ITunes Will Soon Be Obsolete
hypebot.com
hypebot.com
The truly unfortunate thing, for my listening habits at least, is that finding what I want on Spotify is always a crap shoot. They may have it and they may not. What I end up doing at the moment is paying $10 / mo for Spotify premium (primarily because I hate their ads and genuinely prefer the higher audio quality on my home stereo system). and end up supplementing with another $10 / mo in iTunes bills to buy the songs that aren't available on Spotify.
While I do enjoy the "instant gratification" of Spotify and the ability to get an "all-in-one" package, people's expectations and habits around music consumption are fundamentally different than other forms of media in that music is primarily a passive experience with reading or watching television / film content are both very active experiences. I don't think a precipitous drop-off is coming to the downloading world until those habits change--or until Spotify and it's ilk can cater to them (e.g. full library available offline easily, larger catalogue coverage, etc.)
I see your point about the more passive listeners leaning more towards the subscription model. My argument has long been that for a more passive experience, you need more complete library coverage because the expectation is that you can "get anything" pumped into your ears in that passive mode. I contrast it with Netflix where the forced active nature of the viewing means that the catalog need not have full coverage--so long as it has enough coverage to keep you actively engaged when you choose to use the service. That thinking (at least for me personally) has been why I've long avoided streaming music services but use Netflix streaming regularly.
There is a lot to dislike about YouTube and how it handles music, but when it comes to instantly finding music that I want and without no restrictions on playback, YouTube works wonderfully well (at least, for me)
For the last 4 years, I've not downloaded or purchased one single song, I just listen to everything I want to hear on YouTube playlists.
If DI.fm had some way to purchase the song that was currently playing/recently played, I'd probably rely on youtube a lot less, but I don't see something like that happening anytime soon.
I dislike what often happens if I add something to a playlist for future listening, however -- videos disappear, for a multitude of reasons. I have several genre-specific playlists I've curated that require regular maintenance because of this, and I can't always find alternatives for stuff that's gone offline. It's frustrating.
For one thing, it would feel "free." People wouldn't be explicitly paying for the privilege of listening to music they already own. They'd be implicitly paying for super-convenient hosting and access from everywhere.
In effect, it would be almost the same thing, but the spin on the two models is vastly different. It could be entirely hidden for someone who buys a new Macbook every two years with AppleCare.
Come to think of it, maybe it would be a good idea to sell such hosting included as a part of AppleCare. Cloud hosting of user media data could well reduce the warranty related costs for Apple.
People have been saying this for years and it hasn’t happened and I still don’t see it happening anytime soon. I think this type of analysis is flawed on multiple levels, but in particular in how it looks at consumers as a whole.
Looking at the industry post-2000, the way I see it is people tend to fall into one of two buckets as music ‘downloaders’: (1) people who tend to discover and consume music passively (i.e. hear a song on the radio, download the single for repeat enjoyment), and (2) people who actively discover and consume music (i.e. discover a new artist, download their album to hear more).
Regarding bucket (1), I’d say the post is pretty spot-on. These consumers, who I’d easily say make up the majority in the market, are switching towards platforms that deemphasize ownership, and thus render ‘sales’ from iTunes and the like obsolete. But these people never really wanted to ‘own’ the content in the first place; I agree with the post that, for them, ownership was just the more natural and convenient option to consumption.
But for bucket (2), I don’t see this type of transition occurring. These people weren’t just downloading content as a means to enjoy it; the process of discovering, downloading, building-out a collection, and being able to play-back from an exact catalogue of music you like is all part of the experience. For these consumers one of the values of a platform is the ability to get all the music they want and enjoy it exactly as they chose. These consumers may not be as numerous as those in bucket (1), but putting aside the means of download (i.e. iTunes sales may be mostly singles downloaded by bucket (1), but I’d guess a larger portion of total digital music downloads across the web come from bucket (2) with torrents and the like included), they represent the majority of the digital music market. And 'platforms' like Pandora, Spotify, YouTube (if you can even consider it as adequate at all in this context), and others will never replace the ability to build a personal collection.
iTunes may become obsolete soon enough as the less intensive consumers switch to such platforms as described, and the whole system of managing a collection may move to the cloud as well, but I don’t see the act of downloading and maintaining a personal music collection in general going anywhere.
And I totally understand that, all I’m saying (and this is based on my general understanding of the market and no hard data at all, so take it as you will), but there’s a lot of people like you and me out there, and the market will exist, and can thrive serving us. And looking at things from the perspective of current digital music sales ignores the bulk of these people. If anything, a focus towards developing a model that serves people like us will only go towards expanding the market for music ‘sales’ (i.e. converting would-be pirated downloads to sales).
And without going too far-off on a tangent, I’d also argue that the market in many ways depends on the minority of high-volume consumers functioning as the ‘early adaptors’ who discover music and popularize it for the masses. This market, in my opinion, will always be a fairly strong force and will always be served in some fashion that involves ownership (whether that be legal or otherwise).
I agree. In particular, I would add that many of these platforms serve the classical music listeners poorly, IME. I tend to see lots of a) overplayed pieces that I've heard a billion times like Vivaldi's Seasons and/or b) mediocre orchestras/artists (the Radio Orchestra of East Bulgaria or something). The ITunes catalogue is also rather weak, actually. Lots of great classical CDs can't be found there. Finally, in many cases I'm attached to a particular rendition or version. I don't want to hear the Brandenburg Concertos on modern instruments, for example, yet you'll often hear this sort of thing on these services.
