Why Universal Music Group Could Stand A Little Monkey Business
First of all, if you have not already done so, you can jettison the notion that pre-releasing new music online — at any price, including no price at all — will "devastate" legitimate sales. From the earliest days of the Internet, this was a dubious claim at best — or at least it was until about this time last year, when a British rock band called the Arctic Monkeys demoted it from dubious to just plain dumb.
Replacing DRM With A Music Tax Is Incredibly Stupid
Music industry revenues will be a set size, regardless of the quality or type of music they release. Incentives to innovate will evaporate. There will only be competition for market share, with no attempt to build the size of market or serve less-popular niches. Forget labels building new brands and encouraging early artists to succeed – they’ll bleed existing big names for all they are worth and work hard to keep anything new – labels, artists, and songwriters – out of the market. New entrants just means more competition for a static amount of money. Collusion by existing players will run rampant.
Ring Tones: The End of Music As We Know It?
When the technology that delivers pop music changes, our notions of what music is changes as well. Songs have already devolved into ring tones. How much farther can they fall?