The future of the Music Industry

As we are probably well aware, the record industry is declining in the number of sales. With the ease and convenience of online downloading, sales are dropping quite quickly. So what does this mean for the future of music?"The labels fully understand that recorded music, streamed or downloaded, is going to be free in the future (we’ve argued this relentlessly). CD sales continue to decline by 20% per year, and the only thing that’ll stop that trend is when those sales reach zero. Nothing will replace those revenues."
"By 2013 (maybe as early as 2011) it’ll make sense for the labels to finally reorganize their business models around the reality created by the Internet and person to person file sharing services. No longer will the labels be tied to revenue limited to sales of master recordings - by then most or all artists will be under 360 music contracts that give the labels a cut of virtually every revenue stream artists can tap into - fan sites, concerts, merchandise, endorsement deals, and everything else."
"What this means for us music consumers - don’t expect much to change for the next few years. But sometime in the next decade we’ll see a real renaissance in how music is distributed and consumed. And who knows, a decade after that we may have all forgiven the music labels."

Radiohead releasing In Rainbows

Radiohead released it’s seventh album brilliantly on October 10, 2007. Music listeners could digitally download the CD from their website making whatever payment they wanted. Beneath the payment option it read only ‘it’s up to you.’ By the end of the day 1.2 million copies of the CD were downloaded.
“On the deliriously satisfying In Rainbows, Radiohead returns to a more straight-ahead (though subdued) rock sound. Much hubbub has been made about this record's innovative release. Radiohead allowed fans to pay what they wished to download fairly low-resolution tracks from the band's own website. Like so many innovations, it already seems funny both that it was such big news and that someone else of similar stature hadn't done it sooner. Some pundits were appalled that it took awhile to download the tracks if you tried to do it at the same time as thousands of other people, while others decried that the group was trying to kill the music industry (or save it). -Mike McGonigal

Changing Musicians Role

The musician’s role will change drastically with increasing music technology, they will need to adapt to be successful rather than relying or huge record labels. I remember reading (unaware of the exact source) the uncontrollable music piracy in Japan. Musicians must find new avenues of income like advertising for products or appearing on television shows along with continued live performances. Now with the limitless availability of digitally acquired and insurmountable music in people’s hands, consumers and music fans are not going to like getting their music any other way. Music artists who fail to utilize and embrace the Internet’s wide distribution are naive. The Internet’s publicity for music is grand, any musician unaccepting of that is not truly making music for the sake of being heard. I also think that big record companies will become less necessary, if musicians can acquire the technology and knowledge themselves I think they will take the opportunity and be more self sufficient. This will in turn shape the recording industry.

Gerd Leonhard on "ABUNDANCE - The Future of Music"

Music 2.0?

MusicGiants SoundVault

Listening to ipod earbuds is one thing, but “good living-room speakers, wall-rattling home theaters and stereos, or slick car audio systems” are indefinitely another. MusicGiants is planning to sell the SoundVault, a digital music player that would completely bypass connection to a PC by loading songs directly.” They aim to convince music consumers still cooing over their iPods,” that there is something better. Experts predict “master” song copies will be sold and later compressed to fit any smaller version of music player. Digital music if it hasn’t already will be networked extensively throughout homes.

Burrows, Peter. “Is this Digital Music’s Future?” Business Week. 2 August 2005. 11 June 2009. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2005/tc2005062_3663_PG2_tc024.htm

Craving Quality

Currently we are content with music in its small compressed MP3’s, but eventually people will begin craving better quality and higher fidelity. Most MP3’s that people are currently listening to are so highly compressed, ”stripped of millions of digital bits that leave them with about one-tenth of the data found on a CD track.” A small inventive company called MusicGiants is soon to begin selling downloadable CD quality songs off of the internet. They will be more expensive and require more storage space but when listening devices become bigger than ipods and their small speaker hook ups, people will demand listening to better quality.

Burrows, Peter. “Is this Digital Music’s Future?” Business Week. 2 August 2005. 11 June 2009. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2005/tc2005062_3663_PG2_tc024.htm

Cordless Music Experience

I predict that music will eventually become entirely cordless. Instruments, speakers and microphones will soon just have all sounds transmitted void of cords. Headphones for portable music players will soon become closer to Bluetooth devices. Ipods and portable music players could someday completely be compacted to the size of a Bluetooth.