People // Indaba Music // Blog

Back from SXSW, we want to return to the Copyright Royalty Board post we made last week, as the topic sparked a heated debate in one of our panel discussions down there. Last week we brought you news of the escalating royalty rates for streaming music over the web handed down by the CRB, a decision intended to provide greater revenue to copyright holders from an exploding online business. Streaming music services responded that the escalating rates will put them out of business. The panel discussion, Selling Music Digitally, including industry heavyweights Richard Gottehrer, Chairman and Founder of The Orchard and Tim Quirk, VP Music Content and Programming for Real Networks (Rhapsody). Discussion revolved around new opportunities in digital music sales and services, with itunes held up as the model for the former and Rhapsody for the latter. When asked (admittedly, by us) how the panel expected the recent CRB ruling would affect the future of digital music distribution, the panel became animated with debate. Tim Quick offered a particularly insightful view of the future with music becoming an on-demand service (read: Rhapsody). Based on streaming audio technology, this new service would provide music to any broadcast device from a limitless library of songs, all royalty rates apply. Quick explained that the industry would need to find revenue models to match the escalating rates. Others, particularly Dennis Mudd, CEO of Broadband Instruments Corp, countered that people will always want to feel ownership of music files, CDs, etc and that if any move to a subscription service comes, it will come far in the future. Music as an on-demand service? Beyond how this will affect music businesses online, how do artists feel about a future of singles on-demand, a future without the album? How might this change the way artists approach the creative process? Somewhat related, we stopped by the Amie Street showcase at Pianos in New York City last night and caught the last band, New Violators. It was the final night of a North American tour highlighted by a SXSW performance for this new-wave-redux Norwegian quintet, and they rocked. Amie Street is a great website started by a few recent college graduates last year that serves artists and music fans with a revolutionary new pricing model for digital downloads. Artists upload their music which people can download for free at first, then as demand for the song builds, the price rises and 70% of sales go into artists pockets. It's a great site for discovering new music and is leading an innovative charge in digital music sales. - David