Goliath May Be Down For the Count
April 4th, 2008 by Chief NutI looks like little David (i.e. online, social, consumer-driven, music management) may have taken down Goliath (i.e. the big recording labels … all except EMI, and they’re still in negotiation).
A new MySpace venture, funded by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., will launch later this year. The service will provide MySpace members with DRM-free, streaming, on-demand music (ad-based, of course) and will allow users to create playlists and all sorts of other cool non-centralized, bureaucratic RIAA-like features. Oops, did I let my opinion of the RIAA show there a little?
This TechCrunch article has most of the details. Please, dear reader, make note of this event! It’s a biggie business milestone. This is on the order of light bulbs beating out candles and gas lamps … the auto beating out the horse and buggy … VHS beating out Beta … Jordan Sparks beating out Sanjaya Malakar.
This signals the end for many industries. Music stores, radio stations (as we know them today), major record labels control over artists, etc. Maybe it’s not an immediate end to these staples of our society, but, it will be a quickly changing aspect of our business landscape.
Yesterday, I had a wonderful lunch discussion with Terry Lieberman (VP & General Manager) and Dennis Hennessey (Director of New Media Development) for The River — 92.5 FM, a triple-A station in Portsmouth, NH. The discussion revolved around their view of the changing nature of the radio industry. Let me say emphatically, these guys guys ‘get it!’ We all agreed, if the big boys in the radio biz don’t wake up and smell the coffee sometime in the next 12-18 months (24-36 months will be too late), they’ll likely find themselves being referenced with the likes of button hooks, collar tabs, and bed warmers … or Sanjaya Malakar.
