Bad Days ahead for RIAA
With threats of budget cuts, ignoring Harvard, and the Oregon AG fighting back, RIAA and by association the IFPI are both looking at some hard times ahead.
The question is “will anyone really mind if RIAA and/or IFPI goes away”. While Warner Music has seen their business gutted, and other music industry leaders have still yet to report their financials for the year/quarter, we do not think that it will look any better.
The real question though is why the music industry not only missed the boat, but also showed up on the wrong pier at the wrong time with the wrong ideas. While there has to be a certain amount of blame on digital file sharing, (fair is fair in this case), there is also a lot to be said about the lawsuits, the laws being passed here and being proposed in Canada and Switzerland. As well as the absolute difficulty in being able to get away from DRM as the other primary culprits in the estrangement between music lovers and the recording industry.
While major mistakes have been made, the other question is “can this industry be saved?” or morphed into something that still makes money, still supports artists, but also gives the customer what they want. Customers are always going to go where they need to go to get what they want, there is no other lesson in Business 101, the customer goes where what they want happens to be located, in a format they are willing to use.
Beet TV has a fascinating copy of Edgar Bronfman Jr’s speech on the “Future of Warner Music as a Content Company”. The interesting idea is will most of what is made devolve into merely “content”, with more room for both high brow and lowbrow entertainment. Given the disparate nature of users and the internet, can we feed all social niches, making money on more dynamic and small audience material than what we currently have with major blockbusters, major artists, and the whole entertainment industrial complex?
Can we go into micro niches, and provide content that over time, or over the long tail, makes enough money to pay the bills, with a small tidy profit to go along with it? While time will let us know if this works, right now, the industry needs to address the changes that have happened since 1999, they need to find a fair and equitable way of doing this, anything less, is a danger to everyone.
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