I get it. I’d be upset to. I’d be trying my hardest to keep people from walking away from me. Any business should feel threatened when its customers move away from them and profits drop. But… the music industry can’t seem to not look idiotic. Ever.
Take the latest, for example. BI Norwegian School of Management completed a study that said consumers that pirate music buy more. The obvious hits like teenagers smoking because their parents tell them not to. (Those that like music buy more of it.)
EMI reacted in kind. Bjørn Rogstad links the declining profits to “illegal downloading [outweighs] the legal sale of music” (surely correct). This, compared to suing (or banding together with providers to arrest) consumers, is mild but telling.
Instead of embracing the new model of individual track sales, mass distribution for minuscule cost and user-driven demand, Big Music seems to prefer the near-analog. They’re in need of an overhaul and major brand management.
The RIAA needs to accept that Apple and Amazon are playing their game better than they are (and dividing the wealth therein). They need to infiltrate social tools (responsibly) and hear the voices talking at them that they’re obviously ignoring.
How to do that? Digitize your vast reserves of aural content and distribute it in the same way. Get your side of things out and stop attacking your profit source. Above all, realize selling twelve mediocre songs for three demanded ones on a less-portable media is unsustainable.
Until then, all business, especially formerly-established ones that are being uprooted by digital momentum, should avoid reacting like the music industry at all costs.
Cross-posted at Sex Drugs and Intellectual Freedom
Tags: corporations, data portability, digital reputation management