“Few people know the music industry better than Peter Jenner. Pink Floyd’s first manager, who subsequently managed Syd Barrett’s solo career, Jenner has also looked after T.Rex, The Clash, Ian Dury, Disposable Heroes and Billy Bragg – who he manages today. He’s also secretary general of the International Music Managers Forum,” Andrew Orlowski reports for The Register. “And he doesn’t pull his punches.”
Orlowski reports, The major four music labels today are “f*cked”, he says. Digital music pricing has been a scam where the consumer pays for manufacturing, distribution, and does all the work – and still has to pay more. Labels should outsource everything except finance and licensing.”
“But he’s also optimistic that for almost everyone else – indie labels, musicians, songwriters and budding entrepreneurs – as well as network providers – the future’s going to be pretty bright. The Big Four know that the DRM era is nearly over – and within two or three years, he predicts, “most countries” in the world will have a blanket licensing regime where we exchange music freely, for a couple of quid a month,” Orlowski reports.
Full interview here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Alden S.” for the heads up.]
sunra and Ozzy: DRM has nothing to do with artists not getting paid. 90% of music sold today has no DRM and 99.999% of music existing in households has no DRM.
socialism? WTF? Stop throwing around words that have nothing to do with the issue at hand. I don’t believe his proposed system is workable, but it has nothing to do with socialism.
I don’t think this guy has really thought this through or understands the technology & consumer issues. Has has some good points about how the music industry works and how the current system is not designed to work with the download paradigm. He also hits on the head the problem with the current download system – most have DRM, the file is not the quality of CDs, and the vast majority have no artwork or liner notes. We’re paying the same for less. The tradeoff of being able to buy a single song does not compensate for this.
Though there is currently a lot of resistance to subscription models, I believe this is a viable approach in the long term. Purchased downloads will exist alongside those, though the labels could fuck this up by winning price increases or implementation of “creative pricing” schemes. Hopefully, the inability of the majors to change or adapt will lead to a loss of power over time. There are several potential alternatives for musical acts now, but none of them seem to be mature enough or have the money to be anything more than proof of concept at this point.
I want artists to get paid. I do not want DRM. I want to be able to buy a track that is full audio quality (relative to CDs) and that I can play on whatever device capable of playing digital music files that I see fit at the same quality (you lose data with the current method of burning, then recompressing iTS tracks). In other words, I want the same fair uses I had before with vinyl, tapes, and CDs. Illegal P2P distribution is bad for artists – I get that. Me playing a track from iTS on an iPod, a Creative whatever, a Sony XP(FFLD)14 Walkman, or my laptop has NOTHING TO DO with artists getting paid. DRM will never stop the former. DRM will impede the average consumer from the latter.
more cow bell.
@ Mr Peabody
Where in my comment did I say that I agreed with it?
Another celebrity who doesn’t know that celebrity does not make one omniscient.
Bozo.
Steve
… neither does running a computer company.
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