I believe that all the business model change involve a redistribution of Power amongst players this is where incumbent player tends to hold on to previous position and resist technology. thats how incumbent player loose the game . I hope Video Industry don’t repeat the same mistakes .

If I bequeathed my CD collection to my kids, they’d probably sell the whole pile on e-bay for 1% of their original price and be glad for the windfall.

The problem with downstreaming/downloading as a business model is that the royalty paid to the artist/copyright holder is abysmal. I have had a music album listed in the iTunes Music Store since 2006, and also on several downstreaming sites. You’d think having an album on iTunes would be great — the sale of one song would earn me 70 cents, and one sale of the whole album would earn me about $8. But I’m an unknown indy without any PR budget, and last year my total iTunes sales were ZERO. Instead, my total yearly earnings amounted to 20 cents — all from streaming sites, mainly Rhapsody, which pays me ONE CENT per downstream and TWO CENTS per sale. Two cents is what the artist used to receive in the 1940s and 50s, when two cents was actually worth something.

From the artist’s point of view, it’s still those who can invest in PR who will take the lion’s share of the profits. Only the gatekeepers and the means of exploitation are changed.”

“None-Too-Great Hits” on iTunes

I am not an expert on the music industry.. not even that much from the perspective of an opinionated analyst!

However, it looks to me that the industry has already gone well past the point of no return for DRM controls to be effective. “The cat is already out of the bag” so much so that the industry must move on to develop more creative ways to parlay music into new revenue streams as the legacy business model continues to be corrupted outside of industry controls.

Personalization of music. Music videos that are updated. Subscription services that put artists into contact, albeit most often on a mass scale basis, with their public… there are ways to deliver content that drives the market. Much of music is about the experience and personal impact.. how it ‘touches’ the perceptions of the listener/viewer. Isn’t that what art is all about in the first place?

Moving into new modes of organizing the ‘product’ to be a communication to the audience is challenging but it is exactly what pervasive broadband can deliver. More personalized, live, rich media-enhancement of music is not just feasible but is what many music artists thrive on.. the connection with their audience that gets lost if distilled down to a recording studio microphone.