When I launched my business recently, I believed I was
at the forefront of music and technology. As an author and composer, I had
moved to all-digital recordings of my music. As a publisher, I was convinced
that physical CDs were outdated, and I was attempting to convince my clients of
that. Yet, they still wanted that tangible CD in their hands – proof that they
had actually achieved something.
Consumers, on the other hand, are very different. Very few
of them care about the physical CD. They would rather download and enjoy the
music immediately than order a CD online and wait for it to arrive or have to
go to the store and buy it. Understanding this, the band Of Montreal took
a unique step in moving the focus away from the CD and toward another tangible
item: merchandise. In order to purchase the
band’s album Skeletal Lamping, the customer purchased a piece of apparel, which came
with a link to download the music. (Morris, 2011).
In addition to the lack of interest in a physical CD, the
audio music itself has become much less of a commodity with the public. It has
very little value. If you want it, there are plenty of tools available to
simply pick up your mobile device and steal it, or in the best-case scenario
for artists, use a free app to listen to it and reward the artist / publisher
with a whopping one-tenth of a penny per listen.
Recently, the enormously popular band U2 made a free copy of its digitally
downloadable album Songs of Innocence
available to all 500 million Apple iTunes users. For many of those users, the
album was downloaded to their devices automatically without their consent. U2 was forced to apologize to many users who are not fans, and
who value the storage space on their phone more than U2 music. (Clover, 2014).
With the advent of Napster, and follow up file transfer
enabler, Bit Torrent, music continues to digress in value. While Bit Torrent is technically a legal platform,
it is often used for illegal file sharing. (Love, 2012). Moreover,
this continued emphasis on illegal file sharing of copyrighted music causes the
music files to be viewed as something to be amassed, hoarded, and traded. The
following graph depicts the radical decrease in sales revenue due in part to
piracy, and it also shows that, for those who are still willing to pay for
their music, digital distribution began outpacing the purchase of physical CDs
in 2012:
Copyright © 2012, Statista
References:
Clover, J.
(2014). U2’s Bono Apologizes For Automatic ‘Songs of Innocence’ Album Download.
MacRumors.com. Retrieved from: http://www.macrumors.com/2014/10/14/u2-apologizes-for-auto-downloads/
Love, D. (2012).
Everything You Need To Know About Bit Torrent, The Legal (And Illegal) Way To
Download Anything You Want. BusinessInsider.com.
Retrieved from: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-bittorrent-2012-4
Morris, J. W.
(2011). Sounds In The Cloud: Cloud Computing And The Digital Music Commodity. FirstMonday.com. Retrieved from: http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3391/2917
Images:
Richter, F. (2012).
Streaming Boom Can’t Offset Decline in Physical Music Sales. Statista.com. Retrieved from: http://www.statista.com/chart/551/estimated-annual-change-in-global-music-revenues/
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