Revenue Impact of P2P File Sharing
Posted on May 24, 2010
Jim Burger
Today’s audio podcast is an interview with Jim Burger who is an intellectual property attorney with Dow, Lohnes. As such, he is as vigorously opposed to copyright infringement as anyone. Nonetheless, Jim questions the validity of claims by music executives that Peer-to-Peer file sharing has been a major cause the industry’s revenue decline.
Download audio to iPad, iPod, or iPhone here
He readily admits a correlation between P2P activity and declining CD sales, but emphasizes that mere correlation does not constitute causation. For example, CD sales topped-out during the 1999-2000 period, but those were the same years when Napster was most active. Not only was Napster the first popular P2P network, it was also probably the most widely used. Album sales did not decline until 2001 which was the same year that Napster was shut-down by a judge’s order. Read more…
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Music’s Next Evolution
Posted on May 20, 2010
David Pakman
Today’s audio podcast is an interview with David Pakman who has been a venture capital Partner with Venrock since 2008. Earlier he was the CEO of eMusic where he led the online retailer to sell more music download tracks than any competitor except Apple’s iTunes. Before joining eMusic he Co-Founded MyPlay which pioneered online music lockers. MyPlay was sold to Bertelsmann shortly after the turn-of-the-century. Earlier David was a digital music innovator with N2K and Apple.
To play audio podcast to iPod, iPad, or iPhone click here.
David believes that the recorded music business has reached yet another mutation point. Over the past decade worldwide revenues dropped from $40 billion to about $17 billion. Furthermore, unless the industry begins to proceed along a new evolutionary path he predicts the declines will continue for another five years before bottoming-out at perhaps $7 billion. Read more…
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Two Conflicting Music Opportunites
Posted on April 26, 2010
Phil Leigh
The Internet presents the music industry with two potent but conflicting opportunities.
First, it can replace radio as a more effective tool for promoting music while simultaneously avoiding costly disguised forms of payola that continue to linger. This applies not only to new releases, which traditionally have been the industry’s lifeblood, but also to old tracks which often fall into minimal demand.
To play audio podcast on iPhone, iPod, or iPad click here.
Read more…
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Rewriting Apple’s History
Posted on February 6, 2010
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As Mark Twain put it, “Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest don’t happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.” Normally the winners write history, but Apple’s success and lofty stock price has given a number of media executives a bad case of P/E envy. They’re distorting the past by accusing Apple of dictating terms of media consumption on the Internet.
For example, when Apple convinced the recorded music industry to sell digital downloads in 2003 it allocated seventy percent of the sales proceeds to the record labels and music publishers. One might suppose a business partner would be happy with a 70% share of incremental revenues, especially when that partner incurs almost no added cost. Perhaps they actually were smugly pleased with the deal originally. Maybe they figured Apple had been suckered into giving them more than twice as much as it kept for itself. Read more…
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Reviving the Record Labels
Posted on September 2, 2009
Phil Leigh
If you would like to learn one way the record labels might reinvigorate their business, this audio is for you.
Everybody recognizes that the Internet radically transformed the recorded music business. Apple’s iTunes online store sells more music than any retailer having displaced Wal-Mart and Target. As a consequence pre-recorded CD sales are down over 50% from ten years ago when Shawn Fanning’s Napster was set-loose, even though it was later jailed. Read more…
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The Record Label Business
Posted on May 19, 2009
Steve Knopper, Author, Appetitte for Self-Destruction
If you would like to know how the Internet transformed the record label business, this interview is for you.
Our guest today is Steve Knopper who is the author of Appetite for Self-Destruction. Steve’s book is a chronicle and analysis of the spectacular crash of the record industry in the Digital Age. He is a Rolling Stone contributing editor who has covered the business since 2002. Read more…
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Is Napsterization of Video at Hand?
Posted on March 4, 2009
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If you are curious to know whether the video industry is at the threshold of “Napsterization” much like the record label business was ten years ago, this video is for you.
It is hard to believe that it was fully ten years ago that Shawn Fanning unleashed Napster P2P software that forever changed the record label business. Napster demonstrated beyond any doubt that the Internet was going to become the natural distribution platform for all Digital Media files. In order to prosper, or even survive, the established business models would have to adapt. It was obvious that the record label industry was the “canary in the coal mine” and that ultimately there would be a day of reckoning for the video producer as well.
That day of reckoning has arrived for two reasons. Read more…
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Your Music: Always Available Online
Posted on December 8, 2008
If you would like to learn about how the Internet Cloud can provide you with an “always-on” connection to your music library along with a sharply reduced cost to add to the collection and try-out new music on demand, this interview is for you.
Our guest today is Geoff Ralston who is the CEO of lala.com. His website will let you (1) maintain your music library in the Internet Cloud, (2) add selections to your library at negligible cost, (3) try-out new music on-demand at little cost, and (3) avoid advertising. Read more…
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