How To Kill The Music Industry
;)
Jens Roland just wrote a guest article over at ToreentFreak on how file sharing is not the sole culprit in the demise of the music industry:
During The Pirate Bay trial, the music industry placed the blame for the decline in their revenues squarely on the shoulders of file-sharers. Their logic is clearly flawed, but it could sway the verdict if no alternative explanation is presented. So, if piracy isn’t to blame, then what is *actually* killing the music industry?
According to Per Sundin, CEO of Universal Music, the decline in music revenues in the past 8 years can be fully attributed to (read: blamed on) illegal file sharing. If this were actually true, many of us might even respect his decision to go after pirates as fiercely as the music industry is doing right now. However, the past 8 years have seen a lot more changes in the landscape of home entertainment than Per Sundin would like to admit, and some of those changes have had a massive impact on music profitability — much more so than any amount of piracy.
I’ll add a caveat to his eighth point,
“the music industry itself has embraced the opportunities of digital media, at last letting consumers buy *single* tracks at a time rather than forcing entire albums full of ‘fillers’ on them. Looking at the RIAA’s own sales figures for the past 10 years, there is a *direct* correlation between the break-off in album sales and the introduction and increase in single track digital sales.”
I wrote back in the beginning of the year that 2009 would see certain artists abandon the album altogether in favor of only releasing single tracks that have potential of becoming hits. I still stand by my convictions there. As I stated before, however, I don’t think that will be a lasting trend. Our ADD culture will burn out on jumping from one thing to the next. Rather than inspiring a new music sales model, I think the singles-only (that sounds funny…) artist release will spark a return to the full album. Consumers will regain an appreciation for a well constructed album that is complete from beginning to end.
Anyway, Jens offers some very valid points, but not a lot of solutions. We can all try to speculate as to why the music industry is in the shape that it’s in. That’s fine and good to the extent that we don’t want to repeat past shortcomings, but let’s let the past be the past and try to find solutions to the problem rather than describing the problems further.
Tweet
2 Responses to “How To Kill The Music Industry”
Leave a Reply
I think the single track sales certainly could have helped the demise of the industry but not by itself. One could look at the data statistically and likely tell. Could it also be that years ago you could buy an album and get numerous really great tracks and now you can often buy an album and get only one really great track, prompting one to purchase just that one track?
[...] talked at length about the future of the album, different artists even abandoning the album in favor of singles-only releases (see the Barcelona [...]