Track Sales Peak
Fascinating that on a day Steve Jobs introduced iPhone 4.0, it was reported that digital track sales in the first quarter actually declined.
Oh, there’s some mumbo-jumbo about SoundScan reporting periods, but even if you adjust to the old window for comparison, sales would still be down .09% instead of 1%.
In other words, the dream is over. You know, the dream that digital would replace physical. Or that iTunes would stop piracy. Or that the major labels would keep control of the music business.
It’s back to the drawing board, it’s time for innovation.
In other words, when more people are listening to more music than ever before, how can sales be down? BECAUSE WE’RE NOT DELIVERING MUSIC THE WAY PEOPLE WANT IT!
Are Edgar Bronfman, Jr. and Zach Horowitz gonna stand on their high horses and decry pirates, refuse to license new business models as their revenues continue to slip? Or maybe they’re going to come up with 3-D CDs, requiring special headphones. I mean what’s the solution?
Number one… Eviscerate piracy. Make it so it’s just not worth it to steal. Hell, people may even forget how to steal…
But, but, but…if we lower the price so everybody can get in, we’re going to lose that extra revenue from our best customers! Cable providers don’t care how much you watch TV, it’s just about signing up. And cell providers have unlimited plans. And both have great anti-piracy measures so there’s no direct comparison, but the point is today’s paradigm is giving a lot for a little, not being pecked to death by ducks, micro-payments of $1.29 for every track. Who could survive on a system like this? Not car companies, who sell accessories in packages. The key is to come up with a bucket of tracks, for a reasonable price.
Or license Spotify.
Now is the time to try. Before EVERYBODY stops paying for music!
I mean you’ve got it on MySpace, YouTube, Lala…and you’re paying for a 3G connection on your handset so you can sample there too. Come on. We need a better mousetrap.
Lasso everybody into a free Spotify. And then either make the upsell so enticing that people will fork over cash or cut off access after people are addicted, like a drug dealer. Shit, doesn’t the drug dealer give the first taste free?
Desperate times are here again, even worse than 2000 and the advent of Napster. If rights holders have any hope of getting people to pay for music access, they’ve got to throw the long ball now, got to come out of the huddle and let it fly, even though there are so many defenders…because you can’t win if you don’t play.
iPod sales start to fade and Apple introduces the iPhone. And now there’s the iPad. And in the music business we’ve raised the price to $1.29 at a store that broke in 2003… Shit, that’s ancient history in tech terms.
It’s not about finding more places to SELL music, it’s about finding better ways to deliver access to music. Get cracking.
