Mobile Games - another saviour of the music industry?

Ever since the spectre of digital music began to haunt the music industry, any number of saviours have stepped forward to try to halt the loss of earnings felt as a result of illegal downloading. We've had the 360 degree record contract, social media, streaming and even the return of vinyl.  With the announcement that Taylor Swift has signed a deal to launch a mobile game, there's a sense that the music industry is likely to be rescued by a band of heroes as opposed to a singular figure.

Pop stars having mobile games makes a lot of sense; you can license your music for use in the game, promote yourself to a young, growing audience and create easy, click through sales opportunities.  However, it may not all be plain sailing, as documented by Perez Hilton, Katy Perry's first attempt at a game wasn't so successful and reminds us that quality can still count when it comes to attracting an audience.  Perhaps the most important point here, though, is that only a very few music artists will have the audience appeal necessary for a games company to want to do a deal with them.  It's not like games developers are going to be rushing to sign up artists from indie labels - though I would love to be proved wrong on this one.

Will Competition Make or Break Streaming?

There are some great stats in this article.  With Google and Apple about to launch streaming services, it's interesting to note how none of the existing services make a profit and that very few of the potential users actually pay for the services.  An argument is that the cost of a subscription puts users off paying it and that, with Apple and Google entering the market, the increased competition will force down the price of subscription and encourage more people to sign up and pay for services.  However, what would be the eventual consequence of this?  When prices are forced down some services will inevitably be forced to close because they don't have the scale of business to cope.  This often leads to a near monopoly situation where just the big companies are left and less choice is available to the consumer.  Of course, this could also impact on the artists as one or two companies dominating the streaming market will mean that they can force record labels to accept lower payments per play on the streaming services.  On the flip side of course, this might be the bitter pill that the industry and consumer will have to swallow if they want to see streaming services continue.  Investors will only support Spotify and Pandora for so long before they want to see a profit.

Physical Release of U2's album promises more

You may have wondered why U2 would 'give away' Songs of Innocence for free through the iTunes 'gift'. As TV ads have promised in the last few days, the gift was really just a taster of the physical 'deluxe' release. Buy the deluxe CD and you get a load of tracks not available through the iTunes gift.  This article also has some interesting numbers regarding how many people downloaded the gift version - nearly twice as many as those who have ever downloaded U2 material through iTunes.

U2 and Apple - the story that keeps on giving

There's a wealth of stuff available on this story.  This image highlights lots of the issues that can be found in U2's decision to release their new album for free through iTunes.

Music Industry - How to Make Money from Youtube

If sales of CDs are in a permanent state of decline and illegal downloading continues to gather pace, how are music artists and record labels going to make money out of music?  This article from The Guardian breaks down one of the key new revenue sources - sharing ad revenue with Youtube.  There are lots of great statistics and commentaries in here.  It's well worth mining for exam material. It even has figures for the Beggars Group, which part owns Rough Trade.

Music Industry - An Artist's Perspective

For more on the imminent closure of HMV and the reasons behind it, have a read of Irish musician Bressie's take on events.  It's interesting to read how an artist views issues around 360 record deals and illegal downloading. In particular, it's worth noting how he finds it difficult to resolve his understanding of the consumer's demand for easy and cheap access to music and his own need as an artist to make a living.

The Bad News That Should Help You In The Exam

So it's finally come to pass. I remember how in the months leading up to the death of my dog he stank something awful as his insides began to decay. Such has been the slow and drawn out demise of HMV that it seems such a smell has surrounded it for years. In any case, dog deaths aside, read this article on the BBC News site to explore the reasons for the end of HMV. If you don't mention this in the exam, one of two things will have happened: it will have been a very odd question or you will have been horribly distracted by the graffiti of previous exam candidates.

Tackling Torrent Sites

As mentioned in class today, there's been a renewed push by the BPI to get internet service providers to block access to torrent sites.  Click here to read more about it on the BBC news site.  Reading through the article, you'll begin to realise some of the difficulties in stopping illegal downloading

Has downloading killed the album?

An interesting question is posed on the BBC 6Music site - are we witnessing the beginning of the end for music albums? Do you value your album collection? Are tracks better appreciated as part of an album or do you all use the shuffle function on your iPod or MP3 player. Many artists (e.g. Travis, Ash, Prince) are beginning to acknowledge that the downloading of tracks has fundamentally changed the way audiences listen to music and have decided to either do away with or give away albums.