The last decade has been like a painful birth for 'Digital Music' and an industry focused on 'Monetization' and money. Of course 'the industry' should be focused on the making money part, but the primary concern should be taking the music from artists to their audience and create a healthy economic base under the artist career. Making a shit load of cash being 'the industry' for the best and most wanted musicians is great, but this type of business is people business and artists are a different bread then pin stripe suits and businesses that take stuff out of the earth and do something with it. An artist typically is more interested in making the music and entertaining its audience. So what went wrong?
I don't know if something went so wrong that it is all bad. The split between the artist and the business has become like a desert and it's time to make that a healthy relationship and a space where business can flourish.
The change from a physical and territory based logistical playing field has a huge impact too, but its only one aspect of the change. The technology world, the political and the civilization side of the change we are in are also not to be underestimated. Thinking of how to make that business grow again, I have focused my business on the logistics part. But in doing so I tried to be open to every aspect of the domain and to focus my endeavors on solve a problem for the artist and their business partners.
One of the things that have made me think a lot is the focus of many on the legal side and who is to blame for the illegal use of music. Music like water, a flat rate paid by Internet Service Providers (ISP) is for many the holy grail, suing people that upload and download their files to and from the internet. The fact that the Internet is global and most copy rights are broken down on a country by country basis and therefore making it hard for Digital Service Providers (DSP) to start and grow there business. It shows Steve Jobs his genius that Apple was able to grow a profitable business on top of music soil. Doing a search on Google suddenly made me think: Its not the ISP's that should be prosecuted and forced to carry a very heavy burden, but the search engines should play a more honorable role here. Looking at Google's profits and the way they make them I dare to say that Google is, seen their magnitude in search. the most responsible for illegal use of content and they are the ones that could easily make an effort to bring a stop to illegal uploading and downloading. If Google would only give search results for legal use of content and would deliver illegal used Intellectual Property (IP) to an organization that governs the laws of copy right and those copy rights would actually make sense, then I think hyper growth would start showing. Of course all search engines should be doing it and not just Google, but I think this is a lot more doable then enforcing a three strike you're of the internet policy. Of course IP owners should provide Google and others with the proper data of where their IP can be found and in what context it's offered, so Google can provide results that satisfy so people will come back. Search engines are now making money based on stolen goods, like selling ice cream out of a stolen van.
All IP owners provide the search engines with a set of meta data that tells search engines what product is available where under what conditions. (Stream for free, Download etc.)
If on top of that global licenses on music would exist against prices that allow the DSP to make some money and wave the risk of DSPs being sued for offering music where the rights are not cleared for etc and music would be packaged in a digital way so the buyer experiences comfort and value, the growth can happen again IMHO. I will keep searching and keep asking questions until I will stop doing it.
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