Internet Age Redefines Music Industry, Encourages Interactivity

As the legendary Bob Dylan would attest, the times are a changin' inthe music industry. In fact, they've already changed. Ever since theoriginal Napster took the Internet by storm back in 1999, physicalrecord sales have been slipping while music consumption has beengrowing. The RIAA has put up a vicious fight over the years to stopwhat it calls rampant online piracy, while artists at large seem to bebenefiting from a larger audience and more expensive live shows.

Today, a full decade since Napster's birth, things are quite a bitdifferent. The labels have finally learned that DRM simply isn't theway to do business, and even the online megastore that is iTunes hasdecided to sell music with no DRM restrictions attached. But aside fromthe process of acquiring music, something else is changing. More andmore, consumers are turning to the world wide web to get updates onmusic, purchase/download music and find out about new artists andtunes. Live show portals such as JamBase and PollStar have seen recordgrowth as fans look to link up with their favorite artists and consumereal-time information about new live shows, new interviews, concertreviews and new albums/songs.


In short, the Internet age is redefining the music industry at large,and while the RIAA once felt that the web would be the death of music,maybe it's just the death of the CD. As we saw just a few weeks back,some 25% of all music sales now happen through iTunes. There's nodenying that consumers are embracing the digital download, giving Applereason to create its "Cocktail" music formula that will likely bringmore interactivity to the process at its California press event nextmonth. At a Bandwidth Conference this week, Gracenote vice president ofproduct and content management StephenWhite noted that the Web 2.0 technologies available now were reallythere to "empower the consumer and the artist," proving that theInternet is indeed an asset to both parties.

Gracenote is just one of the outfits looking to make music moreinteractive. For example, the company's recently release CarStarssystem enables consumers to generate playlists based on the moment,giving them songs that accompany a coastal road trip or the celebrationof a birthday. White asserts that he's looking to to a future wheremusic experiences are far better than today, and more importantly, more"holistic." Then there's Creative Allies, which hopes to let artistsgive fans the ability to design and create things like band posters andtee-shirts, not to mention music videos and biographies. It's aboutputting the power into the hands of the consumer, and by doing that,labels could generate more buzz about an artist to encourage onlinealbum sales and live show attendance.

There's little double that avenues such as Facebook, Twitter andMySpace have transformed the way listeners interact with artists. Inmany cases, Twitter allows common fans to see exactly what theirfavorite artists are thinking/doing on a day-to-day basis. How's thatfor keeping someone's attention? We also think live shows have a longways to go in the interactive department; imagine if you could text avote at a show for the band's encore song. If you were a fan of anykind, you'd probably be inclined to show up just to see if your songwas selected.