I guess I'm not the only one left scratching my head after reading this last weekend's NY Times Magazine. Talks of focus groups and word of mouth departments left me with all the same feelings that consistently turn me off to the music biz position on how we should get music and content. Rubin has the answer to the p2p crisis - a freakn' subscription model. Very Boomer. This is just so excruciatingly disconnected from the bulldozing reality of today's music consumption - especially as music content is no longer even consumed as a separate entity anymore. Content co-mingles with gaming, social expression etc... My sense is that this is a great example of how research can go a stray. They talked to youth (see below) - but they are just reading the data all wrong and missing the insight that will innovate the existing music model. Here from the article:
" To combat the devastating impact of file sharing, he, like others in the music business (Doug Morris and Jimmy Iovine at Universal, for instance), says that the future of the industry is a subscription model, much like paid cable on a television set. "You would subscribe to music," Rubin explained, ..."You'd pay, say, $19.95 a month, and the music will come anywhere you'd like. In this new world, there will be a virtual library that will be accessible from your car, from your cellphone, from your computer, from your television. Anywhere. The iPod will be obsolete, but there would be a Walkman-like device you could plug into speakers at home. You'll say, 'Today I want to listen to ... Simon and Garfunkel,' and there they are. The service can have demos, bootlegs, concerts, whatever context the artist wants to put out. And once that model is put into place, the industry will grow 10 times the size it is now." ..."
More takes on the whole stink:
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