Further to the Death of Music

I came across a very interesting article about the future of music at Ars Technica tonight.... interesting because it presents other business people discussing the situation the Industry formerly known as Music finds itself in...

It starts out with a fascinating tale...




An anecdote in a recent Economist perfectly summed up the problems facing the major music labels. After EMI, the smallest of the Big Four, invited a teen focus group to its London headquarters in 2006, it wanted to give the teens something for their time. The response is worth quoting in full.

At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. "That was the moment we realised the game was completely up," says a person who was there.

...and goes on to ask some very interesting questions:



"Can you imagine what would happen if most consumer industries over-shipped by 20 per cent? Can you imagine any consumer industry having 10 per cent of employees as middle management? Can you imagine only 6 per cent of staff in production?"



as well as...



Whatever artists and labels might think their music is worth, Pakman believes that consumers see music as simply being worth less than movies. If a thriller can be made for $80 million but be sold for $7.50, why should music remain in the $11 to $14 range?




worth reading, i think, and there are some interesting links to boot!

http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/01/state-of-digital-music-2007.ars

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