Deep Currents

Who knew that they had the guts? A consortium of the largest record companies will soon launch an online jukebox that will play their entire catalogue for free and generate its income solely from advertising. MySpace Music will be an upgrade to the music section of MySpace, already a vibrant outlet for artists to promote themselves online. Up to this point MySpace has been useful for marketing, letting artists set up a custom page with up to six songs to play or download. MySpace Music will be a bona fide distribution channel: arists will be able to upload their entire catalogues to stream for free over the web, with direct links for puchase to Amazon where songs typically cost a dollar each.

This represents a considerable shift in the business model for producing music. There has been plenty of experimentation by small labels, independent artists, and online distributors in new methods for bringing music to market, but this is a step by several industry titans: Warner, Sony BMG, and Universal. Their move is explained in the Times article by this provocative quote:

Greg Scholl, chief executive of the Orchard, the largest distributor of digital music from independent labels, says a music business based on advertising “could well dwarf today’s $30 billion global recorded music industry.”

There’s no discussion of how that would be possible, but there are no doubt many eager strategists in the music industry who have been working feverishly these last few years to find out the answer.

Written: September 16th, 2008