RodeWorks

This week’s Rolling Stone has a good overview of the current stat of the music industry, and the poor state of the record industry.  In part the news is good — people are listening to more music, touring revenues are up, digital sales are up etc.  But for the industry the news is bad, with CD sales continuing to drop, massive layoffs in the works and music stores going out of business. 

I find this issue of interest, in part because of my love of music — I still even visit record stores and buy CDs.  In part this is also a great study of the impact of new technologies on existing business models — something that I think we may need to deal with more in the educational arena.

The article identifies the watershed moment when the record companies didn’t go ahead with a licensing deal with Napster in 2001, and instead chose to effectively drive them out of business.  This eliminated one company, but not the desire to share music, which simply went underground.  I’d argue that the lawsuits of individual users didn’t help the record industry’s reputation/credibility, nor have their attempts to apply digital rights management to CDs.  Maybe EMI has a better approach?

Boing Boing: DRM-free EMI music outselling lockware

DRM-free EMI music outselling lockware

The Inquirer reports that in the short time since EMI went DRM-free with its music, its sales have skyrocketed:

Powered by ScribeFire.