1 post tagged “drm”

The effects of the changing music industry are beginning to show effect.

Brick and Mortar stores are cutting shelf space devoted to music, thus lessening album sales revenue.

The middle management at labels has been cut out, eliminating the strong marketing efforts on the street, web, and elsewhere - and possibly the only strong arm the labels had left.

Still, the labels are making efforts to stay afloat.

New artist deals are being proposed.

The 360 deal takes a cut of all revenue (touring, merch) and is still an old way of doing business because the label retains all ownership of the music. What many people don't realize is that music makes money (oftentimes loads of money) years and years after the recording is released - by ways of licensing.

David Byrne wrote an excellent article in this month's Wired Magazine explaining the range of deals an artist can and should expect to do these days, ranging from an Equity deal or 360 (total label control) to licensing to self-distribution (total artist control). I was also told to check out his keynote at last year's SXSW Music Festival where he outlined similar ideas.

DRM?

Today, Sony-BMG and Amazon announced a deal to offer music from Sony's catalog to Amazon's newly-launched digital music store, free of  the  problematic DRM copyright protection.

It seems that the DRM-haze still exists, like the interior of your highschool mates '86 Honda on the second month stretch of a Phish tour. (Yes, I said Phish, but only to prove a point).

To be continued...