So, at this point I have a very large classical collection that I've accumulated over the years that serves my idiosyncratic tastes. Until someone comes along that provides an equivalent experience -- and there's probably a market opportunity there -- nothing can replace it.
Because of this, I find I listen to less and less classical music over the years, simple because CD device players are starting to disappear from my life. For example, I'm typing on a laptop right now that doesn't even have a CD drive (Macbook Air). I literally have to go out of my way to listen to classical music in the way I want to hear it. It's sort of sad, really.
No, it means the music industry as a whole is doomed, period.
The other BS "experience" selling "direct-to-fan" he describes a few paragraphs later, is not the music industry.
In fact, for the most part it is less artistic than the music industry (which was mostly all about the money), and less about the music. It is mostly musicians reduced to making parlor tricks and selling merchandise, concepts, videos, nice boxes, etc, that is anything that music to their audience, to make up for lost music sales.
Musicians are not there to sell "experiences" in general: they are there to sell musical experiences. That's their art. Now that music does not make that much money, they will have to sell other crap and treat music as a byproduct.
Aside from all the pretty boxsets, concepts, t-shirts, dolls, interactive apps etc, the only "experience product" that retains the direct and primary link to music as art, is live shows.
And for some musicians even those are not to their taste, they'd rather just record and sell songs (remember how Beatles lost interest and stopped doing them? Or how lots of electronic, avant guarde etc genres do not make much sense live anyway, nor their creators want to perform as much as your local pub band / metal geezers want it?)
But I agree that at the heart of this "experience" is the music itself, and the performance that manifests it. But I still feel music is beyond the products that have defined it as a record industry. Music is a primordial organizing principle of human societies, always has been. In a lot of ways, I think these future direct-to-fan experiential products return music to the primordial function it served for humanity, and all that entails. And sure, selling it seems sort of cheesy now, but that's a zeitgeist sentiment, which can and will change. Remember, 70-100 years ago, it was cheesy to sell recorded music. Lot of world renowned musicians, orchestras and performers refused to be recorded, for some of the same sentiments you share here today about "BS 'experience'" products.
Musicians know that music is not just a business. It is a language. Not necessary one every person can speak but certainly one that everyone can understand. Our lives are short and we may never live in a time without a "music industry". But music has a much longer history and a longer future than our short lives. There is more to music than just a "music industry".
What about the idea of peer-to-peer music? Not "file transfer" or "download" but "playback"? (YouTube, while it may seem instantaneous, is progressive download isn't it? Kids may not realize this.) What about decentralized instead of centralized broadcast. If we are doing peer-to-peer VOIP, we can do music as well.
What do you think?
Or, it means that technology (and preexisting oligopoly) has broken that particular market.
Individual consumers didn't buy and sell software in the 80's in the same way that software was sold in the 70's. (Go to computer store, vs. calls by the sales guy.) Consumers don't buy and sell software today like they did in the 2000's.
Throughout this whole time, people were writing software and getting paid to do so.
Musicians are not there to sell "experiences" in general: they are there to sell musical experiences. That's their art. Now that music does not make that much money, they will have to sell other crap and treat music as a byproduct.
Recordings themselves are an experiential byproduct.
http://foucault.info/documents/foucault.thisIsNotaPipe.en.ht...
Or, it means that technology (and preexisting oligopoly) has broken that particular market.*
So, basically the same thing in a different phrasing?
>Recordings themselves are an experiential byproduct.
Yes. I do think that the record ALSO removed the primary link between audience and musician. But al least it retained some of that.
A record is a byproduct primarily linked with music.
In a way that t-shirt, an autograph box, vinyl dolls etc are not.
No, that would be like relating the facts I mentioned about the software industry, and saying that, "The Software Industry is Doomed, Period."
It's more like, "The X industry of time period Y through Z is doomed." Phrased that way, it seems embarrassingly obvious.
There is no, "The Music Industry," of all time. There is only music industry of a particular technological context.
In his book "A Year with Swollen Appendices" Brian Eno has an essay that makes a good case for the role of music in pop music and pop culture.
Basically (and I wish there was a link this someplace) he argues that in popular music people are in fact selling an experience, a lifestyle, a way for people to self-identify. It isn't a matter of here's the music and then everything around it (i.e. all the packaging) is secondary, but that in many (maybe most) cases the packaging is really what matters; the music is somewhat incidental to the whole product.
I don't want to get into a No True Scotsman debate, but there are plenty of musicians whose art, while ostensibly musical, is not strictly limited to the music. Their art is in the entire packaging, presentation, and communal environment created.
You may know this already, but this is in the essay called "Culture" which starts on page 317 of the book you mention. The preview on Amazon includes this passage, which is on page 318. The other essays there are worthwhile if you're into Eno -- a lot are in the preview.
http://www.amazon.com/Year-With-Swollen-Appendices-Brian/dp/...
For folks who have not read or heard of this book, it starts out like a more-or-less normal diary, but soon becomes a set of observations on working, creating, dealing with people, making art and music, and a bunch of other stuff. The second part of the the book, the appendices, are a set of interesting essays, fleshing out many of the things he touches on in his diary entries.
Even if you're not a fan of his music he has some provocative ideas.
What we're seeing now is similar symbiotic evolution, I hope, where the non-musical parts of the experience and the musical parts (and stage presence -is- arguably a non-musical part) feed back into each other in a positive way.