New Digital Music Offerings Forcing Music Labels To Change Their Ways

Six months ago it seemed none of the big 4 music labels had a clue how to deal with the digital era. And while a couple of them are at least experimenting, (Universal with Spiralfrog, the dumping of iTunes, EMI offering DRM free on Walmart), it's looking more like degenerating into a dog's breakfast than heading into a clear direction.

After years of being raped by piracy and P2P networks you would have thought they would have had some time to come up with a solution that would better serve the customer and the artist. But it seems the lack of understanding of the digital world and more recently an adverse reaction to a bad DRM experience being driven by the media (and some governments, Norway, France, Germany), it looks like we are heading into a DRM Free Zone. That may well -- rather than saving the big labels - bring about their demise.

Why? Simply because giving it away wont do much for helping the artist to make money from their business and as artists begin to understand the digital realm themselves, they will see new opportunities emerge.

To move forward, Labels need to move into the Digital Age. They have to think differently.
MTV taught us that consumers like music with pictures. It was easy, we just thought about music and television and got the result. And it's no surprise they have a worldwide following, a great TV experience but they too have failed sadly to offer a satisfying digital service (think web 2.0 guys).

The music labels (big and small) need to think about music and digital services available today. They need to forget boundaries such as countries or regions. We're talking cyberspace, there's no borders in Cyberspace. Think interactive, put the Moshpit and the sale together. Find a digital storage solution. Think DRM3.0.

And just a store is not enough. Where waiting for the emergence of sites like ClubMosh. Something where we can get music cheap, but high quality, flexible DRM, share with friends, videos and pictures, interactivity and direct connection to the artist.

And maybe it's time the artist started thinking digitally too. And marketing digitally. Do you really need a big label when you can sell it yourself? why surrender 70% of your earnings when you can go direct? From Cellcity to ClubMosh the alternatives are emerging. And we are all going to have to change.