The Future of Music - The Song Remains The same (Remix)

Fourth up on Wednesday at the Financial Times Digital Media & Broadcasting conference was "The Future of Music" with a panel discussion featuring:

- Geoff Taylor, CEO, BPI
- Richard Wheeler, Head of Music, Virgin Media
- Rob Salter, Entertainment Director, Tesco
- Paul Smernicki, Director of Digital, Universal Music UK

The after lunch slot, usually a time for a gentle snooze (unless you are presenting) and what better than The Future of Music long playing album, aka "The Song Remains The Same". We go to an indsustry that has been wailing about its woes, donning sackcloth and ashes and predicting Dooom for longert than any other media industry, yet, like the rest, seems to look much the same as it always has. So, what has changed in the last 2 years since I went to a Digital Music type conference last, I hear you ask?

Well nothing really. the same LP was played:

Track 1 - Piracy is killing music
Track 2 - People buying by the song is killing music
Track 3 - People not buying CDs is killing music
Track 4 - People not buying more music is killing music
Track 5 - Shops no longer selling music is klling music
Track 6 - People not behaving like they did in the 70's is killing music (Though my Teen son is buying vinyl albums, as i did in the 70's... )
Track 7 - Piracy is killing music (remix)

And yet, and yet - apart from the Great EMI Rock and Roll Swindle*, the same names, songs, structures, stories are all there from 2009 - hardly a sign of Collapse!

I did see a ray of common sense breaking out (common in the sense that most of the people up there on the panel agreed) - apparently the industry is dimly beginning to perceive that:

- Selling a customer a locked down, overpriced digital product is a poor choice vs a free one that you can put on all your devices and no-one can rescind. It's what we used to buy from them with CDs and Vinyl!

- There is only so long you can make a market in "heritage acts" and "harvesting tours" and in fact the musicians have just gone off and made their own markets elsewhere

A lot of the evidence is that actual consumer spend on all aspects of music is as high as it ever was in the last 30 years (ie after the Golden Years of the 70's and the Computer Game Invention Black Day), its just not pouring down the same old drains as much as it used to, yet the Olde Industry still seems to believe - systemically, rather than individually - the best solution is legislate the new channels of value back into the olde troughs.

Worked for Canute, after all.........

And it was ever thus - to quote Wikipedia:

In the late 19th century and early 20th century, the music industry was dominated by the publishers of sheet music. By the middle of the century records had supplanted sheet music as the largest player in the music business: in the commercial world people began speaking of "the recording industry" as a loose synonym of "the music industry". Since 2000, sales of recorded music have dropped off substantially, hile live music has increased in importance.

The chap from Tesco was a nice touch, as he looked at music as Just Another Hedonic Commodity - and its losing shelf space to booze, games, drrty sex aids and so on as its a tired format with virtually no industry innovation. He felt that when you buy a CD you should get the complete digital rights, and the CD is your backup copy. He noted that last Christmas they sold thousands of the "Fools and Horses" TV series DVD boxed sets, even though the series can be viewed on free TV channels on any one day, so you can see it free anyway.

* That is a clever play on words of the Sex Pistol's record, by the way.