imeem) and a licensing deal. Historically the labels have offered licensing deals that make it impossible to make money (see Sonific: http://www.mediafuturist.com/2008/04/in-music-the-lo.html). And I’m not sure this has changed with Spoitfy, which doesn’t really make money for itself - it’s all siphoned out to the majors in royalties (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/05/spotify_exclusive/). The major labels big challenge isn’t piracy, it’s a declining demographicand greater competition - there are fewer teenagers (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_compendia/fom2005/04_FOPM_AgeStructure.pdf) and of course many more competitors for teen spending than there were in the 60, 70s and 80s. I don’t really see any evidence that the majors are doing anything other than protecting their traditional revenue sources and I’m not that confident that the piracy issue has really gone away. Their big challenge long term is still Apple: they want to own the whole value chain from production (Macs and Logic) through to distribution (iTunes). It’s beginning to work - grime artists like JME are building a business model around getting a track battered by DJs for 6 weeks then released on iTunes for 79p (http://verybutterz.blogspot.com/) - and noone pirates music more than the grime scene. And the artist’s rate from iTunes or Juno is much better than major label contracts get you - or Spotify. A lot of producers I know are thinking of taking their tracks off Spotify. There’s no money in it.