Comments: Reactions to External Blogs

This week while exploring the blogosphere, I discovered two posts that piqued my interest and that I subsequently commented on. The first post I commented on is by Marketing Pilgrim staff writer Jordan McCollum and is a follow up of sorts to my recent post on the band Radiohead. In this post, McCollum discusses the success Radiohead has achieved since the release of its "free" album to consumers online one month ago. While McCollum points out that Radiohead has achieved some monetary gain, its much less than what many people had originally predicted. In response to this, I point out that McCollum and others are expecting too much too soon. The second post I commented is written by Brad Linder, an audiophile, freelance journalist and blogger for Download Squad, Green Daily, and TV Squad. Linder discusses the new Mbox Micro, the latest installment in popular audio recording company Digidesign's Mbox 2 arsenal. I build upon Linder's comments and suggest ways that Digidesign can improve its product. My comments can be found on the external blogs, as well as below.

Comment to McCollum: It goes without saying that what Radiohead has done with this experiment is truly revolutionary. Furthermore it is nice to see that Radiohead is making some profit, despite the fact that it is much less than what many people expected. One must keep in mind, however, that it has not even been one month since the album was originally released to consumers. Greg Sandoval, an author for CNET's News Blog points out in this article that it is probably much too early to determine whether or not Radiohead has been successful (monetarily speaking) in its endeavors. Sandoval quotes Chris Castle, (scroll down to see biography), a long-time music attorney and record executive for A&M Records, with the statement that "the money-generating lifespan of an album can last as long as two years. It starts when an act releases a record and continues when the performer goes on a concert tour." Traditionally, performers have released albums and then immediately afterwards toured to support the sales of their album. As Mark Ellen, editor of "The Word" magazine and music journalist, points out in this article, "[f]ive years ago people toured in order to sell records." With this in mind, Radiohead's limited success can be partially attributed to the lack of live performances this far into the experiment. Not only this, increased touring will undoubtedly lead to greater revenue generated by the sale of tickets, as well as the sale of physical merchandise and other paraphernalia that consumers cannot simply download for free. Therefore, your suggestion that people should find a more effective business model is premature. With the addition of touring, some marketing and promotion by the band, and simply time in general, the figures might change drastically, turning this experiment into a highly effective business model.

Comment to Linder: It is ironic how Digidesign releases the Mbox Micro as well as Pro Tools version 7.4 immediately before the big holiday season is it not? At first glance the Mbox Micro does seem really cool (see image), but as you pointed out, it is not - technically speaking - an audio interface as it provides no audio input to the computer. This is a drawback for true audiophiles who would like a small interface for recording "on the go". Yet it also makes sense that a true interface with a decent preamp and analog to digital converter would be significantly more bulky, diminishing the Micro's novelty miniature size. That aside, I might even consider purchasing the Micro for "on the go" mixing, but I feel that purchasing another $250 copy of Pro Tools LE software is a waste of time because I already own a copy. It might be more beneficial to Digidesign to offer the Micro at full price with the software bundle, as well as at a reduced price without the software for those of us who already have the latest version. You do bring up a good point, however, that as the number of high quality, hand-held flash recording devices increases, people interested in home recording are going to be doing less and less multi-track recording sessions, and therefore using Pro Tools as purely a platform for mixing imported audio files. The question then is whether or not the microphones in these hand-held devices can produce audio that is comparable to the traditional microphone and preamp combination. If so, then this could be the death of the large, multi-track audio interface market.

Quick Comments: Reactions to External Blogs

This week while exploring the "blogo-cosm", I came across two posts that I found to be quite interesting and deserving of my written reaction. I was particularly interested in these posts because both expand upon the topic that I covered last week in my "Future of Music" post (as the image to the left portrays). The first post is found on the prestigious Ars Technica (art of technology) blog and is penned by Thomas Wilburn, a Washington D.C. based author who is no stranger to the music industry. This post consists of his reaction to and summation of the various viewpoints explored at the recent Future of Music Policy Summit. I found the ideas he relays to be interesting, revolutionary, and at times, even absurd. The second post I commented on is by Stephen J. Dubner and consists of a panel of music industry experts, each offering his own impression of the current state of the industry. Dubner is a New York Times blog contributer to the "Freakonomics" column and an award winning author. I responded to the section of Dubner's blog written by Koleman Strumpf, professor of business economics at the University of Kansas Business School. My responses to these two posts and the links to the original comments reside below.

Comment to Thomas Wilburn:
"I feel frustrated after reading this post because, unlike the subject matter discussed in most blogs, there is almost nothing present here that I can disagree with. It is inspiring to know that so many people see eye-to-eye on this subject and that people are working together towards a positive end result. I must admit, however, that in the last paragraph of your article, the statement quoted by David Harrell irks me. Being a musician myself, it is hard to agree that "musicians should start balancing the loss of revenue with the promotional value of direct communication with fans online." What exactly is the "promotional value" of direct communication with fans? One can speculate and say that increased contact with fans online will lead to more fans, leading to more paying customers at concerts, eventually leading to more revenue for the artist. Yet a musician has to eat, and these speculative values that Harrell associates with artists giving away their music for free are not reassuring in the least. What I am getting at here, is that revenue and promotional value are two entirely separate things. An artist needs revenue to generate great music, which if given away for free, may lead to an inherent promotional value in the art. It is true that greater promotion usually leads to increased revenue, but not always - record companies rarely recoup all of their promotion expenses on an album for newer artists. And there is no guarantee that playing more shows will generate more revenue for an artist because touring is a major expense as well, (think about transportation, food, and housing costs for months on the road). My point here is that if one wants to turn the artist into a small business, promoting itself through free goods to the public, then one will have to find news way to support artists financially. Creating, recording, manufacturing, distributing, promoting, and touring are costs that smaller artists will not be able to tackle on their own, especially if they give their art away for free."

Comment to Stephen Dubner:
"In the article, Koleman Strumpf claims that there is no direct relationship between the pirating of recorded music and the recent decline in CD sales, and that one explanation is that “the industry has failed to find genres that capture the interests of consumers" (par. 12-13). This seems highly counterintuitive because for so many years now, the Recording Industry Association of America has been suing the public on the basis of copyright infringement claiming that this causes a loss of money through a decline in CD sales. I must ask, can so many people have been sued and asked to pay thousands upon thousands of dollars for the wrong reason? Looking at Strumpf's paper, it becomes apparent that he fails to examine one crucial point: the fact that illegal downloads today (and in the last few years) consist mostly of singles rather than albums. People are just not downloading entire albums and this is why their downloads cannot be linked to a decline in album sales. Although it is true that with the recent rise in Bit Torrent technology, downloading entire albums with large file sizes is quickly becoming more common place. Yet, it still holds that the general format of illegal downloads via services such as Limewire and Kazaa is that of the single, not the album. Therefore rather than the consumer being forced to waste roughly eighteen dollars on a new album for a few singles, the intelligent (in terms of saving money) consumer is attaining those singles for free, without all of the filler songs he or she will not listen to anyways. This brings me to my next point which is that I agree with Strumpf that maybe the industry – for some time now – has not found a genre worth selling to the public. I feel that in general that the idea of creating an entire album as a continuous work that tells a story, was thrown out the window long before illegal downloading ever took place. The internet has provided a method for people to not waste their money on music they do not want to hear. This stems from musical decisions rather than promotional and marketing decisions. I believe that if artists and the people who collaborate to make music can create epic stories, (like Pink Floyd did in their 1973 release "The Dark Side of the Moon"), that take the listener on a journey of adventure and discovery, the end result will only be positive and the album will sell once again."