Is Open Source Music the End of Record Companies?
Michael S. Malone published a really interesting article on popular well-known bands releasing their albums for free. The latest band to release their music for free is Nine Inch Nails. The best part about this release is that fans can do what they want to the music including mixing and reusing it in their own projects.
Why would an artist give away their music? Because they make most of their money from the concerts, t-shirts, and other add-ons, not from selling albums. Years ago, the record companies had the advantage that they were the only source of music distribution: selling records to stores, having music played on the radio, getting music made part of TV and movies, etc. The Internet has completely killed their distribution model. iTunes started the job. MySpace and Facebook with their pages that let artists showcase their own music has finished it off.
While this new freebie system may work for artists, it leaves the big record companies with nothing to contribute with their current business models. That does not mean that the record companies have to die, but they will need to change. In an interview given by Jin-Young Park, a Korean pop music manager, he explains that the big record companies that he meets with don’t get that the CD is dead. He makes his money by cultivating talent and marketing the acts. Quoting directly from his interview:
When prospective U.S. partners ask music mogul Jin-Young Park where he’s from, he has a conversation-stopping answer: “I’m from the future.”
It’s a deft riposte that opens up space for Park, who discovered and managed Asian pop phenomenon Rain for many years, to spool out a string of facts that make record execs weak in the knees. “In meetings with music labels here, they talk to me about releasing albums,” says Park. “They can’t accept that there’s no such thing anymore. Where I come from, CDs are nothing—they’re just souvenirs. I tell them, ‘Wake up!’”
Tags: copyright, distribution, music, Open Source