Music

One of the challenges of blogging is doing it regularly. For the last couple of weeks, I have been laboring under a fair amount of guilt for not blogging. I had a couple of days when I felt meh (not good) and there were other days when I had to focus on getting client work out the door (good).

But there has been one thing on my mind for a while and it has to do with the music industry and how it needs to seriously re-invent itself. I love music in most forms. I still have my first LP (Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water) and still continue to purchase physical media. Paying for music is a given for me but clearly I am in the minority these days.

The Internet has clobbered many industries hard and the music industry is no exception. To my mind music piracy is so prevalent that the sharing of music files, in the minds of many, is not considered a bad thing ie an act of copyright infringement act.

In my past, I managed software anti-piracy programs in numerous Asian countries, and know the challenges of taking out legal suits against infringers. It’s one thing to sue businesses for using unlicensed software but it’s another thing, on a totally different scale, suing millions of downloaders of pirated music. There has to be a better way for the industry to increase revenue. The old top down approach doesn’t work anymore.

Having read Sting’s recent op-ed in the New York Times where he advocated that ISPs should monitor the downloads of their customers gave me an uncomfortable feeling. No one likes the idea of their ISP monitoring their use of the Internet.

Artistes have to realize that the Internet has changed the music industry and they must take control of how their music is distributed and marketed. Which is why I agree wholeheartedly with this excellent article by Jon Pareles where summarizes the evolution of the digital age in the context of music and how it was the canary in the digital coal mine (love that metaphor).

I see the Internet as a benign tool. Those artistes who have embraced it and used it to market their music have been able to reach an audience they would never been able to before. For example I discovered this band on the Internet via a NPR podcast and they are in my own Seattle backyard!

Visqueen, and yes, I am going to buy their CD!