ContentSphere - Music & Media in an Online Culture

Today’s act I’m going to introduce to you is no band. Neither it’s a solo artist. You might call it a project. And it sure has developed in a way not expected.

Ambient Circle is a collective of various participants located in Germany’s North-Rhine area. Every now and then, they get together to play electronic music sessions. They are entirely focused on electronic ambient music, and it’s just twelve sessions they did so far. This includes public and private sessions.
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Michael Masnick revisits the shutting down of SpiralFrog, putting emphasis on the fact that however a new idea in online music business gets hailed, there still is at least one predominant reason for failure. To succeed, you have to offer more than what you can get for free using bit torrents. As I mentioned before, quite along the lines of Michael Masnick’s Reznor case study, you need real added value. It’s what Masnick calls the "reason to buy". Add something to the product (= music) to be obtained nowhere else, be it quality, quantity or core competence.

Learn from history or fail to succeed.

Jamendo is the world's first B2C music download service offering all tunes under the Creative Commons license. At least that is Jamendo's claim. Also, I do not know about any other one either. If there are small ones or large ones out there handling their business that way – please contact me. I really would be interested in your experience.

The Land of Digital Milk & Honey

Most importantly, any music offered on Jamendo is legally free for download. This is rather surprising to say the least. Yet all of us should have been prepared since OpenSource software like Linux is something we take for granted. But music? It feels like the Holy Grail being one-way used in a fast food restaurant and thrown into the litter box right afterwards.

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Three weeks ago, Andrew Dubber once again tackled the question of "Why give music away for free?" on his blog. He earned more than 140 comments. That is a lot. It stirred up the a lively argument between the contributors on more than just one level. Take your time - it is an excellent read.

Here is the comment I added. I left it unedited which means there are a few referers to other people's comments. Hope you don't mind. If you like, add your two cents by adding a comment right here (or over there).

Nothing is predictable

So what remains to be a constant in music business? There’s the product, which includes performance & composition. It’s the artists, or more generally speaking, the creative bunch (whomever that will include on the technical side). On the other side of the story we’ve got the consumer. Then there’s kind of a middleware - let’s call it the platform of distribution, no matter how many third party companies are involved (if any). There are rules and a technological as well as a economical framework to deal with the product. This includes licensing & copyright law. Anybody involved intends to get their share of money. Expect for the consumer, who’s trying to pay as less as possible. IF he’s doing so.

So everything remains more or less? No, for heaven’s sake - again I’m with Andrew. If anything’s predictable, it’s a multi-dimensional complexity which arises of any constant being altered by a multitude of parameters: technology, globalization, ubiquity, The Long Tail, individual production etc.

Upside down

What’s changing in music (or media) business? Basically, anybody’s role will change - that’s quite easy to see. It’s not only the labels. And it will not change somewhere in the future, it’s already in the making. Be open minded and keep up a good amount of analytical awareness. Your tasks have changed.

Complexity arises from multiple forms of the product’s carrier (media, format, resolution, options). More complexity arises from options in the choice of distribution channels (online, offline, label, portal, aggregator, selling by yourself). Even more complexity arises when it comes to choose whether to add added value (ltd editions etc - see Tom Robinson and Julian). If that’s not enough, you can define the pricing model and strategy as an artist yourself (depends on way of distribution of course).

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