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“The Future of Music Business, Law and Technology: A Critical Analysis of
Related Articles on the Topic of Digital Music.”

Quite a mouthful.

The related articles mentioned in the title were all written within a short time frame (2000, 2004 and 2005), yet also within three significantly different climates. The first was written before the explosion of Napster, the second at the height of Napster Mania, and the third just as the iTunes Music Store was gaining momentum.

I have decided to revisit the topics discussed in these papers and to reflect on the last several years. I wrote the first version of this paper before many had heard of Facebook, MySpace or YouTube, and well before they sold for billions (Facebook pending…). New bits are in bold.

So here we go:

It is a popular notion that the future of the music business structure is unclear. Traditional copyright law does not allow for a frictionless model of information diffusion and companies that have, in the past, been based upon geographic boundaries are being forced to adopt new business models.

In order to create a practical vision of the future, several issues need to be examined. The history and evolution of current copyright law, its intended purpose and the effect of globalization on that institution is discussed in “How Will the Music Industry Weather the Globalization Storm?” by Wilfred Dolfsma (2000). Digital technology’s role in changing the way consumers experience music and the resulting shift in relative value within the music market structure is analysed in “The end of the CD as we know it… Shifting consumer behaviour and changing business models in the music industry” by Dr. Piet Bakker (2004). The article “The Move to Artist-Led Online Music Distribution: Explaining Structural Changes in the Digital Music Market”(2005), by The Carlson School of Management proposes a model of the future music value chain where litigation and the proliferation of a digital rights management system will maintain the status quo with respect to copyright and its benefactors.

(I’ve linked to the versions that were originally cited…)

All three of these articles introduce a vision of the music business where intermediaries, that is any system or stage between the producers of content and the consumer, will have new and different roles.

Dolfsma and the Carlson School of Management are polarized in their vision of copyrights role in the future, but their proposed model for intermediaries are both similar to Bakker’s.

Both “The end of the CD as we know it” and “The Move to Artist-Led Online Music Distribution” do not examine the effect of the potential for new value-added features contained in physical media.

Advances in audio technology, storage capacity and new media formats as potential sales drivers should be considered when predicting the future of the music industry market.

Today, we can see a wonderful combination of both digital distribution of music, and the traditional distribution of value-added physical media. The best example, in my opinion is Radiohead’s Rainbows record. Anyone reading this is probably aware of Radiohead’s “pay-what-you-want” digital strategy and their kick-ass physical project promotion.

There are a few bands that could pull off such a campaign without a label, but the vast majority of acts can still benefit greatly from the knowledge, experience and resources of a major record label.

Even though the points of view of the above authors are different, we can find similarities within their conclusions that display a reasonably realistic image of the future media industries.