Anyone who's got an ear turned to the behind-the-scenes turmoil of the music industry knows that it's been nudged to a precipice of uncertainty; perhaps it's even been pushed over the edge. The heart of the matter is that people are consuming more music now than ever, but instead of walking out of stores with CDs, most are stuffing hard drives with the modern culmination of what CDs first introduced - digital music in the form of binary bits and bytes.
The thing is, those hard drives can be filled up through a variety of different means, whether it be downloading music for free, buying it online, ripping CDs or simply dumping a whole pile of it from one computer to the next. In other words, determining exactly where people are getting music is difficult to pinpoint, which means there's no easy solution for fixing the sales slump because there's no one thing to target. Amidst all the vagueness, the only real certainty is that the implications of this seismic shift in music consumption are sure to be substantial. In a sea of change, nothing is safe.
Some music industry folks are putting forth the notion that CD production will cease within 10-15 years if digital music continues on its current course. Interestingly, those same people are predicting that vinyl records will survive long after CDs are gone, maybe becoming even more popular than they have been recently. Their argument, quite reasonably, is why would people hang onto CDs when all they really are is an outmoded stopgap of sorts, a technology awkwardly situated halfway between records and MP3s? Vinyl is bound to always have a niche, no matter how far the cutting edge migrates.
Last week, iTunes officially became the second largest music retailer in the country, beating out Best Buy and Amazon to become subordinate only to Wal-Mart. Perhaps not so coincidentally, that announcement arrived on the same day that more than 500 leaders from all walks of the music industry met in New York for a Digital Music Forum, concerned precisely with the same trend of growing digital dominance.
The main thrust of the forum was to discuss the transitional phase record labels have been forced into. To survive in an age of waning sales figures and the Internet, they're finding it necessary to make concessions to the digital marketplace that would have been anathema even a few short years ago, including a more open-minded approach to music licensing, doing away with Digital Rights Management limitations and supporting ad-based online radio stations.
The fact that labels are waking up to the need for a more progressive approach is promising news, since it's bound to balance things out a bit more as a side effect - if the major labels have no choice but to relinquish a bit of the monopoly they've held for ages in the interest of self preservation, it may lead to more freedom for both artists and audiences.
Consider for a moment that 30 percent of all music sold right now is coming from artists on independent labels. With this in mind, it's easy to imagine why major labels are so concerned: They're quickly becoming outmoded by the little guys because the indies are much more in touch with the current climate of the music business. They're also the ones more willing and readily able to adapt to change.
So how will labels cope with music's changing tide? One thing's for sure: The answer doesn't lie in cold lawsuits or increased limitations - something the industry finally seems to be catching on too, one step at a time.
Need some advice on where to get some pristine vinyls to replace your outdated CDs? Ask Ben where to look at bpeterson1@wisc.edu.
