A good article in today's Sunday Telegraph:
... Bertelsmann, the German media behemoth, recently predicted that within five years CDs would be as obsolete as the outdoor lavatory. ...Many artists are bypassing record companies altogether, in favour of direct exposure on the net. George Michael recently announced that record-company demands had made his life "unbearable" and in future he would be releasing all his new music on his website in return for a charitable donation from anyone downloading songs.
Few feel sympathy for an industry generally perceived as profligate and grasping. "For some reason people think that everyone in the music business is a crook, whereas people in television and movies are patrons of the arts," says David Hepworth, the editorial director of Word, a music and entertainment magazine. Attempts to protect itself have only made matters worse. The Record Industry Association of America's prosecution of a 12-year-old girl last year for downloading songs provoked a considerable backlash. Critics of the action complained that the real threat to the industry came from organised piracy in countries such as China rather than schoolchildren.
But while the record industry is suffering, the music industry is doing better than ever. This year, sales of phone ringtones are expected to bring in £70 million (profits go straight to the songwriter, bypassing the record industry), while sales of charts singles will bring in only £67 million. Rock dinosaurs such as the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney made millions out of last year's world tours, with fans happily paying more than £100 for a night out and a T-shirt. The ubiquitous iPod - the must-have present last Christmas - led to millions of people rediscovering their love of music, with trains, buses and parks now full of people nodding happily to self-composed playlists. In the US, iTunes, a legal download site set up to sell music to iPod users, is proving an astonishing success, with more than 30 million songs purchased in less than a year. Yet British consumers who want to download are unable to do it legally, after a similar system was delayed because of wrangles over tax. "All our research shows people dislike breaking the law and would happily pay for music if they only could," says the boss of one British record company. "When we get such sites up later this year, the problem of file-sharing will decrease dramatically."
Matt Phillips, of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), thinks the changes will have come too late. "There's a very worrying trend of younger consumers who have been brought up on a culture of 'free'. Music is all around them, in supermarkets, on television, on the internet, and they simply don't see why they should pay for it. They spend their disposable income on mobile phones. The concern is that this generation won't become music buyers in the future and then the industry will die." Rather than address this problem, however, the record industry is simply ignoring the teenage market and focusing its energies on "50-quid man" - affluent, middle-aged professionals such as Mark, who think nothing of spending that amount on CDs. For the first time since the pop mania of the 1960s, people in their forties are buying more albums than teenagers, with those in their fifties close behind. ...
Yet others envisage a more positive future. "Why shouldn't people buy Engelbert Humperdinck if that's what they like?" says the record boss. "There is still plenty of eclectic music out there, and thanks to the internet and digital radio almost anyone can access it. A recent survey showed that 25 per cent of people used the internet to find music that they couldn't get in local stores. "Punters can just go online and fish about for things that they like rather than relying on the industry telling them what to buy and what not. Marketing will wield a lot less influence, which has to be a good thing." It will also mean an end to the tyranny of the album. "Until now, consumers have had to buy an album even though they only want two or three songs from it. Now they can download just the numbers they like."
Moby, the musician who was one of the first stars to spot how he could diversify his earning power by allowing his songs to be used as soundtracks for adverts, predicts good news for consumers, but bad for the industry. "I think we're about to see the end of million-dollar videos and marketing campaigns, as well as the end of million-dollar executive salaries and millionaire musicians," he told Word magazine recently.
