Everyone in the recording business felt it coming – the growing stampede of internet-savvy listeners who got a taste of free music and never went back. While many cynics see this as a harbinger of doom for the music industry, optimists like Terry McBride see this transformation in listener behaviour as an opportunity to rethink the system. McBride believes the focus needs to shift away from monetizing music files, because he predicts our desire to “own” music will fade away in the next few years.
“The iPod is over,” says McBride, referring to the hassle of downloading and organizing music files. If his predictions are correct, on-demand streaming programs like Spotify and Last.fm will inevitably change our cultural instinct to collect CDs, download mp3s, or otherwise “own” a music library. Instead, we will have instant access to any piece of music ever recorded (just check out the YouTube-based Muziic.com if you don’t agree). Who wouldn’t want infinitely free music?
There still may be a part of us that isn’t convinced. Why should I replace my personal, meaningful album collection with a vast, impersonal database of songs somewhere up in the clouds? This question is one at the heart of the new music revolution, and it’s precisely the point McBride is getting at. According to McBride, it’s no longer content that matters, but the music’s context. The new industry leaders will be those who create the most emotionally engaging system for listening to and discovering music.
Back in 2002, Wired’s co-founder Kevin Kelly wrote an insightful article on the digital music revolution:
“Copies are so ubiquitous, so cheap (free, in fact) that the only things truly valuable are those which cannot be copied. What kinds of things can’t be copied? Well, for instance: trust, immediacy, personalization.”
In other words, we don’t need a gigantic database of music files, we need a friend who finds us awesome music we will like. When the music is free and infinitely reproducible, real-life human recommendations become the precious commodity. Talent scouts will be leaders in this new music industry – heartening news for the music supervisors, reviewers, DJs, and mixtape junkies of the world.
Charlie McCarron, Sound Consultant
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When we talk about music we have always to think about targets of users. What is music for people? I listen to Lady Ga Ga, Sonic youth, death metal, it’s the same, I want listen to music the same way I listen to radio. Compression quality? Mp3, Vorbis, WAV? It’s the same. I charge my mp3 player with everything….this is the user who doesn’t care if music is on the ipod, hd or the web. Online database is perfect for him/her. They don’t need to have a customized collection. This is the largest piece of the matter.
If you are really into music, you want cd or vinyl, you want THAT piece of your life at home. You’re going to hate remote online music. This is another user, but this user historically did not succed to win the war of quality in compression algorythms…this is not the majority…
Posted by Gianpaolo D'Amico on February 20th, 2010.