Peter Gabriel: Digital Music Downloading's Future

securitas writes "CNN International's Becky Anderson interviews musician and OD2 online music service co-founder Peter Gabriel about the future of digital music downloads. The interview covers Gabriel's motivations in starting OD2, how technology has changed the music industry business model in the favor of artists and away from the big record labels, and where the small, independent artist fits in. Gabriel's words have weight because of his insights as both a musician/artist and a businessman who guided a digital music on demand distribution (OD2) and download service to success."

Comments

Last hope for the independents

[RLiegh]

Gabriel: That's always the question. There are deals being done now where the independents are going to get screwed again, I think. Where they're told they're on a level playing field but actually the big boys are. And again, I think it's only by staying together, and consolidating as a lump, that has some leverage and some power, that the little guy can have a chance to compete. The great thing about the economics of the digital world is that it's much cheaper to do everything and to reach people.

I think that this is something that everyone outside of the time/warner, sony, etc cartels who want to be in the music industry need to take heed of. If the big boys are consolidating, then maybe the smaller labels and distributors should put aside their personal ambitions and look at the larger picture...before they're written out of it.

Re:Last hope for the independents

[proj_2501]

That's what's nice about things like Submerge

Basically, a bunch of small Detroit techno labels got together and put all their resources together for their own distributor.

listen to the man

[jacquesm]

Peter Gabriel has always been one of the music scene's most technologically advanced members. For instance with Genesis he pioneered the use of lasers during concerts.

Re:listen to the man

[jacquesm]

I'm not aware of 'varilight', but I do know that a friend of mine used to tour with Genesis and did their first laser shows (they *built* their own stuff, hardware, software and so on, practically between gigs). This is way back when Gabriel was still in charge.

From the article...

[k4_pacific]

Peter Gabriel was quoted as saying, "I'd like to hit the RIAA with a SLEDGE-HAMMER dunt-duh. After all, I've kicked the RIAA habit, (kicked the habit, whoo)"

How disappointing....

[Asprin]

Sorry guys, OD2 is Win/IE only. No Mac, no Linux, no Moz.

OD2 still here, yea, but a success?

[JasonUCF]

a businessman who guided a digital music on demand distribution (OD2) and download service to success.

Durrr... I dig Peter Gabriel, and I dig this concept, but, uh, success? Can we have any stats to back that up?

In January, it seemed like the store had varying rights per label, delivering only Windows Media songs. Varying DRM'd files with fine print? Ok, I guess people were buying into it when they introduced that penny per streaming song thing.

Outside of that I've seen no press releases or 3rd party sites talking about OD2 as a "success". Are we qualifying it by the fact that they're still here after 6 months? The submission just feels weird to me.. I couldn't even find any stats thru google.

(again, I dig Mr. Gabriel, and I appreciate him and Mr. Eno coming up with a new concept. It's nice for iTunes to have competition.. but I need to see some numbers to endear a service with only DRM'd WM9 files servicing 3-4 countries of the EU as a "success". Even the BBC calls them a success with no numbers!)

Won't work, unless.....

[tenjinzan]

This won't work for any artist other than mainstream artists, unless the indie artist gets airtime. Radio stations are still owned by big corporations, and like to shove thier music down your throat...until there are more places like IRL, then this model will probably not work for small artists. What Gabriel is suggesting is alot like communism...looks great on paper, but in the real world, other things need to change, not just how you buy the music. He is suggesting a change that will alow ANY artist to sell thier own works, but that really does need alot of help in the "Gabriel: Well you see, I think that a lot of artists aren't very good when it comes to marketing or accounts or doing a lot of the jobs that record companies do" area....and that doesn't necessarily mean that the RIAA can still have a job. Fsck the RIAA! I want to choose the music that I want to listen to!

Re:OD2 still here, yea, but a success?

[glenstar]

Check out the story on Loudeye acquiring OD2. Towards the bottom is this:

"For the quarter ended March 31, 2004 on a UK GAAP basis OD2 generated approximately $2.5 million in revenues, which represented over 80% sequential growth from the quarter ended December 31, 2003 and over 250% growth versus the prior year quarter."
Not outstandingly successful, but not terrible either.

Downloading and the small artist

[Phoenix666]

Downloading takes the critical distribution link in the music delivery chain away from the big companies. That alone gives the artist the biggest chance to break free that they've ever had. P2P file-sharing, not iTunes-style pay-per-download, weakens the promotion link in the music delivery chain to some extent as well. That is, it doesn't cost you anything to experiment.

Big promotions via radio and ad campaigns are a different matter. Pretty tough for the small artist to negotiate with ClearChannel for airtime. Also pretty tall order for them to finance a billboard in Times Square. But that's the case now, so perhaps we're looking at a future where small artists starting out have to look to viral marketing to get their name out there.

What must go is the big labels acting like dictators, oppressing artists and dumbing down music to fit their marketing models. They should shrink and shrink until they're like specialized ad agencies, marketing a product like every other firm on Madison Avenue does. Then successful artists can hire them just like they'd hire an accountant, retain a lawyer, or any other sort of specialized service.

It's still not easy for small artists to accomplish what a label does now, but with home-recording studios more affordable than ever, P2P file-sharing for free advertising, and accounting software like Quicken it's more possible now than it ever has been for the motivated indy artist to DYI their own success.