RSSMusic industry heads seriously consider the subscription model
By Tim Conneally | Published January 9, 2008, 9:09 PM
With digital rights management provisions being stripped from audio files now by all four leading music publishers, some of the digital music industry's leaders took time at CES today to evaluate the extent to which that loss could lead to gains.
In a sort of "what we have learned and where are we going" session, the panelists discussed the impact that DRM has had on digital music, its profits, and its availability, and where the consumption of music is going.
Billboard Magazine's second presentation in its all-day workshop at CES was a panel discussion featuring Ian Rogers of Yahoo Music, Barney Wragg of EMI Music Group, Terry McBride of Nettwerk Music Group, entertainment lawyer Fred E. Goldring, Esq. of Foldring, Hertz & Lichtenstein, and Matthew DeFilippis of performing rights group ASCAP.
Barney Wragg of EMI opened by saying that for EMI, at least, the lifting of DRM has at last allowed the company to re-connect with its disenfranchised customers. Though his company has not released any numbers, he said that as soon as DRM began to fall away, EMI's album sales went "through the roof."
Ian Rogers of Yahoo said that he could think of five companies offhand that haven't been able to establish deals with Yahoo Music strictly because of DRM issues, and that music as it stands lacks the contextual data the Internet has the power to deliver.
Goldring added, "DRM was a terrible idea from the consumer's point of view, but it did help the music space evolve." The fact about music, he said, is that the industry is competing against "free."
Years ago, Wragg said, everyone used to think that e-mail had to be downloaded onto a computer's hard drive. But today, everyone uses Web mail services like GMail where content resides in "the cloud," and subscription-based music services are the same way. The issue at hand, he argued, is how to make it work for people.
The rest of the panel seemed to favor the idea of subscription-based music services, noting the potential similarity to cable television with money in subscriptions, value-added packages, as well as in advertising.
Rogers said, however, that many services require users to go through "seven install screens, then a system restart, then they have to input their credit card," to pay X amount per month. It's no wonder these services aren't attracting as many people as they could; they need to be fast, easy and enticing.
the problem with iTunes is that if you want to deliver media to the iPod market, you have to pay those rottenApple swindlers a huge chunk of your revenue.
i think PlayReady and Flash DRM will nail open a lot of doors that iTunes and Windows DRM opened. DRM is definitely not gone from online music or video- it will continue to be visible in most deployment strategies. the Subscription Music offerings that the industry iNubs were all cooing about above--- will all have DRM. how else would you enforce a subscription, show a sponsor that someone watched or listened to an ad? um ok- next.
to summarize, the real problem with the Music Industry, is the Music Industry and you just can’t cast the blame anywhere else. they went from head in the sand to blindfold, naked and riding a donkey backwards through town- in under a decade. you’ve come a long way, baby! one thing for sure, the kids driving the bus right now need to take their white cane and dog, step to the back and hope someone helps them into a seat.
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|DRM is not the issue. How could iTunes be so incredibly successful selling BILLIONS of DRM managed, encrypted music tracks, but the rest of the music industry hangs their failures on DRM.
The real issue is that the music industry created a beast in selling out to iTunes, and now because Apple uses a proprietary DRM technology on their iPod which they don't license, the labels are all forced to sell unencrypted MP3's via their channel stores.
There never was DRM on MP3's as well. Not sure where this tidbit came from.
Christopher Levy
clevy@buydrm.com
www.buydrm.com
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|Subscription is only one business model that will have appeal to some of the many music consumer behavioural segments.
Currently, most music consumers seek interoperability& ownership, ever if ownership was obtained by breaching copyright.
It is my view that it is a great thing to offer music consumers choice while ensuring adequate remuneration to both artists (content creators) and business representatives (labels, managers, aggregators). Let the product offerings and segment dynamics drive adoption, regardless of limitations within various models or product offerings. How many cars & car segments do we have in the market?
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|You know they have been planning this all along right? Its called "testing the waters"
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|The thing about a subscription service is that once your subscription ends, so does the music you've downloaded. I'm curious as to how they'll implement that if they're not using some form of DRM? If you put a song on your device - I guess if you were to sync up again it could wipe it, but what's to stop you from moving it off yourself to where they wouldn't see it?
I'm not sure I'd want to pay for "radio" - which is what Cable sort of is today.
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|Well just keep paying your subscription fee on time then you have nothing to worry about.
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|Could you imagine if magazine subscriptions worked like a music sunscription service? As soon as your subscription lapses, all the issues of the magazines you own become unreadable. *heh* Who would want something like that?
I'm glad to see Amazon offering DRM-less, high-quality MP3 downloads. I hope they do well with it.
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|Until they go belly up or "misfile" your payment
or decide that you have to much music and cancel
you or or find that you have a song you didn't
get from them or your device dies and they decide
that you trying to get the songs a second time
means you are a pirate....
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|Can you imagine if you *rented* Internet access from an ISP and if you stopped paying them a monthly fee they stopped giving you access to the Internet? You could always save all your favourite websites and than cancel! that would stick it to them. You would have the Internet saved on your computer and you wouldn't have to *rent* it from them every month!! As long as no websites ever change your good to go . . .
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|What a joke! I will welcome the day when Artists realize the Internet Age is here and that they can make more profit without the RIAA's and ASCAP's of the industry. Can we say "Behind Schedule"!
RIAA and ASCAP are certainly on track to drive themselves right out of a profit and a career.
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|Wow, look at the f-tards trying to catch up with the consumers. What next, flying pigs?
"noting the potential similarity to cable television with money in subscriptions"
Coming soon from Comcast - The $100 per month music subscription service. Just as soon as they get Congress to grant them a regional monopoly on the market and ban all other services from accessing their network.
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|I love the subscription based model.
I'm a Zune user, and I'm a subscriber of the ZunePass. $15 per month for unlimited music. The only caveat is that a few bands don't put their music out there, which is a bummer, but for like 90-95% of the music, it "appears" free!
They really need to just go with the ZunePass model.
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|Yea I agree...I use yahoo music engine and it's great being able to listen to any song you want for $15/month or so
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