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The cats over at Axehole have opined that if Bloggers and other tecnocrati ran music labels, they (the tecnocrati) would end up bankrupt. Read the article here. As a reluctant blogger I did post a response there, but I shall also post it here because that's what we "bloggers" do, apparently. Axehole is a pretty darned good site and everyone is entitled to their opinions. Axehole's opinion isn't "wrong" on many counts, but it can be construed as misguided, depending on your point of view.
- Most music fans don’t care about DRM. Ask a typical music fan what DRM is, and most are going to shrug their shoulders. While copy protection may be a big pet peeve for the Linux crowd, most people have know idea what it is, and if they do, they don’t care.
- eMusic doesn’t really sell songs, they sell subscriptions. eMusic doesn’t really sell individual songs, like iTunes does. They sell subscriptions. Until recently, they charged $10 for 40 downloads/month, about a quarter per song.
- Labels aren’t going to get rich from eMusic. At $.25/song, 100 million songs, sold in three years is about $8 million/year. The RIAA’s figures for 2005 music industry sales are 12.27 billion dollars.
- eMusic’s sales are less than 1% Apple’s. Apple’s sales of DRM’d tracks are about 1 billion/year.
- eMusic’s traffic has flatlined over the last year, according to Alexa traffic charts (below), except for a spike when eMusic offered 50 free tracks as a promotion.
- Musicians aren’t going to get rich at eMusic, either. eMusic claims a catalog of 2 million tracks. With about 50 million downloads last year, that averages out to be 25 downloads per track. And at $.25 per download, eMusic is making about $6.25 a song. Take eMusic’s cut off the top, split the rest with the record label and you can see why eMusic sales aren’t going to help artists quit their day jobs.
1) You are correct, for now. DRM still hasn’t penetrated the market to such a point where it inconveniences the general public. Still, when a user upgrades from an older PlayForSure device to a Zune or iPod and finds that the music they purchased isn’t going to work on it, they are going to be a little pissed. 2) Que? Seriously, you do keep the music man. 3) Yup, you got that one right, which is why the labels won’t like it. Thankfully there is a small, but growing, trend for bands to skirt the majors as the majors seek to reduce royalties, cut into ticket & merch sales(1). 4 & 5) Again, spot on. 6) That’s more than they get from the majors now man, and the labels want to reduce what they are getting now(2). They will get more cashish from emusic, not that royalties or CD sales were the sweetest cherry. –
Bloggers are doing the preaching now because they are, generally, more technically inclined and can see the problems that a DRM’ed future bring. (1) http://tinfoilmusic.net/content/view/1734/2/
(2) http://tinfoilmusic.net/content/view/1724/2/
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