Eric Jensen

In a recent sur­vey by British think tank Demos, researcher Peter Brad­well found that music lis­ten­ers who par­tic­i­pated in ille­gal file shar­ing behav­ior spent more money on music than lis­ten­ers who did not admit to using ille­gal ser­vices. Two key par­a­digm shifts cre­ated by Inter­net dis­tri­b­u­tion come to mind: Dis­tri­b­u­tion, whether as playlists, rec­om­men­da­tions, or down­loads, is largely con­trolled by fans, not record labels or con­tent cre­ators. The per unit cost of ‘dig­i­tal copies’ is essen­tially zero. This cre­ates a sit­u­a­tion in which even an unli­censed trans­ac­tion has value for the con­tent owner; a pos­si­ble new fan, and mar­ket­ing data. The first chal­lenge is to lever­age that value. The sec­ond is cre­at­ing legit ser­vices that pro­vide a vastly bet­ter user expe­ri­ence than ille­gal file shar­ing at a com­pet­i­tive price. In addi­tion, why not sim­ply license file shar­ing behav­ior, lev­el­ing the mar­ket­place? I know, eas­ier said than done. The issues of copy­right infringe­ment are sig­nif­i­cant, but a major road­block is the com­plex­ity of the tra­di­tional roy­alty model. Peo­ple will pay for inno­v­a­tive, supe­rior prod­ucts. Apple is a great exam­ple. Every­one grum­bles about the pro­pri­etary nature of their busi­ness model, but folks are still lin­ing up for iPhones in a reces­sion. The music indus­try has the poten­tial to trans­form itself, ush­er­ing in a new era of com­pelling, com­pet­i­tive, Inter­net mar­ket­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion ser­vices. Exe­cut­ing will take hard work, vision­ary think­ing, and cooperation.