I’m taking credit for this one.
I went to a MusicTank discussion about online music with some hefty industry people in London last year. I did my usual thing of being ‘Annoying Questions Guy’ in the audience. One of the head honchos in charge of online distribution for Universal was there, and so I asked "What percentage of all the music that Universal has in its catalogue is currently for sale in any form anywhere on earth?".
"Probably less than 2 percent" was the answer.
The reason? It costs money to digitise and make available all of the back catalogue stuff – and besides, there’d be no payoff. Nobody’s really interested in that deleted stuff anyway….
I called him on it. I said I bet if he started to put that stuff up on the internet for sale, it would pay for itself many times over very, very quickly – and open up a whole new revenue stream for his ailing corporate overlords. He was skeptical, and made very clear that he thought that the music business was very much a current hits game. That was just over a year ago.
And today, this:
Universal confirms music fans want rare tracks online
Download Andrew Dubber's new book Music in the Digital Age - or, if you already have and you've been enjoying it or finding it useful, please consider paying for it here.
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3 Comments
Thats excellent. Definitely take some credit for this, it takes people to take the bull by the horns and get people thinking, so kudos.
I like where this is going.
2% though? Whoa.
I would be looking for my commision cheque
That was really awesome. It dose go to show how mutch influance the top dogs still have though. To bad they are still a bit blind to what is happening in the world around them.