As the industry continues to scratch looking for answers to the dilemma of illegal downloading, I think some solutions could be on the horizon. I got to think about it all in a different light by taking a closer look at the DJing world and wondering if any market concepts could maybe be applied to the traditional music listening networks.
In the DJ community, music purchasing is still going strong even though illegal downloading technologies are available, there appears to be a stronger sense of social responsibility in this world that doesn't exist in the normal consumer market.
Take for example that the original medium for DJs to perform shows with was vinyl, and since cutting vinyl discs is a more labour intensive task, vinyl records were never pirated in the DJ communities like all the other mediums. Yes people could make a cassette duplicate of a vinyl record, but that was of no use to a DJ.
So first we see that the medium and the process used to create that medium is a big factor in eliminating piracy. DJs are used to paying for music, and even though i'm sure many have been happy to play tunes they didn't pay for in their sets, on the whole they are still purchasing music unlike other crowds who have given up.
But the big key is that in the digital age, tracks that are intended for DJs to perform with are not as commonly found on P2P networks as normal commercial releases are. Of course the really popular club tracks will always surface by their nature, but on the whole I think that there is that social responsibility there amongst DJs, since many serious ones make a living off of playing other people's music.
If buying the music meant supporting your career, you probably want to keep supporting that music. We've seen this model in the Open Source software community where entire companies are funded by donations even though their code is given away for free, because the people using their code absolutely need to keep the developers around to support their own goals.
See it's too idealistic to think that in this day in age, normal listeners are satisfied with supporting their favourite artists just because the music is good. Well some are, and I think artists respect those people a lot, they are who they continue to create music for at the end of the day. It's a mega-capitalist landscape, and I think greed is fueling the revolution.
The lust for money not only fuels artist to create(and many untalented folks trying to get their hands in the pot at the same time), but it also fuels the consumers to steal by any means necessary. The more you can steal, the more entertained you can be, while minimizing costs and maximizing capitol, capitol being the music, movies, video games, whatever we can consume and destroy.
Why do you think people are filling up iPods to such extremes? Not because they listen to that much music, but because they can, and in the process they feel empowered with an abundance of material wealth. I know it seems like i'm hating on p2p, i'm really just trying to illustrate a point.
Grabbing entertainment for free has it's advantages for everyone, and I will always be able to admit that. But this past weekend I was browsing some artist websites, and I came across Steve Aoki's myspace page. It says that if you embed this Musicane widget you can earn money off of every album sold.
Referral and Revenue Sharing models aren't anything new, a lot of websites run on Amazon referrals, but I think as we get down to the more lower levels of marketing, this concept is really going to fuel a new revolution of music sales. Amazon is good and all but it's a little tiring, even though their new download store looks good.
Widgets are great cause people can embed them directly on their myspace and facebook profiles and get people listening to their favourite tunes right then and there. I'm curious to see how all this works out and if music fans take to the concept. I'm sure there are going to be plenty more business models of this sort to emerge soon. Not to mention there are already new models appearing on sites like Last.fm which will pay artists based on how often they are being played on the site. It's the sort of thinking that many other sectors of the online world have been using for a while, the ad-based content model.
I guess the problem with music is it's so portable and editable that it's not as simple as in the 2d world of print media relies heavily on advertising enough as it is. But it appears that the industry folks are really putting their heads together to be creative now, after almost a decade of total idiocy and complacency with a fragile market that is the entertainment business.