I have to admit to my confidence that it would happen — more than $1 Billion in sales of digital music in 2005, which was triple the year before. Revenues in 2006 doubled to about $2 billion. People are willing to pay for music if it is offered to them in a contemporary way — i.e. digital. Consumers like choice and when it comes to music, they have access to many music sites with unlimited shelf space. It should not be a surprise to the music industry that if people are offered the choice to buy tracks of music of their liking instead of being forced to buy an album containing mostly songs they don’t want, they choose the former. Apple continues to be the thought leader on this. Today they announced that if you like some tracks you have purchased and want to buy the entire album later they will give you full credit for the tracks from the album that you have previously bought on iTunes. In other words you don’t have to pay twice for the same song when you purchase an album containing tracks you already own from that album.
Not only is choice a big thing for consumers but also for businesses. Stores and restaurants and companies of all kinds have been using "elevator music" for years and have paid dearly for it. Now they have some new choices. It is called "royalty free music". Operating as one of Jupitermedia’s new companies, Royalty Free Music.com offers thousands of tracks of high quality music for every occasion and from every genre. Once a company pays an annual licensing fee, they are free to use the music they download on a nearly unlimited basis. After downloading their choices, they can connect their PC to their audio system and use iTunes, Winamp, or any MP3 player to shuffle and play the music whenever and wherever they choose. For example, rather than using "piped in" music a store can pick the music they want and can feature sounds and songs that may remind customers of things the store has for sale or sets the atmosphere they want to create in the store.
In case you are reading the patrickWeb blog via email, take a look at the patrickWeb homepage and try the music. Let me know if there is something else you would like me to add to the collection.
As for the music industry, I continue to believe the core problem is attitude. The industry group that publishes data on music sales calls itself the "International Federation of the Phonographic Industry". Does that give us a clue that they are not keeping up with the times?