Dinosaurs

Recently the music industry has been getting uppity about free CD's givenaway with newspapers, particulalry following Prince giving away his entire New Album in a deal with a national newspaper. Indeed for this particular album teh only way to get it it through the paper or by attending one of his live concerts, where its free with each ticket.This complaining is yet another sign that the large record companies have absolutely no idea on how to run a buisiness model based on anything aside from the sale of physical singles and albums, and indeed no particular desire to develop a new buisiness model, prefering to shut down, lobby and stop any new way for as long as possible. Thing is, it won't work. The mass lawsuits of those who illegally downloaded music has not stemmed the tide of peer to peer sharing, nor has it moved people on to more legitimate download sites. The best DRM is usually only 2 hrs away from being hacked and rendered inert and many consumers refuse to buy music legitemately online until they can be guaranteed complete freedom to use the tracks as they see fit (be it mix CDs or transfer to any music player they own) plus a free backup should a catastrophic failiure occur. At the moment the record companies are caught seriously wanting. Combine thsi with the alterations in how the carts are measured, now including all downloads. with Internet and DAB radio catering for more refined and specific music tastes its becoming much harder to invent a pop act (bovine and obedient) and find a similarly bovine and obedient crowd to buy them en-masse. Hell we've not had a new boyband since westlife, and the bigger events ahev been the reforming of old acts from the 90s, winning nostalgia and novelty value in the same way black lace doesn't for the 80s.In short the record companies are loosing control of their indusrty, their content and with artist now able to generate their own hype through social networking, they may have to accept loss of control of any new acts.I heard an interesting idea, that in the future an album may be used more as a shopfront to try and persuade people to buy tickets for a tour, in short Artists (and companies) may in essence give away and album in order to generate fans to buy tickets for a tour. WHile I don't see this happening any time soon I do think that if artists can make most of their money from touring and the all important royalties gained form radio play (WHich is constantly moving away from playlists and more to public demand) then there may be more artists willing to give away the Album for free.