Important considerations
The death of the album
Individual track downloads are killing the album market and the revenue that it once created. Can the album be saved? Should artists release in 1 to 3 track clusters?
Music as a service and “on demand”
People used to call music “product”. Did the pendulum swing to far in that direction? Or is music a service based on subscriptions? Furthermore, will more and more music be bought an enjoyed via mobile devices?
The changing nature of music delivery waqs illustrated in an article in the Times earlier this year.
The internet is being seen as both a threat and opportunity for the English music industry.
The internet is the big battleground. Piracy remains rampant, with more than seven million illegal file-sharers in Britain alone. Shops such as Woolworths and Zaavi have collapsed, further depressing CD sales. Albums, which bring in the most amount of revenue to record labels, have been hit by digital websites such as Apple’s iTunes that allow users to “cherry-pick” their favourite singles. Falling revenue has had an inevitable effect on talent.
The desperate situation has pre-empted two radical approaches: labels have invested in new subscription services such as Spotify, and artists have increasingly moved towards corporate sponsorship.…
Feargal Sharkey, the former lead singer of the Undertones and chief executive of UK Music, agreed. “Research shows that 80 per cent of 14 to 24-year-old UK filesharers would pay for a legal service. Quite clearly, this is the direction in which we need to be heading.”
The new website, Spotify, could provide a way for the music business to make money in the digital age (see link).
No single business model
It used to be that record labels made money selling records and bands made money live. This may not be the case any more.
The democratisation of music discovery
Once DJ’s told us what to like. Now our friends do or we discover it ourselves and share the news. This has become much more easy using Facebook, Twitter, and other mechanisms of social bookmarking. How does that change how music is marketed?
The law
The Digital Economy Act 2010 (c. 24) (“DEA”) is an Act of Parliament regulating digital media. It received Royal Assent on 8 April 2010, and came into force on 8 June 2010 (with the exception of certain sections). On 10 November 2010 the High Court granted permission for a judicial review of Section 3 to 18 of the Act.
However, a report from the United Nations very recently has labelled some aspects of the UK’s controversial DEA as disproportionate, and warned they should be repealed. The report was written by Frank La Rue, who is the special rapporteur on freedom of expression for the United Nations (UN). In his report, he flagged the controversial provision within the Digital Economy Act (DEA), that could potentially cut off music and film pirates from the Internet, as a violation of our right to free expression.
Currently in the UK, people who are found to be downloading or pirating content illegally are issued a warning. Further violations trigger other measures including speed limits or even cutting off access to the Internet for the most persistent offenders. La Rue called on the government to “repeal or amend” the legislation, as it is a “violation” of the right to free expression. The report has been presented to the Human Rights Council.
Problems with the DEA have been rumbling on for some time, as reported in the Guardian earlier this year. Two ISPs, namely BT and TalkTalk, have been spearheaded the fight in the UK to overturn the DEA’s copyright measures. The ISPs had argued in court that the DEA, which came into force in June 2010, was disproportionate, and that it infringed users’ basic rights. They also said it had received sufficient parliamentary scrutiny. The high court judge, Mr Justice Parker, dismissed the ISPs’ argument that the previous Labour government, which rushed through the DEA in the dying days of the last parliament in April 2010, should have notified the European Commission; that it makes ISPs liable in damages for copyright infringement on their network; that it breaches data protection laws; and that it is a disproportionate response to copyright infringement.
Even in para. 87, there appears to be some disquiet about the passage of this legislation through in English courts:
It is contentious whether the Commission or other Member States would have been better placed to comment upon the initial obligations if the United Kingdom had adopted the course which he argues it was legally obliged to adopt. Mr Eadie argued strongly that, in the absence of a draft Code, the Commission and other Member States would have been left in the dark about significant parts of the content of the initial obligations, and either would not have been able to comment in a sufficiently informed and constructive manner, or would have been tempted to make assumptions that turned out to be unfounded: in short, a premature, pointless, time wasting and resource absorbing exercise. In my view, this particular debate cannot be satisfactorily resolved either way, and cannot, therefore, be decisive or significantly influential on the resolution of the relevant legal issue.
Both BT and TalkTalk applied for leave for appeal, but were turned down. The Digital Economy Act is not only unpopular with ISPs, but has also faced consistent criticism from open rights campaigners.
The future
So the future will be demanding. A possible major impetus is David Kusek and Gerd Leonhard’s The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution. A major purpose of scenario planning is to empower people, organizations, and industries to evaluate a diverse set of possible futures, decide which future they prefer, and to identify those key milestones or Events that lead logically to the desired outcome. In short, scenario planning provides a structured framework for strategy determination and implementation.
