As has been reported in Online Music Sales Increase Tenfold in 2004 :: Internet World and elsewhere, online music sales has arrived in a big way. But one has to wonder if this would have happened if the appetities of music fans not been whetted by Napster and other P2P systems. Probably not.
I quit using Kazaa when the lawyers got involved. But the attraction was never free music. Rather, it was access to the largest library of recorded music in history.
I play in a roots music band, and I often used Kazaa to search for material to cover. I ran keyword searches on "truck," "train," "drunk," and other such terms, and came up with some great stuff, including a very cool, very old song called "You Drink Too Much" by a group called the Chicago Black Swans, of which Big Bill Broonzy was a member (according to what little information I could find). Another great find was Dwight Yoakam's "Since I Started Drinkin' Again." (And thus emerges a theme...)
These days I enjoy using iTunes for the same reason. The selection is certainly not as vast as what was available during the heyday of P2P — I haven't found anything else by the Chicago Black Swans. But that will likely change over time as the music industry in general acclimates to this new environment. After all, free of both the limitations of shelf space and the geographic realities of retail, there's no reason not to make everything available. Somebody, somewhere will buy it.
Journalist Chris Anderson covered the exciting new realities of book, music, and video retailing in an excellent article (The Long Tail) in the October edition of Wired. According to Anderson:
Unlimited selection is revealing truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it in service after service, from DVDs at Netflix to music videos on Yahoo! Launch to songs in the iTunes Music Store and Rhapsody. People are going deep into the catalog, down the long, long list of available titles, far past what's available at Blockbuster Video, Tower Records, and Barnes & Noble. And the more they find, the more they like. As they wander further from the beaten path, they discover their taste is not as mainstream as they thought (or as they had been led to believe by marketing, a lack of alternatives, and a hit-driven culture).
As Big Martha over in D Block says, "That's a good thing."
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
very interesting and enlightening perspective on the phenomenon and practical personal experience as well - thanks Bob!
2 - SFC SKI
Knowing I can get long OOP stuff or obscurities and niche genres is the strongest incentive for me to get into web-based music purchases, I will pay a reasonable price if I can find what I want, not what the biz offers.
On the roots music tip, if you aren't into Webb Wilder already, you need to give him a listen.
3 - matt
One of the greatest things about services like Rhapsody is they create an almost frictionless experience between hearing about a band and being able to log on and immeidately hear their music.
And the advent of playlist blogs, like the Rhapsody Radish (http://www.scopecreep.com/Rhapsody) and my blog, Rhapsody Rock School (http://rockschool.blogspot.com) provide great ways for people to navigate and explore the ever-deeper catalogue of music available through these services. It's MP3 blogging taken one step further, where instead of downloading files you're getting entire playlists of music.
4 - DJRadiohead
Interesting post and perspective. The major labels were led down this path kicking and screaming and it might turn out to be the best thing for them.