The MusicBlues

We all must have realized that the music industry may be in financial trouble just like everyone else as a result of the recession, not to mention the HMV stores shutting down. But how bad is it, and are we really seeing the whole picture?

Although music still surrounds us it nowadays emerges from different formats such as using our mobile phones, mp3 players and Internet streaming services (Ludovic Hunter-Tilney, 2010). We are living in a digital age, and may be satisfied as music listeners however this creates quite the opposite effect in the industry and their executives. The birth of iTunes with their downloadable tracks and not to mention piracy which has spread like the plague across the world where large chunks of revenue is lost each year, has almost killed the CD and destroyed record companies leaving nothing to patch them up.

So there is no wonder the music industries revenues have continued to drop in recent years. Not only are the industry executives from the large label companies like Sony and EMI affected but also smaller independent musicians nowadays are unable to make a living solely on their music. The industries economy is a well talked about topic and especially during Billboard’s Annual Music and Money Conference were EMI fanatical situation was discussed, in 2007 (Gringer, 2010) EMI (a British music company) allowed a private equity firm to purchase them in the hope of recovery when in the beginning things seemed to be looking up, proved failing unfortunately resulting in the loss of top artists including radio head and rolling stones. Today EMI is no more and in 2012 sold of there assets. Could this be the record industries fate? Or can they learn to adapt successfuly in this digital era. Author of  “Digital Disruption “ believes many lessons can be learnt from observing the music industry.

“Build a digital customer relationship. The music industry fought the first wave of digital disruption — it didn’t help that Napster was ultimately illegal, making the industry fail to realize that the bigger phenomenon was legitimate even if its current manifestation was not. But then when iTunes came along and offered some relief, the industry gave away all the keys to the kingdom, with the most important one being the digital customer relationship they could have had if they had insisted on different terms or created their own digital music service without hampering it with impossible DRM expectations”. (McQuively, 2013)

For more on the music industries financial crisis check out blogger “The Unsigned Guide”