The Future of the Music Industry

The music industry has been devastated by online piracy for over a decade now. So, where does that point us for the future of the music industry? What will we do to gain back the lost revenue and carry on surviving? Paul McGuinness believes that "music subscriptions" (McGuinness) will be the major access route for future online music sales. Customers will be able to pay for music services in the similar fashion as sports channels on paid T.V. or as a bundle or extra to their Broadband service. Then customers can listen to music on paid T.V. (like MTV) or can have a quota or album downloads per month.

Is This Viable?

McGuinness believes that this will work and people will jump at the chance to have an amount of albums or gigabytes to download of music a month. I'm not so sure and have to say that I feel somewhat sceptical about this idea.

It is a good idea to treat music like we treat our Internet allowance. That way it won't seem as much to a consumer to purchase albums. They have the choice of what they want to download and its all legal. The cost per album or gigabyte of music will be cheaper than purchasing from a record store or online stores such as iTunes.

However, iTunes opened and let the world have discounts to music if they purchased online. Did this stop the piracy epidemic? I believe not.

This idea is good but looking at how people have reacted to iTunes as a cheaper option and looking at how people already view the Internet costs as their justified means of payment I don't believe it will be as much of a success as McGuinness predicts.

References:

McGuinness, P. (2010). How to save the music business. Rolling Stones, 708, 34-37.