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
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.