Sean Patrick Cooper

I’m still under the impression that the new music industry has yet to be designed.

No one yet has figured out how to blueprint the post iPod marketplace.

With the announcement of iCloud, I believe we’re getting a glimpse of what at least part of the marketplace foundation will look like. Spotify’s stateside release is another significant piece of that foundation. The missing and unknown pieces? The pieces that need to solidify before anything resembling a new marketplace can be built? (1) Critical Mass adoption and (2) artist’s entrepreneurial efforts. 

(1) Critical Mass

It is unlikely that the music listening masses’ sense of entitlement about digital music will ever go away. Piracy is rampant and the expectation that most music will be either instantly or eventually free is nearly impossible to combat. Yes, some people pay for music, but the majority of people only pay for a portion of their libraries and that’s something the industry will have to work with, not against. 

What can possibly change is the way that people listen to their music. 

The thing that makes me skeptical about the streaming services and cloud lockers is their dependence on an internet connection. Broadband is not universally available and not universally free. What happens to a listener in a subway or driving on a remote road sans internet? Why would that user abandon their iPod/iPhone that works all the time for a service that works most of the time?

(2) The artists 

There’s a phenomenal opportunity for artists right now to dictate the terms of their own careers. Direct to audience communication via web/online channels is enough on its own to negate the need for an artist’s involvement with a major label’s marketing department. The iTunes store and Bandcamp methods of delivery negate the need for a label’s distribution arm. The low cost of computer-based production negate the need for a label’s studio. 

I get the impression that there’s a lot of testing of the waters going on right now and no one has taken the full plunge. Jonathan Coulton might be the first one into the pool, sort of speak, but I’m surprised that there haven’t been more success stories like his. That there hasn’t been an artist or a collective of artists dominating the spotlight for their creative use of technology to create careers. Odd Future has received some attention for how they built a post-iPod fan base. However, their apathy and reluctance to position themselves as anything other than ant-establishment everything undermines their opportunity to really lead a new generation of artists. 

The thing that I find curious is that there hasn’t been an artist-led redesign. The efforts have been individual, cowboy-like, with musicians making it up as they go, creating their own methods for survival. Does the new marketplace have to be corporation-designed? Can’t it be designed by a company of like-minded artists?

There’s something missing still from the new marketplace. We haven’t seen yet the smart set of musicians who will crack the design from the inside out. I think this is in part because the expectation that the industry is label-driven still lingers, even though it’s obvious that the labels have no idea what their doing right now.