We Need To Talk About Streaming (again)

Last night I participated in a Music Tank seminar on streaming music.  It was a vibrant and valuable debate with a healthy diversity of opinion.  Below are brief highlights of my opening keynote, including some exclusive data from record labels and from Spotify. Streaming isn’t the paradigm shift, increased convenience of music access is Streaming [...]

Agile Music (the Midem Speech)

For those of you who weren’t able to make it to Midem last week here are the text and main graphics from my Midem Visionary Monday speech. Agile Music: Artist Creativity and Music Formats In the Age of Mass Customization Today I want to talk to you about a concept called Agile Music, a framework for [...]

Release Windows, the Cure for the Access vs Ownership Debate?

Back in early 2009 when I was at Forrester Research I wrote a report proposing that the Music Industry should adopt release windows.  It seemed to many something of an anachronistic concept, written just at the time with the Movie Industry – that bastion of release windows – was deeply engaged in a dialogue about [...]

The Music Format Bill of Rights

Today I have published the latest Music Industry Blog report:  ‘The Music Format Bill Of Rights: A Manifesto for the Next Generation of Music Products’.  The report is currently available free of charge to Music Industry Blog subscribers.  To subscribe to this blog and to receive a copy of the report simply add your email address [...]

Megaupload: Another Mole Down The Hole

By utterly amazing coincidence, ahem, just as the US Congress is considering Sopa and Pipa, cloud locker service Megaupload gets closed down and its top executives arrested and refused bail.  The timing is of course important, but nature of the media industries’ latest scalp is even more intriguing.  Megaupload, along with Rapidshare, Filestube and other [...]

Sopa Highlights Media Industry Strategic Failings

The controversial US copyright and piracy acts Sopa and Pipa (see this Wired piece for a Bluffer’s Guide on what they are) have been thrust centre stage by Wikipedia’s planned protest black-out on Wednesday.  It has taken an entity the size of Wikipedia to bring the debate out of the confines of the digerati and [...]

Is the Music Industry Going the Way of the Newspaper Industry?

The newspaper industry has had to grapple with a seismic shift in user behaviour over the last 15 years: people just aren’t buying newspapers in the numbers they used to and crucially newspaper buyers are getting older, to the extent that the long term prognosis is for the bulk of newspaper buyers to die off….literally.  [...]

The Digital Music Year That Was: 2011 in Review and 2012 Predictions

Following the disappointment of 2010, 2011 was always going to need to pack more punch.  In some ways it did, and other ways it continued to underwhelm. On balance though the stage is set for an exciting 2012. There were certainly lots of twists and turns in 2011, including: disquiet among the artist community regarding digital pay-outs, [...]

Rara and the Bid for the Mass Market

Today Omnifone made the move from B2B2C music service provider to consumer facing brand with the launch of their streaming music service Rara, which is being operated as an entirely separate company utilising Omnifone’s technology infrastructure.  The knee jerk reaction would be that this is bandwagon jumping in an increasingly cluttered streaming market, joining the [...]

Why It Doesn’t Really Matter Whether Adele Sells More Albums Than Lady Gaga This Year

You may have noticed the unattractive furore surrounding Adele’s contest with Lady Gaga to become the biggest selling artist of the year.  The momentum appears to be with Adele, with her hugely successful ‘21’ album yesterday becoming the first ever album to sell more than 1 million digital copies on iTunes in Europe. But the [...]