RSSDigital Music Forum: How to offer digital tunes without going broke
By Jacqueline Emigh | Published February 27, 2008, 6:20 PM
At the Digital Music Forum in New York City today, speakers talked up a couple of alternative approaches for offering freely downloadable digital tunes without going broke.
As Microsoft's Zunes, Apple's iTunes, and other online music distributors are quickly finding out, a lot of people just don't want to pay for song downloads to their PCs.
How can distributors cope? A new site called RCRD LBL, for example, now supplies only "ad supported free music," said Peter Rojas, CEO and co-founder.
TouchTunes Music's downloads, on the other hand, are targeted not at home PCs but at restaurants and other places where people listen to music while they're getting together.
"TouchTunes is unique in that people never seem to mind putting money into a jukebox," noted Celi Hirschman, moderator of a panel session at the Digital Music Forum.
But TouchTunes' online digital jukebox will soon be joined by a TouchTunes social networking site. "This will connect you more closely with the place you're going to and the people there," elaborated Vicki Saunders, TouchTunes' director of music marketing and promotions.
RCRD LBL already has five major corporate ad sponsors, including BMW, Nikon, and Puma, for instance.
A few months ago, the Web site only provided music from a handful of musical artists. But by now, RCRD LBL has worked with 250 of them, according to Rojas.
The musicians on RCRD LBL have different goals. Some are just looking for visibility, whereas others want to earn revenue.
In contrast to major record labels, RCRD LBL gives artists a choice of short- or long-term deals.
"The 'indentured servant' model is a little out-of-date. It's not really relevant these days," Rojas remarked.
My only question is this: if there are legal, free download sites out there like http://sadsteve.com that DO NOT have ads, then why would users ever patronize a site like RCRD LBL which doesn't even have that big of a music database?
Basically,
iTunes:RCRD LBL :: RDRD LBL:Sad Steve
So, I'm doubtful that this current market model is the be all end all solution to the industry's woes. I believe that as long as users can freely and easily download music (legally or not), they will. Why don't labels recognize this and develop their own revenue strategy built around this fact?
-John
Score: 0
|Wait, what? iTunes is the 2nd largest music retailer in the United States, Apple has some of the highest margins in the industry (compared to service cost), and they're talking about "going broke"? Maybe they're talking about people not wanting to pay for non-mainstream music - but then they *never* did. If you're trying to fill a niche by selling lesser-known music online, maybe an ad-based model is more effective, but all you're doing is monetizing something that was basically fringe and unprofitable before anyway. You're improving on the old situation, where hardly anyone bought the physical media, but you can't *expect* to be able to make a living off that - no one ever did before. If that's not what they're talking about then I really don't know what these speakers at the Digital Music Forum were on about.
Score: 0
|I used to download plenty of songs from itunes, now I buy from lala.com as I get the CD in the mail also for just a bit more then the price of itunes. I have also ran into the problem of not liking anything on the radio hardly. I don't even want to buy any of the songs out there. I bought my first cd in months expecting it to be good and it was crap.
Score: 0
|