More on Things Digital
I’ve done a lot more thinking lately on the digitization of books – and the post to that you will find if you go back a week or two.
Truthfully, the same can be said nowadays for music.
In light of me spending time with some musician friends at the Great South Bay Music Festival out in Suffolk County, I began to think more about the way that music changed as well. And it really has been evolving in format; and now, the Internet is where everything is.
I’m sure you remember the brouhaha that was the Napster legal case, which is why Napster then went subscription only. Ad- and adware-fueled shareware programs like Kazaa and BearShare, as well as Limewire, have taken music away from record stores and put them directly into the hands of the users. Remember going to a friend’s house with a CD, and saying, “You have to hear this one!” – well, the new way to do it is to copy over the mp3. Which, of course, drastically cuts down on the artist’s salary and is a breach of legal copyright.
Cue the Napster lawsuit.
Also cue RIAA prosecuting end users for downloading, once going so far as to try and slap an 11-year-old girl with a $2,000 fine.
Sounds outrageous?
The truth is, the times, they have changed indeed, and prosecuting end users for something that is done by billions worldwide is a waste of time and government effort. It will continue to happen, and the only way to keep it happening and have the artist get their cut too is by harnessing the phenomenon.
Which is why iTunes and Rhapsody, as well as mp3.com are very popular. For a dollar (or a little more), one can download a fully legal, licensed copy of their favorite song, which is not transferable or playable anywhere other than the purchaser’s computer(s), or mp3 players.
Innovation, meet modern world.
I can’t help but wonder what this means for the artists. Friends of mine let me know that the ‘Net is their main source of revenue, seeing as CD sales have been slowing in light of the rise of iTunes and other online sources. I am certain that the royalty cut is considerably smaller because of the song-by-song purchasing, but the distribution aspect is all but trimmed out of the equation. Think on it: there is no distributor to take their cut if there are no hard copies to distribute, but iTunes would take their part for hosting the download material. Distribution then comes in the form of advertising, because then you have things like Starbucks’s free-song cards, which iTunes is able to do because of the revenue from downloads.
In this modernizing climate, one has to wonder about where the advertising has gone, and in this changing world, we have to think about what the new ways to advertise are.
In conversation with a friend, this topic came up. If an artist were to take a magazine ad – who would host him? And why? And would it be just an ad, or a featurette article on a topic?
This started me thinking. If magazines are now the primary placehold for advertising anything culture-related, does this then mean that the route of junk mail would be it? Not the e-mail kind. Think on subscription offer. So would the subscribers of Wine and Jazz then get 10% off their ticket if they book a table to attend a show at, say, Blue Note or Spagghetini’s if they got a discount card for it? Seems very weekly-coupon-circular, but you do see what I’m going for here.
If you also consider the general digitization of readership, would a Kindle page insert advertising a musician or a show would do, if someone has a subscription to the Times, or a specific section thereof?
On one hand, the possibilities that used to work so well before are no longer enough. On the other, consider the multitude of innovations that are possible in this. It’s definitely food for thought, and for my own restless and ambitious brain to percolate.
K.G.
you could even put up a coupon on-line through things like Kindle, and other things like IPads, and tell people that if they saw the coupon on-line, they’d be entitled to a discount on their table/tickets, or merchandise, what have you. reaching people via electronic means seems to be a bigger way to go. print advertising does work, too, but, like i mentioned earlier, the average consumer does not really read it the first two times, it generally takes 3 times before the average consumer will respond to the ad. i know this, because i worked in the pizza industry for a number of years, and with any print advertising we did, it would take 3 times before we’d get a response. reaching people via radio and other electronic means is a faster way to reach people.