Digitalgig.co.uk - The Future? ...It's Coming On!

With the ground shaking under the feet of record executives everywhere we take a look at the music industry and see what is really happening to change the face of modern music. In this issue we examine how we got to this point.

Not so long ago everything must have seemed so wonderful. Younger and younger people were being targeted as pop consumers. More airspace was being dedicated to the newest, shiniest face to sing their ‘tunes from a tin’ than ever before. Then a cloud appeared.

At first illegal downloading must have seemed like a minor annoyance; a mosquito on the fat rear of the industry. After all, people had always bootlegged music; from copying vinyl disks onto mono reel to reel (honestly!), through to tape cassettes.

The threat level went up when it became possible to copy at a similar standard to the original. CDs, at first recorded onto type IV (Metal) tapes and later onto CDRs gave the bootlegger access to a perfect copy of the music. This was, however, still not enough to amount to a real threat to the music industry. The reason for this is simple: in the past an individual had to have access to a purchased original copy of the music, whatever format it was on.

When these copies were mass produced by shady individuals and illegally sold at carboot sales or in pubs in the UK they were a matter for Trading Standards and the Police.

Then two separate things happened. MP3 became an accepted standard of file type to compress and store music on PCs and the peer to peer file sharing phenomenon hit the internet. Although generally of a relatively low quality, MP3 has become the standard music file type for personal music players, phones and computers and by far the majority are downloaded illegally.

A growing number of the target audience for the music industry has now grown up without ever paying for music. A recent MCPS/PRS Alliance survey has shown that 80% of all download revenue comes from 52,000 of the 13 million tracks available! This seems to be a very bleak time for the industry. Worse still, when these stats were translated into album sales, only 173,000 of the 1.23 million albums available sold any copies at all. This means that 85% of all albums failed to sell a single copy!!

While these stats are grim reading for record industry executives everywhere (and therefore Aston Martin and Ferrari dealerships too), they are disastrous for acts that are either signed to small labels, or worse still, are hoping to sell some of their self produced music to help fund their continued existence.

When major acts like U2, Madonna, Prince and Jay Z start to abandon major labels to sign with companies that used to manage their tours, it becomes obvious that something is wrong with the system.

When we began to do the research for Digitalgig some 3 years ago it was obvious that all was not well in ‘Musicland’. Indeed, as we analysed the situation we began to see that live music and official merchandise were the only really controllable aspects of the industry. The experience is where the money is. No doubt about it.

True fans will probably always buy their favourite artist’s music but they will, as time goes on, demand more and more additionality from them. It will be for the artists and their record companies to decide what this should be. Whether this is intricate packaging, vouchers for limited edition or discounted merchandise or even preferential ticket sales, as with any good song, there needs to be a hook.

The bottom line is this; although we at Digitalgig may not agree with illegal file sharing (and we don’t, sorry) it can’t be stopped. DRM (Digital Rights Management) and court cases didn’t stop it. Fining ISP providers won’t stop it either. While there are people like those at PirateBay and others that don’t believe in the capitalist system and are prepared to be arrested for their beliefs how can it be?

The recent failure of the ‘Featured Artist Coalition’ to condemn the practice shows that musicians are caught somewhere in the middle. No one wants to commit the type of PR suicide that Lars Ulrich and Metallica did when they went after Napster. After all, it makes no sense to alienate people that want to listen to you.

As the industry digests the MCPS/PRS Alliance statistics they will almost certainly back themselves into an area they understand best; mass marketing.

With this inevitable refocusing on the most profitable areas of their business what does that mean for the prospects of less mainstream music? As with all other things change brings about opportunities as well as threats.