It’s the most important time in digital music since Napster peaked in 2001.
In the short term, the equation is clear. Three elements remain:
1. MySpace Music/Amazon - News Corp. will dominate the upper echelon of the new music industry, where multi-platinum records are a thing of the past but a band with 1.7 million MySpace fans can move mountains all the way to the bank. Well, Amazon.com ships mountains, and MySpace’s massive but distracted audience, once exposed to ad-supported free music, will never look back. Yes, I know it’s crazy that a MySpace Music hater like me would herald their second coming, but barring a huge screw-up, it’s on. Print… radio… television… internet. Advertising goes with the flow, and keeps the media stream running.
Conclusion: The new platinum record is brought to you by McDonald’s.
2. Facebook/iLike - Having recently selected iLike as their preferred music service (disclaimer: I work for iLike’s sister site GarageBand.com), Facebook will gain traction as the more sophisticated social music networking site as MySpace caters to fanboys and girls. Its marketing demographic may slant upward in age, but new music consumption is stretching far into adulthood these days.
With iLike (teamed with Rhapsody) fueling Facebook’s fire, look for the service to redefine the art of finding music and tighten the connection between fan bases of modest size and the niche artists that find rock star status among them. These two companies define the idea of ‘agile development’ and will be on the cutting edge of future developments in both social networking and music discovery. Their platform is people, a fact that MySpace critically dilutes with the double-edged sword of ad-supported music.
Conclusion: The next big thing in music will be brought to you by Web 3.0.
3. Apple – The music labels were asking for it with their vast history of corruption, but what did the consumer electronics industry ever do to deserve Apple? Sony still licks its Walkman wounds as the iPod finds its way into millions of pockets the world over. I guarantee you that Apple’s brightest are at a whiteboard right now figuring out a way to make social networking device-dependent, but until that day comes, they will continue to own the way music is played.
iTunes 8.0 introduced the ‘Genius’ feature which serves as a music discovery portal to the iTunes Store. While at first this seems to step on the toes of the iLike Sidebar for iTunes, it is merely an upsell plugin. Apple will cash in for sure, but outside of their credit cards, fans will reside elsewhere.
But yeah — the credit cards. They’re with Apple.
And notice I didn’t say anything about this silly press-hyped MySpace Music vs. Apple battle that’s supposedly going down. For the next few years, it will continue to be a stalemate. No matter which company swipes the credit card, Apple will be playing the product. Music lovers own. Flirters stream. The curious sample. The clueless watch American Idol.
Conclusion: See illustration.
Footnotes of the new digital music movement?
Last.fm & Lala.com – I’m fans of both these sites, but they seem to be orbiting the established music industry’s main goals. Both offer full streaming clips and some interesting social networking features, and I still use Lala.com to trade CD’s through the mail. But they simply lack the juggernaut industry status of the aforementioned entities to have a paradigm-shifting impact on the way music is consumed.
Pandora.com – In dire straits due to the ass-backwards licensing regulations of the recording industry’s old guard. If not the company, then certainly the concept will reemerge as Pandora was arguably the most efficient and elegant way to discover new tunes. You just can’t simplify music discovery more than ‘thumbs up, thumbs down, skip to next track’.
Digital music distributors – Some were okay, some were awful, most are gone now and all of them were stopgap measures to the ultimate solution that the music industry is executing today. Napster bought by Best Buy. Rhapsody teaming with iLike. Even Amazon.com has picked a side. A new era dawns.
Discmakers/CDBaby – I’m hopeful at Discmaker’s ability to take CDBaby further and build their own brand while at it. They have a decent shot and I hesitate to call them a ‘footnote’ just yet. But it’s going to take some serious online savvy on Discmaker’s part, particularly marketing-wise. Their offering is solid, but their brand image as a clearinghouse of fledgling musicians still drives indie artists to seek out cheaper options with smaller merch-making outfits. Still, they are the household name in indie music duplication and their future has just begun.
