Well, you may think this is an unreasonable title to discuss music industry issues. The truth is: the current state of the music industry has less logic and monetization avenues than common prostitution and both actually operate under similar schematics.
In both sex and music (the goods) there is pleasure and enjoyment with a payment in the end – and the payment is the part where the Music Industry fails big time! In the sex business, both the pimp and the prostitute usually get paid!
In the Music Industry, “bulk pimps” like Shazam, Soundhound, or other lyric ID guys (with Google being the biggest one) will line you up with new pieces of music – totally free of charge. Afterwards, you can go to one of the pirate download sites or just YouTube the song, and once again, totally free of charge, become a satisfied music consumer and “owner”! To give the Music Industry some credit, approximately 1 in 20 music fans dealing with these “bulk pimps” are honorable customers and go to one of the certified establishments to purchase the music for just $0.69 to $1.29 on iTunes, Amazon, or Google.
Otherwise, the biggest music pimp, Shazam, and the biggest music bordello, YouTube, work for nothing – vending other people’s music for free!
A closer look at Shazam reveals that as they pass on music IDs for free, they earn cash from advertising products / brands like eBay or Capital One Visa!
Even after 13 years in business, Shazam still has never turned a profit. Such a great child of the Music Industry with over 350 million users had little over $30 million in revenue in 2012, recognizing a loss of almost $5 million. They gross less than $0.10 per registered user for providing billions of song IDs that typically convert to theft. Can they legally process someone’s intellectual property and not even gain much out of it!?
RIAA must react NOW! 90-95% of the time, Shazam and other music ID entities process digital music solely for the benefit of pirates.
Shazam actually has the nerve to value themselves at one billion dollars in current IPO preparations.
The net result? Mismanagement and misallocation of great NEW resources in the Music Industry. This is a situation where all the goods are free and openly available basically anywhere, like in bars or inside your car, with Shazam being the one giving it out to everyone for free. The Music Supermarket with no walls and all ID services removing the goods into the parking lot and neighborhood streets for a total pleasure of all 24/365!
So what state is the Music Industry in? The best description is equivalent to hundreds of naked prostitutes running around town with a sex hungry man observing the webcams. This uncivil fellow is just one click away from a “Shazam courtesy delivery” of whomever he chooses. Both Shazam and the prostitutes will not see any cash from this bad guy. As the Shazam guy knocks on the door to deliver, a proud Capital One logo will be displayed on his shirt and the girl will have a McDonalds tattoo on her chest!
To some of us the situation actually might resemble a gang rape in the public square. Shazam grabs the girl and delivers her to Spotify or YouTube users. Moments latter, to get more satisfaction, they press a “similar tune” button to receive instantly and for free all other, similar looking girls. All of it is propelled by degenerated parents of music, the labels, who started and continue to deliver their best kids in to this madman rape arena.
To be blunt, this is only proper assessment of current situation in the Music Industry.
Time to finish those desperate giveaways and start Discovery Moment Monetization.
Time for billion dollar Shazam music store!
… and a five billion IPO will follow!
Perhaps you should do some research next time you considering publishing an article.. Services like Shazam and Soundhound are hurting the music industry? Are you insane? Not only are they not music streaming services, but Shazam drove 300MM dollars to the music industry alone by allowing its users a mode to identify music and purchase them directly from iTunes, Google Play, etc.. If it weren’t for Shazam and SoundHound I can almost guarantee that the music industry would be further in distress than it already is..
Hi Hank,
You think I might be on medication but I do know my numbers. Shazam is an industrial pimp living out of investors cash for last 13 years.
If those guys would have little logic and balls to say no to Mr.Jobs in 2008 each one of them (Soundhound and Gracenote too) would be today 4 to 5 billion corporations subject to 10 billion IPO. Spotify in the meantime (I call it Spoofy) is the biggest pleaser of the freeloading public.
It is insane to allow such a turbo charged Napster to exist! Streaming with paid discovery tools, and few cents per stream converting you to ownership @ stream #7 is perfectly perfect.
Time to wake-up! There is 100 billion dollars out there and clueless folks keep melting this opportunity down to at the best $25B in 2020.
Best regards,
Remi
Remi,
I’m not quite following your bitterness towards Shazam for making a better pitch than you. I’m sorry about your troubles with not seeing your billions from your own patent, but I don’t follow the logic. It’s not as if people use shazam because they recognize a song – if they knew that much they’d search for it in spotify or youtube – I fail to see how shazam does anything more than offer a service that lets them make affiliate revenues from the actual sale of music. They are like the old record store without the used collections.
Thank you for your comment.
It is not bitterness, just call for logic, common sense and fairness to musicians.
The problem is that record labels never noticed Shazam and other ID service providers as a “old record stores”.
Shazam is starving and never made any profit, or they never made any serious attempt to sale tunes.
Net result is the industry in the open with just subscription and advertising for income generation.
Spotify and YouTube with free Shazam and other ID services will kill iTunes and all other music sales.
In the meantime Shazam converted to mandatory sell only mode will become a billion dollar music store in just few years.