Besides learning these and other fascinating facts of other cultures outside our own slightly self-centered culture here in America - we were asked to view a thirty to sixty minute podcast or video on a feature of the entertainment industry that interested us and write a research paper on the topic. As a music enthusiast and reputed technological buff I chose to watch a podcast on the changes of digital music in the industry and the effects of it upon the music industry.
The paper reads as follows:
Digital music has come about through many changes from its beginnings in the days of dial up taking multiple hours to download a single song to the ability to purchase, download, and burn to CD an entire album in a matter of minutes to a single hour. Digital convergence was once a thing of theory and now has become the way of life in the music industry. An album can be purchased through the Internet and shipped home or downloaded directly to one’s computer. In August of 2006 at a conference in California Neil Smith, General Manager for AOL Music Now, America Online Inc.; Anu Kirk, Director of Product Management of Music, Rhapsody team, Real Networks; Ty Braswell, VP of Content Development, Music, Sony Digital Entertainment; Srivats Sampath, President & CEO, MERCORA; David Ulmer, Senior Director of Marketing, Digital Media Services, Motorola sat down for a panel with Ted Cohen, Managing Partner of TAG Strategic met to discuss how they felt the music industry was going to evolve and how the industry had evolved previously.
A brief biography of the members: Dave Ulmar works for Motorola and is in charge of marketing efforts to develop seamless music solutions to combine multiple forms of media and medium. Anu Kirk simply cannot avoid music in his life – beginning as a drummer, then an oboe player, keyboards and synthesizers, after graduating with a degree in economics he began working on several different online music distribution sites and has gone on to start up several different directory services and also music distribution sites including the walmart.com download store, and Windows Media Player. Neil Smith is in charge of the AOL Music Division and from this position helps direct AOL in its marketing and expansion efforts in the realm of music and entertainment. Srivats Sampath began with McAfee, a pc security company, and has had a hand in several other Internet based firms as well. Ted Cohen served as moderator for this discussion and previously worked for EMI as the Vice President of Digital Development & Distribution.
In recent history the world has seen an evolution unprecedented in the time of human kind. Music started prior to written history with people playing songs through crude bone carved flutes and drums made from animal hide, and has evolved in many ways since then. However, how music is made is not the point of today’s discussion; it’s about how music is delivered to people. Originally the only way to enjoy a musician’s wonderful talent was to be in their presence; today the world has evolved from being able to purchase sheet music to reproduce something at home, to analog forms of reproduction such as vinyl and tape all the way into today’s modern version of CD’s and MP3’s that permeate the current society. This whole revolution started with computers becoming such a large part of every day life, and came to where it is today with the ever present ipod. With the growth in technology not only has music evolved in computers, but also as telephone technology has evolved so has the music included in them. Cellular phones have gone from having simple monotone ring tones to now having mp3 quality ring tones. PC’s evolution in the music world is stagnant due to peer to peer sharing services; however, this trend in pirating and illegal opportunities is not as prominent in mobile services. Even with the ever-expanding realm of musical piracy Itunes is still expanding.
Mobile music allows for end user personalization. This personalization has its costs though. For a higher dollar download, users purchase a lower quality song than on computer with highly restrictive licenses. Originally when the Razor came out, it sold millions of units based on looks and not musical features, the phone could store between one and two songs on it without any more memory options, however when the second generation came out, the phone included a higher memory capability. The largest downfall with mobile phones as music units is that a phone must be a phone first. This restricts the music playing capabilities of the unit. The largest hampering placed on the evolution of digital music is DRM, or Digital Rights Management. DRM is a form of anti-piracy that restricts how and where music files can be played.
DRM has taken a stranglehold on digital music. A form of catch twenty-two has been established. When previous ‘tangible’ forms of music where purchased like a CD, the purchaser knew that the CD would work in any CD player. Now, when an mp3 is purchased, it might or might not work in the mp3 player the individual owns. Some things the panel thinks needs to be included in DRM and in digital packets are lyrics and updates on artists’ shows in the area around the downloader. In today’s age of digital convergence combining a data packet that allows the downloader to know where the artist is playing close by should be a standard practice, not an item for debate. The largest downside to DRM is that users are purchasing several units for different platforms that are not transferable. A song purchased on the Internet may play or not play in the computer the file is downloaded to, the cell phone the person owns, or the mp3 player the person transfers the file to. Currently, transferable downloads and less strict DRM standards are emerging, yet, songs downloaded on Itunes cannot be uploaded to a Zune brand music player, because competing companies own the two products.
Currently the large subscription based services require a larger learning curve to fully grasp what the user can accomplish with the service. However, once the learning curve is conquered, a high volume of use is usually observed. These services allow a consumer to access the same material several times prior to purchasing the song. Access isn’t the same thing as ownership though and, in the end, consumers’ want to have a tangible object that they own rather than the rights to access it want to have the same principles behind things as when they were purchasing physical products. The positive side to the digital revolution in music is that consumers and artists are more in control now than the labels, giving birth to more creative outlets for independent artists and allowing for consumers to seek out music they appreciate much more. Labels are having trouble adapting to the transition to digital than consumers and artists. Labels responded slowly the same way when radio came out, and again when vinyl. With these different changes the labels feared no one would purchase music, yet the music industry has remained a top economical force in America for decades.
As mobile means become the primary source for consumers to consume their music needs, prices will drop and a normal purchasing pattern will return. As normal purchasing patterns return, the difference between number in sales at the top and bottom will reduce as well. Mobile technology will, and has, increase as time continues standalone mp3 players will become rarer and rarer while multi-functioning highly user-friendly devices that serve multiple functions will increase in popularity. As music evolves in coordination with technology the possibilities are limitless. Already standard equipment possesses more computational power than was used in the entire moon exploration systems. The end result lies in what the consumer desires, and consumers are not idiots.
Sources:
Smith, N., Kirk, A., Braswell, T., Sampath, S., Ulmer, D., & Cohen, T. (2006, August 16). Digital music & its transformation: Downloads and subscriptions in mobile, broadband, pods & digital and internet radio. Panel discussion presented at Building Blocks 2006.
The video was a great watch, and I honestly feel this was one of my better papers I wrote up to that point in time.
