Is Free The Future?

Music industry has the potential to double in size
Matt Mason then summed up the debate by saying that the music industry is finally catching up with piracy and learning how to provide alternatives. Really this is about the industry re-evaluating the true value of music, which most people agree had been overestimated in the past. The industry is still searching for a simple model that can track downloadable music and until it does, the problem will exist.

Tablo from South Korea added that when we talk about how the value of music has decreased and the revenues have decreased, how much of those profits actually went to the recording artists in the first place. The balance has been addressed in favour of the artist when before they got between 10% or at best 20% of revenues. Tablo said that before the advent of downloadable music he was getting such a small cut of the revenues that he decided to give away his music for free rather than earn money for music company executives. Tablo worries that if we embrace the digital model and it becomes profitable again that artists will be in the same position that they were before the digital revolution.

Mason continued on this point, saying that under the current model, if 300 million people worldwide were paying $5 dollars a month to consume as much music as they wanted then the music industry would be twice the size that it is now. So the money is there in theory, the problem is that piracy is the symptom, the problem is we haven't put any systems in place in a coordinated way and you cannot now ask people to pay for something that they have been getting for free. Mason maintains the way to make people change their behaviour is to change the environment and he thinks the music industry will grow to twice its present size if it can find a better solution to piracy.page << 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 >>