The problem with music

Posted by muesli in Music
Saturday, September 20. 2003

Music is just a product. A product for masses. No music-industry official would (read: could) deny that. We're (talking about the media-crazy western world) living in a free market economy. Everyone participating in this world has to follow certain rules. Whether he/she likes it or not.

Offer & Demand: It's known, that the price of a product is an interplay between demand and offer. Rare items are more expensive, bulk goods are cheap. The more rare such an item is, the merrier the public demand for this product. The reverse is true: If there are too many offers for a certain good, then the demand for it will drop, just as the price drops the same way.

Suddenly, the music industry has to face the following circumstances:

- With every song released, there is more of this good available to the public.

- Those goods ain't fading. Of course, music loses some value with the time - but the really good songs (and only those are worth the bucks, be honest) last for a long time.

- As people own more and more songs, the assortment is getting bigger every day. Therefore, the demand for new supplies is decreasing.

- The last argument combined with the fact, that 50% of concurrent songs consist of nothing else than cheap remakes, tends to the flagrantly sharing of copies via P2P.

- In the long run, only quality will have a chance to survive.

Noticing something? Yep, first-grade economics.

MI-Motto: Drop the prices, save the asses.

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Here's the thing though... Yes, they most definately need to drop the prices, but they also need to give the people the product (music) in the container that they want it. It's kind of like the fact that we want Peanut Butter, but we don't want to buy it in a stainless steel jar. People want to buy music, but they don't necessarily want it in a CD anymore, they want it in a digital file that is easily playable and easily modified (MP3).

#1 Matthew Jones (Homepage) on 2003-09-20 08:01 (Reply)

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