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MySpace Teams With Record Companies To Create Music Site
The New York Times reports on a deal between MySpace and three of the four major music labels to develop a new music website. Users will be able to stream songs for free, purchase downloadable tracks, and (possibly) pay a flat monthly fee for unlimited access. From the Times:
"Exact terms of the deal and details about the new site, like prices for downloaded music tracks, were not disclosed. But MySpace did say the site would offer songs free of digital rights management software or D.R.M., which is used to prevent illicit copying but can create technical hurdles for buyers. The songs would be playable on any portable music device, including Apple's iPod. For the music industry, the deal is partly born of desperation. In the face of widespread, escalating online piracy, music sales dropped to $11.5 billion in 2006 from a peak in 1999 of nearly $15 billion."
There, fixed it for you.
I don't know about anyone else, but I don't think piracy is to blame. Its the music industry's inexplicable urge to present themselves as greedy, morally bankrupt fat cats who don't care about the artists, or anyone other than themselves really. I just can't bring myself to financially support those assholes, so I don't buy music.
I think this is too little, too late on the part of MySpace. Their site fell out of fad (in favor for Facebook, but Facebook will eventually be a fad too), and was and still has a terrible site design.
Last.Fm will be a tough competitor to face off against, especially if the same "brilliant" minds behind the MySpace site layout try to crack Last.Fm's bread & butter.
...deserves his MBA revoked. Cut the middlemen. Cut DRM. Team up with a bunch of garage bands, make them famous. They have the popularity to do that, which is precisely what all those unseen talents need...
3 of the 4 major music labels? Make your own!
And give us some GOOD music, ferchrissake!
"It almost sounds as if they are considering treating their customers as *gasp* customers!"
Quote from the Slashdot story: "In the face of widespread, escalating online piracy, music sales dropped..."
To me, that sounds like the music industry saying, "If something bad happens, it must be someone else's fault."
I think the falling sales are the industry's fault. I was supposed to by a Britney Spears CD to hear her singing something about abusing men? If the music industry wants strong sales, it can be kind to the customer and produce something valuable.
iTunes is the only thing standing between the consumer and the record labels desire to charge $2.99 per track. The illusion of competition evaporates when you realize that all the popular music is owned by a couple of companies. They have the monopoly. If iTunes "stranglehold" on distribution is broken, it will become the consumer against the record labels directly, without Apple to stand in the way. That's why other sites are able to offer such deals-- the record labels are intentionally trying to break Apple's control of distribution not out of altruism but because they think that it will lead to increased profits (ie. higher prices) down the line.
E pluribus unum
So now you have imeem as this monster service where you can essentially listen to any tune ever recorded, and it's all paid for by advertising.
Similarly, myspace has been in litigation with the record labels and has taken a page from the imeem playbook, copying the deal making, the business model and everything else. Only this isn't some tiny startup, this is Fox Interactive with it's massive pockets.
I really hope myspace loses this time.
Or you could look at it as the target audience diversifying far more than they ever did before.
From the inception of vinyl until the turn of the century, most people just bought pop music, because that was the only music they could hear at the time. There was nothing to compare contemporary music to, so people bought it out of ignorance. Generation gaps, outdated and worn out audio formats, scarcity due to albums going out of print, and a general lack of interest or time/money to sample, kept the majority of listeners from experiencing music's rich history.
Once Napster came about, people suddenly had instantaneous access to almost the entire back catalog of all prerecorded music (or at least all music that was released on CDs). This allowed for a rebirth of older music and genres that hadn't seen as many fans since their industry-granted 15 minutes of fame expired, as well as the diversification and maturing of musical taste in the majority of listeners. Lots of people I know like older music as well as new music, and have a far more diverse set of musical ascetics than any of the generations past. The success of the Guitar Hero franchise is an excellent example of this. Most of the soundtrack is either indie music or music that's at least 20 years old, yet it sells because people have heard a decent amount of the soundtrack before and found that they liked it much better than what plays on today's top 40 radio or what's in the CD racks at Wal-Mart.
The industry is dying primarily because their business model relied on music being disposable and the audience being fickle and spontaneous. Since P2P emerged, tastes have become more engraved in the general populace, and it's usually difficult to get people to stop liking the really good artists just because something new has come out. Now that they can't get people to throw out their old albums anymore for new ones, the industry has lost its moneymaker. Yes, people are now more used to the idea of music being "free," but the real cause of sales slippage is because the industry has failed to diversify as fast as its populace has. It's still trying to market pop idols as if these were the days of old. Not anymore.
The competition between itunes and myspace is not for the consumer dollar, it is for the music industry's product. If myspace gets enough traction with consumers the MAFIAA can tell Jobs to stick that 99 cents up his ass, because they are going to stop supplying music to itunes for sale - instead they will switch over all of their product to myspace and it's $2.99 prices.
Apple is left with no songs to sell, and the music industry gets to start raping and pillaging again with the help of their old buddy, Rupert Murdoch.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.