Music to my ears: The changing face of the digital music marketplace

July 24, 2007 7:33 PM

I like music. A lot. I regularly hole myself up in my room for hours scouring music blogs and sites, downloading the latest tracks and checking Metacritic for the latest review summaries. Without getting too deep into my own purchasing habits, I'll say that the album leak has become absolutely commonplace in the digital music world.

I'm not sure many people know exactly how each album leaks, and a vast majority of them don't care. Pre-release music is pre-release music, and for a lot of people, the price is right. A leak, oftentimes months in advance of the release date, is simply expected among some music lovers. As soon as one sees a tracklist posted on their favorite music site, the hunt is on.

The government tries to crack down, but the music hunters will very, very rarely become the hunted, so it's on the record labels to adapt to what has now become a way of life in the business. Physical album sales have absolutely tanked and continue to do so at an increasing pace, so the majors are forced to focus their attention on digital sales, and of course one name comes to mind when we turn to digital music sales: Apple's iTunes.

Despite holding more than 80 percent of the online music sales business, even iTunes is scrambling. The tide began to turn earlier in the year when Apple CEO Steve Jobs wrote an open letter suggesting a movement away from digital-rights management (DRM) protection, which limits buyers in their ability to share their downloads. Jobs stayed true to his word when he later introduced iTunes Plus, which for an extra 30 cents per song, gives buyers the option to purchase DRM-free songs. Whether it likes it or not, the industry is beginning to relinquish control over the digital music frontier.

You can see it on all levels, too. Recently, indie pop band Stars rushed the digital release of their album to try to garner at least some sales revenue as the tracks hit the Internet (quick research will show you that it's still very easily available for free, if someone were to chose that route). Major-label mainstays are changing their ways too. Smashing Pumpkins recently released four versions of their Zeitgeist album, each with different bonus tracks to motivate fans to purchase the album. The tracks are readily available for free on various blogs.

The Internet is even making it as easy as possible to find your favorite pre-release songs. Sites like Hype Machine and Elbows aggregate the free mp3s posted daily on the myriad music blogs, letting visitors quickly run searches for the songs of their choice.

So what's a band to do these digital days? Sure, they do it for the art, but money is money, and making a living is necessary. Fighting illegal music sharing has proven futile at best, and the business knows it at this point. It's time for bands and labels to start thinking pro-actively, rather than re-actively. We've already seen some smart bands (Spoon, for example) embrace the leak and thrive as a result: their album debuted at #10 because their mindset was that "a leak is only going to hurt you if your record sucks," as quoted from a Merge Records publicist in a recent SPIN magazine article. Now the real show will be watching how the industry as a whole changes its stubborn ways to make the most of a landscape that has already indelibly changed its tune, and for music fans, that tune has never sounded sweeter.

Digg It | Reddit | De.lic.ious | Facebook