Re-inventing The Music Consumption

The current status of the illegal music downloads shows how strong is the demand for music, but on the other hand it is a proof that this commercial model does not work any more. In this case you have two options, whether you take the people to the judge for downloading your music or you just create a different model for the music consumption. The first option is usually the most painful in terms of economics and consumer loyalty because you gain more from what you would ever expect…More hate, more conflict and more pain for the future of your career. All the fans that «borrow» your intellectual property for such a long time will turn against you because you dared to ask money for it? Even if you are not a bad guy, your partner in crime (label) is going to be the bad guy because they invested in you and they want to take their money back. Does it sound logical for you? Yes! But for the fans: No!

The famous cartoon influenced by the case of Metallica Vs Napster / Music Fans

Do you think that you could persuade your fans with your logical point of view? Probably, if we are talking about Maths or Natural Sciences but here we are talking about Art and Art most of the times does not work such an algorithm because you always have the human creativity factor that changes your plans. The human creativity is mostly about feelings and expression and the persons (fans) that are into it do not always embed their feelings and expressions under number, statistics or tags. The best way to solve the problem is to take a look deeper into the problem: If you cannot prevent the people from borrowing your intellectual property “forever” then give them what they want for free and make other people pay for it. Who are the other people? Of course the political authorities who did not educate people that “virtual borrowing” is still considered a “stealing”. Are you going to fight the authorities and bring chaos to the political framework? No, this won’t work because you may end up paying more that you expected to gain from this process.

Art is more than an algorithm…

There is another way to get your money back: Demand from the government to buy or rent your music by creating a space where people should get their music for free. In this case, the more people are borrowing your intellectual property, the more you demand from the government to give people what they want. Usually people steal because this is considered an illegal activity and sounds exciting the fact that they are not being caught for that. However, if you give to the people music for free then the illegal downloading won’t be a cool thing to do. What you can demand as a musician from the political authorities? Make them borrow your music and create a space that the fans could use for the listening pleasure. The best place that you can ask for, it is a music library. If people start listening to the music in a library, then you educate people about how they should listen to the music. Moreover, you still get your royalty share from the authorities that they buy your music.

Music Libraries: The educated way of music consumption

An interesting case study for my scenario is the music library of Odenske, Denmark. The music library belongs to the Municipality of Odense and it gets funding from the government. It is located in an enormous building near the train station, so it is easy to find it. It includes thousands of vinyls, CDs, DVDs, music books and other rare music items that you may never find on the internet to download. Moreover, it includes a small recording studio where people can play and record music. It is interesting how wide is the range of the items that you can find and how service oriented is the personnel. When I entered the place today, I asked for a Black Metal album and the librarian was happy to show me how many albums does the library own from this band and where can I find the item that I am looking for. The library operates during the working hours of the stores and it is an experience of how should be the music consumption: Legal, service oriented and exciting! At last I have to add that they try to bring people inside the library by organizing Social Listening Events where they hear the whole album of a band and afterwards the fans or some very special guests comment on the music and the lyrics. This is really important because the social thing is what made the record stores popular back in the 1970s or the 1980s. Back in the day, you were making a lot of friends while waiting in the queue for the new release and the social cause was an additional reason to come back to the record store. So, sometimes in the record store you were”buying” more than a record, you were buying friends, memories and experiences. As a matter of fact, the social listening sessions of the music library in Odense, Denmark can make the Music Consumption 2.0 become a real case scenario.

Size really matters…