The Equity Kicker - Latest Comments in Future of the music industry

Re: Future of the music industry

Robert Gordon — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:41:03 -0000

Last.fm's announcement is only big news if you've never used imeem.com - they've been doing the 'free, on demand, high quality, major label streaming' for over six months

Furthermore a scientific comparison finds that imeem has a catalog twice the size.

http://youngstv.imeem.com/b...

Re: Future of the music industry

Joe T. — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 18:10:45 -0000

Good post, Nic. I think there's something else going on with the music industry, and it's very sad. It's the passing of a very long era that has existed since the beginning of recorded music. Whether we continue with the present "file-based" system, or evolve to a system where "music is like water" pouring endlessly out of the pipes of the internet -- universal access to every track ever recorded -- something much more fundamental is happening. It used to be that the music industry "found" the best music and "pushed" it out to the public. Promoters would actually find the most talented and interesting artists and labels would promote those artists. Think of all the cool artists Malcolm McLaren found in the 70s and 80s, for example. Who would have known about them if it weren't for someone like Malcolm?

Today, by contrast, all the work of finding great new artists is on the individual listener. True, it's a much more "libertarian" and "decentralized" system, but it's also much harder for the average music consumer these days to sift through millions of tracks and new artists, and locate the best.

The only artists who have any real promotional money spent on them these days are the ones who don't need it -- like Britney Spears. The truly talented gems get little or no promotional investments now, and are never heard from.

Re: Future of the music industry

Henry Yates — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 08:02:39 -0000

Interesting post on a potential new model http://radar.oreilly.com/ar...

Re: Future of the music industry

Fred Destin — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:18:23 -0000

Nice one re Martin, funny. Paul McG is surely a success given U2 (by the way besides U2 I can think of PJ Harvey, but no one else), but go to the Music Managers Forum if you really want to see to what extent these guys have no clue... This is a dumb comment from a great man that is in may ways "back to the future" (reminds me of early days of the RIAA -- let's focus on device based protection huh ?). So dumb, so predictable, so much more for our startups to do !

Re: Future of the music industry

Robin Blandford — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:33:27 -0000

It's "Paul McGuinness"

Martin McGuinness is a totally different kettle of fish http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...