Music Industry RX

The internet is perfect for selling all products and services. This statement also applies to music.

It should be very simple, as long as you get the money at the DISCOVERY MOMENT! 

All participants of the  discovery have to be rewarded and converted to cash registers of the industry.

Let’s summarize the current state of the music industry:

It has decreased from $40 billion to just $16 billion last year.

How is this possible with the obvious synergy between the Internet and digital music?

The answer is an obvious one: Shazam, Soundhound, lyric IDs, and radio displays with YouTube are all free suppliers that keep all profitable content outside of the “translucent music store” and available TO ALL!  iTunes, as well as any other music store, don’t have a chance to survive with no barriers to these music providers.

Currently, we are in a state of a streaming ELDORADO – Content owners throw all they have into this fire. This fire is propelled by free ID services, similar tune discovery and portability, providing total convenience to users and little or no cash to creators. I hope this is just a transitional era of TURBO NAPSTERS sterilizing the field for new crop! This situation should infuriate the creators of music and force the brains of the industry into a well overdue state of MONETIZATION, not ideas solely for the consumers’ pleasure!

YouTube, with its desperate VEVO, just adds fuel to this mindless “give all – take little or nothing back” business model… if we can actually call it business!

If uninterrupted, the current course will demolish over $100 billion in revenue from the natural synergy between music and internet and global revenues will plateau at $25 billion in 2020.

LET’S SEE WHERE THE MONEY IS.

The real, easy money is in the payment for a song at the moment of discovery- let’s capitalize and get the cash when a person falls in love with a song, lives it, and wants to hear it again. No matter who you are, whether a streamer or a buyer, the price is 39¢ to live and enjoy that great emotion from that song again and again.

DISCOVERY MOMENT MONETIZATION!

The best and last opportunity for cash in the era of instant access and smartphones.

A reasonable price is the most important aspect to discourage this theft and make purchasing a song a happy event; 39¢ (US cents) should be a perfect global price.  Good for a stress-free acquisition to all teenagers in the US, EU, or Japan, and still reasonable in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and most of the Far East.

I would not allow for any regional experiments over 49¢ per song – WE NEED SUCCESS!

THE REST IS A BREEZE! We just need 250 billion transactions per year to create a $100 billion industry.  A very easy task, considering that the once $40 billion industry in 1999 was made by 3.3 billion transactions and a $12 average price for a CD.

During this time, most of the revenue came from a select few western countries along with Japan, and with virtually no discovery tools! This is an impressive number considering the lack of the resources we have at our fingertips today.

We are very fortunate; it’s 2013 and we have all we need to double the industry to $32 billion within 36 months as well as GET TO THE $100 BILLION MARK BY 2020!

Let’s review the list of idling and MISSUSED GOODWILL:

• Over 5 billion global cell phone users
• At least 1.5 billion music fans can afford $0.39 per tune – which is at least 10 times more than number of active CD buyers in the past!
• Free Shazam, Soundhound, Gracenote, and other lyrics ID services have over one billion users, and 19 out of 20 ID services go to free YouTube and torrent sites. Billions of music IDs provided for free should be converted at once to mandatory Discovery Moment Monetization.  The easiest conversion would be based on  changes in “fair use” laws, which are missused and abused. We should start at once with exaggerated  financial benefit to ID providers.
• Free  similar song suggest engines provide total pleasure. Spotify and Pandora providing access to them are outside of “fair use” boundaries and are no different than common thieves.  They give access to tunes for free, with no knowledge or permission of the owner, to total strangers – again, legally or solely for their own benefit, those services must become part of the mandatory Discovery Moment Monetization.
• Multiple sources assign over 50% of discovery to traditional radio!  Together XM, Pandora, and other internet and conventional radios as well as TV provide 85% of discovery. Discovery  happens as we live our lives, without enchainment to computer. YouTube or Spotify discovery is usually a secondary event triggered by “as we live” discovery  activated by one of the ID services.

This is a very impressive list – it’s clear that we don’t need much effort or promotion to generate seventy times more micro monetization transactions than in 1999!

TIME TO DOUBLE THE BUSINESS IN THREE YEARS!

“Stage one” of Discovery Moment Monetization should include instant elimination or just intelligent limitation of content on radio displays and conversion of all music ID services to mandatory music retailers.

“You like it?  Want to hear it again?  YOU MUST PAY!”  It is that simple!

• All ID services, both old and new, must be “bribed” financially or forced legally to comply, and a brand new stream of revenues will open.
• Shazam, Soundhound, Gracenote, have to stop their free music pleasure services and become billion dollars corporations by 2015!

We might have to lower royalty payments for some radio operators to convince them to remove all relevant data from displays. Otherwise, it should be a smooth take-off to monetization. Let’s just give ID engines, as mentioned above, what we use to pay the typical brick and mortar CD retailer – it should be a winner for everyone, unless they are part of some “secret anti-music religion”. The music industry situation is so hilarious that I would not be surprised to discover this ANTI-MUSIC PLOT

Let’s do some industry wide promotion and double the business in 36 months.

“Stage two” of Discovery Moment Monetization (PATENT PENDING)

Should start at once, parallel with stage one, and involves creation of the CENTRAL BANK of MEDIA. Google, Sound Exchange, or one of the discovery engines are all perfect candidates for this assignment.

All songs, or any media designated for monetization, should be registered with this bank and receive an interactive “license plate” artist, composer and label data should be consistent! Then we add the liquid part by identifying distribution participants!

This license plate is invisible to the human ear, but will allow THE MUSIC BANK to distribute revenues to the artist, composer, label (if there is one), the radio station that played the tune, or the McDonald’s restaurant for allowing the discovery of the new tune.

Honestly, McDonald’s master DJ might become a new label!

DISCOVERY MOMENT MONETIZATION is simple and fair to all.

There is only one condition: all tunes, including those served by iTunes, YouTube, Spotify, traditional radio, and chain of restaurants have to be coded from one central source.

This is an unbelievable opportunity for new discovery… and monetization at any place!

Just imagine the quality of the playlist on a radio station earning cash from music!

There is even room for subscription free Spotify; just pay $0.10 for the first stream and $0.05 for additional streams – rent to own conversion at $0.40 (just one cent premium to cash buyer) Just NO DISCOVERY TOOLS please!

It is time for DISCOVERY MOMENT MONETIZATION!