The Web vs. the Music Industry: a Battle for the Ages and a Prospect for Growth

• May 10th, 2010
• Posted by Andy W.
• Posted in Music, Recording Industry, Social Media, Soundcloud, Tunes, Uncategorized

A brief overview

Whether you’ve got a deal or just some unsigned hype, music distribution has never been easier thanks to social media. One tool that I’ve been especially excited about lately is Soundcloud. Here’s the breakdown: artists can make their music readily available for stream, purchase and free download. Listeners can listen to tracks while being able to easily share music across their social networks.

At this point Soundcloud seems to mainly be used for sharing tracks with users outside the Soundcloud network. However, I’ve started exploring the internal functionality and have been pleased so far. You can follow people (Hot tip: Sub Pop Records ), favorite songs and make set lists. Pull in people from your other networks with their built in tool (including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Gmail and more) and start discovering what your buddies are listening to. This network is still in its infancy so countless improvements can be made to how it works. Hopefully they will develop their internal social network and make a one-of-a-kind social space for music.

Social media and music

No matter how this service develops, it’s another tool that the record industry can leverage to win back listeners. The giants are slowly coming around, especially with initiatives like Pearl Jam’s free iTunes track for a Twitter follow promo they ran earlier this year. This kind of creative thinking may not spurn the kind of sales the industry had in the early 2000s, but it is a show of good faith that demonstrates they care about their customers.

The industry’s first interaction with peer-to-peer file sharing (i.e. Napster), ended horribly for all parties. The industry betrayed its customer base, Napster was destroyed and many smaller artists were hung out to dry. For file sharing to work there has to be a give and take between users, artists and labels. I foresee more and more legal, free music in our future and it will be interesting to see how record labels alter their business models to work with peer-to-peer distribution. Hopefully this time around users won’t get sued for downloading Green Day in their parents’ basement.

The jam

For now take a look around Soundcloud and enjoy this sweet mashup:
wait what – juicy-r by wait what

And discover new music from folks that you’d probably never hear any other way:

Savoir Adore – Bodies by musicmule