Sometimes I like to think and discuss about copyright law, mainly relative to music and software. Right, Claudio? And there’s one thing I know for sure, the motivations of which are being felt all over the Internets, which is that the entertainment industry is not selling its music the way they should,considering the environment in which they exist.
With the easyness to copy data and the advantage of being anonymous online comes careless online music sharing, which is a real and unavoidable problem. And the music industry is only fighting itself, while it continues to carry on such a business plan.
Let me pinpoint what I feel to be the essential problem here: to sell music as a product. In a business point of view, to successfully sell a product means to outrun your competition: to do a better product and/or sell it in lower prices. Note that it’s essential that your product distinguishes itself from the all the rest out there in the market; and that its value is contained in the business’ ability to produce it like no other.
Consider now the expression “to steal music”, often associated with online file sharing. Think of what happens when you actually download a music file from the Internets: someone posts the file online and you download it. It’s simple. Now both of you have the file. But consider that if a song is actually worth any money at all, to download a song means to create monetary value out of nowhere. There is no such thing as stealing, when it comes to the digital world, since the original information is kept unchanged and remains under the same ownership as always. As least not while stealing is defined as it always was.
Copying a real-life product is actually a difficult task and that translates into how much a product is valuable to its business.
Selling music as a service is actually not a new idea, as many online websites and applications have tried to fulfill that need. And I think that has to be the way to go. Trying out Spotify was my turning point.
I had seen the video introduction a couple of months back and today I was lucky enough to have an invitation fall from the sky [or more precisely, from this awesome dude]. This application is off the charts. I mean, nearly perfect work.
The design is slick and its functionally is really perfect; I really don’t have any bad features to point out. Its library is huge, spanning all kinds of musical genres; its responsiveness is amazing, this bad boy doesn’t even have a loading bar: once you choose what you want to hear, you hear it and that’s it. It even features scrobbling.
You can subscribe to the free service (if you get lucky to have an invite) or you can use their paid services (day or monthly pass). The monthly pass costs €9.99, which is really an awesome price. I can imagine myself easily paying for this kind and quality of service.
Now this is how I imagine peacefull, profitable and problem-free access to online music. All you inflexible guys, please take note: stop chasing them unicorns, it’s time to change and finally adapt to your environment.
