1) Do you see the current debate questioning the effect of ubiquitous free music online leading to real change, or is the
Taylor Swift and her management team at
Artists who breathe the rarified air up there with Taylor, Beyonce, Rihanna, and Lady Gaga can pretty much do whatever they want as far as windowing releases and creating tiered offerings for their fan base. In many cases it does make sense to delay a release to free services in order to take profits, especially when you are at that level. But overall, in order for streaming services to dominate the ecosystem, the popular music needs to be on those services and the artists needs to be properly compensated for it.
The #1 thing holding streaming services back are their broken economics. Artists are not paid enough, labels and publishers are paid too much and the services overall are too expensive for most fans. Until these issues are addressed, there will be continued debates about the business models, more opportunities for publicity stunts and erosion of revenue for creators. If the streaming services were cheap enough, there would be little need for perpetual free services, except as a teaser to an ongoing subscription fee that was so low, that it felt like it was free.
2) How important is the entry of
The streaming audience is expanding every day and will continue to grow as all of these companies gain market share and help people switch their habits. Yes, the audience will be larger by the end of 2015. And it will be some time before we see a lot of shakeout in the streaming providers. The market is still nascent and the growth potential is simply staggering.
As we wrote in the Future of Music book in 2005, we will see “music as a service” become ubiquitous in the marketplace, but it hasn’t happened yet. The prices of the services are still to high and there are not nearly enough people on board to make it economically viable. Why the rights holders have to cling to past practices, and why services like Spotify have to lose so much money to get critical mass is beyond me. Once these businesses can align properly and run profitably, we will see things take off.
As far as Apple and Google are concerned, we should be very excited that two of the most valuable companies in the world are focusing their attention on music. Yes it may take some time for them to get the streaming offerings right, but each one of these companies makes more money in a quarter than the entire music industry does in a year, so we better pay attention.
I think Apple acquired Beats more for the headphone line than anything else. It becomes another iconic hardware brand for Apple. And Google already owns the #1 channel for music discovery with YouTube, so really, given time, how can they screw it up? Let’s all be thankful that these companies are continuing to shine light our industry. We need it.
What big shift or story took place in 2014 that will have a major effect on your business/sector in 2015? How will you feel and field the effects?
For my business, it is most definitely the disruption occurring in education and the emergence of alternative learning platforms.
Today there are attractive and viable alternatives to spending years of your life in school and getting heavily into debt in pursuit of a formal education or online degree. As the music industry shifts and revenue flows continue to evolve, it is even more important to have access to real-time learning along with affordable and flexible educational options that address and adapt to the realities of the marketplace. This is what I am focused on with the New Artist Model.
