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The Age of “music like water, music like wine”

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I read this article “Another music store closes as piracy booms” in the Jamaica Observer this Wednesday morning. It was about how Mobile Music, the CD selling store in Liguanea Kingston is closing down and how supposedly piracy has been the reason for Mobile Music and other such CD stores has been affected by it. It was such a false premise and read sorta more like a PR piece to announce Mobile Music closing down sale.

So I posted it on my Facebook Profile and made the following comment. “The CD died years ago! Piracy didn’t kill the music store…technology, the power shift to those who owned those technologies and changed consumer culture did. ” I loved what followed…a wicked sweet discussion. First a comment by Real Estate mogul in the making Howard Johnson, “That is correct Ingrid. I now buy all my music from iTunes.” Then another by Natasha Parkins, academic and social critic..she added “The concept of the record store has died…..in fact so has the concept of going to the movies as films move from big screen to DVD in record time and can be downloaded for less than the cost of the “brick and mortar” cinemas on iTunes et al…..I don’t even bother trying to see movies in the theater anymore.” .. and then a thoughtful missive by a colleague of mine Peter Rothman, a SiliconValley based entrepreneur and 100% geek. He added his comments…
“I agree.

Piracy isn’t the entire issue in the U.S. at least. IMO, even if music piracy ended tomorrow, the existing large music production and distribution companies would be in trouble because of technological developments such as bedroom production, Internet streaming, music blogging, and social media based music stations. We’ve entered the age of “music like water, music like wine”.

One of the biggest issues here has been the music industry’s insistence on crippled offerings. For example, for years they fought any form of “interactivity” in online music offerings despite the fact that illegal offerings (i.e. Napster 1.0) had all of these features. They sued Launch (aka Yahoo Music) over the inclusion of a “skip” button for example.

Consumers expressed their preferences in the market place, they chose free music and un-crippled interfaces, and the industry has suffered largely as a result of offering things that people don’t want to buy since then. It would be simple to offer what people want, but this means giving up control which the industry violently opposes at all times.

The simple answer is to sell something with added value that can’t be easily pirated, i.e. tickets to live events, physical goods such as t-shirts or art, etc. along with the music. But even this sort of thing might not recoup the revenue lost in the evolution of the music business. Some people may need to lower their expectations, but it need not be the artists.

The good news here is this: the artists making music can connect directly with their fans, and they can promote themselves and their music in ways that they never could before. Anyone can reach a global audience, and you don’t need a big record label to do it.

I get most of the music I listen to for free or low cost directly from the creators of the music, or from small record labels and online stores that are often owned by the same people.

Of course in San Francisco we still have the famous Amoeba records, a huge vinyl mecca for those of us that still collect those odd black discs.”

What are your thoughts on the age of music like water, music like wine?

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