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Nic Brisbourne’s view from London on venture capital and exploiting change in technology and media
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Labels unrealistic pricing assumptions holding back ad-supported music market

Started by brisbourne · 6 months ago

Last week I wrote a couple of posts about the music industry, firstly about the trend towards free ad supported music and then about how to combat piracy.
Thank you all for your comments and pointers to new resources and companies.
The big takeaway from the conversation so far is that the reco ... Continue reading »

5 comments

  • illectro

    1 year ago

    The funny thing is that none of those companies is properly licensed to deliver the goods in the UK right now. And in the US, the biggest market in the world, only imeem has the all important licenses.


    we7 have a few small independent artists and, they've publicly stated they want to prove the revenue model before committing to pay the labels the rates they want.

    imeem has licenses from all the big record companies, but only for north america for the moment.

    Deezer has a deal with SACEM in France and claims this is all they need to be able to deliver music worldwide. Vivendi-Universal begs to differ and is suing them.

    And Qtrax is still doing the musical equivalent of a Henry Wensleydale impersonation (look it up).
    reply
  • Gareth Reakes

    1 year ago

    Hi Nic,

    My name is Gareth Reakes and I am CTO at We7. I think your analysis is good. I would like to add that the illegal market is only one component of the target market for ad funded services. Technology is changing the way people listen to music and they are trying more and more. If you are someone who pays for your downloads then you are restricted by your budget (who can pay $30 a day a music just to try?). With a model like We7s, you can download 3 new albums onto your iPod in the morning, listen to them on through the day and then buy the couple of tracks in the evening that you really like. The artists of the tracks you decide not to buy are still compensated.

    Regarding technologies to track the listens on a download, we have a iTunes plugin in beta that does just that. It also enables us to change the advert when it becomes out of date or less relevant (as well as remove it when its been listened to enough).
    reply
  • Joe Charakupa

    1 year ago

    It's been interesting following your posts re music industry and tech.

    We are launching something that applies to the industry as well and there has been no shortage (since I started networking in that angle) of companies interested in partnering etc. So far none have been traditional labels. Our model allows me not to worry though.

    In general it's starting to seem like their resistance to change keeps costing them leads in the change sweeping the industry. All other industries experiment with different stuff and do R&D. BP and other oil companies, with green energy etc.

    To paraphrase that old quote; the nice thing to note is that "resistance is futile" in their case.
    reply
  • Mike

    1 year ago

    "...but over time we are likely to get the technology which allows us to track the number of times a downloaded song, with ad embedded, is listened to."

    I don't get that "ad embedded" part. Isn't that basically adware, then? Someone explain the difference to me.
    reply
  • Abo Sabry

    1 month ago

    Nice video :)
    reply

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