Metafluence

The future of music

For nearly a hundred years the music industry has largely been financially supported by selling recordings of music on physical media. For almost 10 years now, that model has been eroding. Nic Adler told me he knew the shift was final when he saw the going out of business sign in the window of the legendary Tower Records on Sunset Blvd. During these past several years, new players, namely Apple, have stepped up to take over what remains of the recording industry sucking the last bits of profit out of a model that even life support won’t keep alive.

I’ve heard a few different people talk about the state of the industry and everyone seems to be focused on how to “fix” the recording model. I think tackling that problem is a bit like changing seats on the Titanic.

It’s only a matter of time before owning your own copy of a song will just be silly. There will be servers that hold nearly all of the world’s music and we’ll just tap into that system. Will there still be money made off of selling copies of a recording? Yes, at least for a while. But, it won’t be where the lucrative music opportunities will be at.

You see, in the past people paid for music because distribution was difficult. There were no communication networks to deliver the content to devices on the edges that could play it. But, we live in an increasingly connected world that has made access to music ubiquitous. So, if we want to know where the money in music will come from, it has to be where the new areas of difficulty are.

Here are a few things that I would pay for:

• A constantly updated playlist for someone with good taste. I don’t have time to sift through all of the great music out there. And, Last.fm has too many cooks in their kitchen that I don’t trust. I prefer experts over crowds when it comes to music recommendations.
• Merchandise
• Early access to music from the bands I really like.
• Concerts
• Subscription to a music library that was accessible from anywhere in the world on all of my devices. Then the bands could split the monthly revenues based on the percentage of airplay they got. Like a mashup of ASCAP, radio, and Napster.

Don’t just take my word for it, check out some of these hot posts on the future of music:

• Matt King makes a great point about the importance of the mobile space for the future of music.
• Kyra Reed wrote an in-depth post about the future of the music industry that will make your brain grow another wrinkle.
• Dave Allen has an insider’s perspective on the changing music industry as the bassist for Gang of Four and the man behind the popular music blog, Pampelmoose.

What do you think is in store for the future of music?