ryangutierrez.com - Making Life Better One Step At A Time

I was listening to last week's MacBreak Weekly today and they spent a lot of time talking about the state of the music industry, as usual.  If you haven't heard yet, iTunes is now the #1 American music retailer, with 19% of the market, surpassing Wal-Mart's now-second place 15%.  They also mentioned a study on The Guardian that said that 95% of 18-24 year olds surveyed said that they copy music illegally.  The general consensus on the show's pundits was that we have an entire generation of people unaccustomed to paying for music because it's more convenient to download it illegally.  Of course this is a similar view that the RIAA has taken, as well as the majority of the music industry as a whole.  Unfortunately, nobody involved seems to really get what's really going on here with a few notable exceptions.

The reality is that whether you like it or not, music piracy is here to stay.  The only question now is, "What the hell are we going to do about it?"  Previous efforts by the RIAA include suing old ladies and dead people and of course the anti-piracy FBI warning labels that come on most CDs.  Unfortunately, this hasn't really stopped anybody and the piracy continues.  Anybody involved in the music industry, whether its on the artist side or the business side needs to seriously re-consider the way they think about the purpose of music from a business perspective.

Instead of clinging to the dying business model of selling a commodity that consumers are currently getting for free, everyone involved needs to embrace it.  Let's harness the power of music piracy and leverage it into something that was previously impossible.  Let's start thinking of the music as a promotional tool that helps to build a band's brand in the same way that a Coke commercial helps to build Coca Cola's brand.  Many artists make around 13% of the retail price of a CD in royalties, which can be anywhere from $1-2 per CD sold.  Not bad in a pre-internet era, but if nobody's buying CDs, everybody now thinks that there is no money to be made in the music industry and that all the artists are going to stop creating because oh god, if there's nobody buying CDs, how will artists survive?!   Read More »