Digital music projects are opening new and exciting opportunities for music collections and sound archives, making it more accessible to designated communities as well as to the public.
In the new direction, the hardware and software will be used to store, process, manage and analyze music and information about music in a more friendly and attractive manner.
Digital library and archive documents will no longer solely remain in the domain of computer specialists and, therefore, guidelines should also aim at the non-specialist.
Finally, as technical developments converge to feasible system solutions, a change of emphasis towards user’s requirements is essential.
When it comes to the red-hot online music business, a lot of the focus has been on how we’ll get the music; whether we will buy songs from a download site such as Apple’s (APPL) iTunes music store or rent it from subscription services that let you listen to almost anything so long as you keep paying their bill, a la Napster (NAPS) or Real Network’s Rhapsody (RNWK) service.
Another question is going to become an important issue for an increasing percentage of consumers: namely, what will the sound quality of this music be? Today, songs pulled off the Net are skimpy facsimiles of the ones you get on a CD. They’re highly compressed, stripped of millions of digital bits that leave them with about one-tenth of the data found on a CD track (that’s assuming the typical “bit rate” of 128 kilobits-per-second). You can transfer the files fast, but the sacrifice is sound quality.
CD quality: that is fine for now, since most people listen to digital music on their PCs or MP3 players, devices normally used with cheap speakers that mask any sound quality deficiencies. And compression has played a vital ole in the development of the market so far. It is the magic that makes iPod-mania possible, by enabling even tiny devices with limited storage to carry thousands of songs.
But if the digital music revolution is to reach its full potential, an all-digital future, perhaps, in which CDs racks are no longer needed, analysts say the industry will have to hit a far better – sounding note. Already, tech0savvy consumers are dabbling with ways to distribute their digital tunes more freely, to play them on their good living-room speakers, wall-rattling home theaters, or slick car audio systems.
Often they find the compressed files’ sound quality sorely lacking. “If you are listening to compressed music using your iPod ear buds, you won’t notice much difference from a CD,” said Scott Bahneman, founder and chief executive of tiny startup Music Giants. “But once you play it on a good home stereo, the difference is huge.”
Bahneman hopes to close that gap, and position Music Giants to take a high-end niche in the fast-growing “digital home” market. This summer, his 15-person outfit will launch the first service that sells online music at CD-equivalent fidelity, what Bahneman calls “high-definition music.” Music Giants has licensed the music of all five major record labels, which it will sell in a “lossless” format, defined by Microsoft (MSFT) that results in digital songs that equal the quality of CDs.
These are big files requiring far more storage space than MP3s traded on file-sharing sites, or downloaded from the for-pay services. But for music lovers who can the difference, or think they ca, Music Giants’ service will be the only game in town, at least for now. “They’re addressing the biggest compromise that music fans have to make: trading portability for quality. This solves that dilemma,” says Ted Cohen, senior vice-president for digital development and distribution for record label EMI.
The Internet will eventually be wonderful for music buyers, but it is still a threat to today’s dominant record labels. Today, there is more optimism. In the first half of this year, global physical unit sales of recorded music rose, albeit by a tiny amount. The industry claims that file sharing has stabilized thanks to its lawsuits. The number of music files freely available online has fallen from about 1.1 billion in April 2003 to 800m this June, according to IFPI, a record-industry body. That said, Internet piracy is rampant, and physical CD piracy continues to worsen.
But big music's attitude towards the Internet has changed, too. Over the past four years the big companies have come a long way towards accepting that the Internet and digital technology will define the industry's future. Thanks to Apple and its enormously popular iPod music players and iTunes download service, most music executives now believe that people will pay for legal online music. (Although they have mushroomed, legal online downloads account for less than 5% of industry revenues.) The big companies are trying to work out how they can harness the Internet. Consequently, they have to rethink their traditional business models.
In the past, an important part of the major’s R&D strategy was to buy up the independent firms themselves. But after years of falling sales and cost cutting, the major have little appetite for acquisitions, and now rely more on their own efforts. What some people call music’s “disease” is not solely a matter of poor taste on the part of the big firms. Being on the stock market or part of another listed company makes it hard to wait patiently for the next Michael Jackson to be discovered or for a slow-burning act to reach it’s third or forth breakthrough album.
The majors also complain that the radio business is unwilling to play unusual new music for fear of annoying listeners and advertisers. And while TV loves shows like “Pop Idol” for drawing millions of viewers, such programs also devalue music by showing that it can be manufactured, technology has made it easy for music firms to pick people who look good and adjust the sound they make into something acceptable, though also ephemeral.
The majors could argue that they can happily carry on creating overnight hits; so long as they sell well today, why should it matter if they do no last? But most such music is aimed at teenagers, the very age group most likely to download without paying. And back-catalogue albums make a great deal of money. The boss of one major label estimate that, while catalogue accounts for half of revenues, it brings in three-quarters of his profits. If the industry stops building catalogue by relying too much on one-hit wonders, it is storing up a big problem for the future.
Universal Music and Warner Music are starting up units to help independent labels with new artists, both promising initiatives that show that they are willing to experiment. Thanks to the major’s efforts in the last few years, their music has already improved, says Andy Taylor, executive chairman of Sanctuary group, an independent, pointing to acts such as the Black Eyed Peas (Universal), Modest Mouse (Sony), Murphy Lee (Universal) and Joss Stone (EMI).
And yet if they can shore up their position in recorded music, the big firms may find themselves sitting on the sidelines. For only their bit of the music business has been shrinking: live touring and sponsorship are big earners and are in fine shape.
